812.77/1200
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Welles) of a Conversation With the Mexican Ambassador (Nájera)
The Mexican Ambassador called this afternoon at my request. I told the Ambassador that I had always had the happy experience with him during these past two years of being able to take up matters in an entirely personal and unofficial way whenever questions arose which seemed to contain the possibility of creating misunderstanding or friction between the two countries. I told him that the decree of expropriation of the National Railways which had been communicated to the Department by telegram this morning was a matter of very great importance and that certain questions had immediately arisen with regard to the interpretation which should be given to certain features in the decree which I had requested our Legal Adviser to place in the form of a memorandum for my own convenience and that I was going to give the Ambassador, entirely informally, a copy of this memorandum72 with the personal request that he let me have a reply to the ten questions formulated therein as early as possible. The Ambassador said he would be glad to do this and would give me an answer as soon as possible.
The Ambassador agreed with me that it was of great importance that his Government, if it were prepared to give equitable compensation to the American citizens who were stockholders in the Railways, should make that fact doubly plain so that public opinion in the United States might not gain a false impression of what his Government intended to do. He said that Dr. Suarez, the Finance Minister, had called him on the telephone last night and had indicated that he was prepared immediately to negotiate with Mr. Rublee73 a conclusion of the agreement covering the national debt and that he would attempt to bring this to a final adjustment before Mr. Lamont74 sailed for Europe on June 30. Dr. Suarez had also told the Ambassador that the shareholders in the Railways would be in a far more satisfactory position as the result of the expropriation decree than they would have been if the Railways had been permitted to continue in their present status.
The Ambassador told me with much satisfaction that Dr. Suarez at the same time had advised him that a decree had been signed refusing nationalization of the religious school in Monterrey and the one known as the Burns school property in Mexico City. I expressed [Page 681] to the Ambassador my very deep appreciation of the interest which he had taken in this matter and said I knew how happy the authorities of the Catholic Church in this country would be because of the decision taken.
The Ambassador then spoke at some length about his call upon the President this morning, upon the European situation, and expressed for the first time very considerable doubt that the Valencia Government75 could maintain itself much longer.
- Infra.↩
- George Rublee, representative of the International Committee of Bankers on Mexico.↩
- Thomas W. Lamont, member of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co.↩
- See vol. i, pp. 215 ff.↩