710.H Agenda/30: Telegram
The Minister in Haiti (Mayer) to the Secretary of State
[Received 1:45 p.m.]
33. The Minister for Foreign Affairs tells me that he believes the Dominican Government seriously intends to press for the formation of a Pan-American League of Nations. Corroborating this, Leger18 says that the present able Dominican representative here, Jimenez, is being sent to Peru as Dominican Minister there in order to prepare the ground to the above end for the forthcoming Conference of American States at Lima. Incidentally Leger understands that one of the two des Pradels is to come here.
With all this in mind Leger inquired regarding the Department’s attitude toward the formation of a Pan-American League of Nations, saying he would like to know this before being sounded out on this score by the Dominican Government which he felt would be soon.
At my solicitation Leger said that personally he felt the disadvantages of a Pan American League of Nations would far outweigh any possible benefits; that the present system comprising the Pan-American Union, the various inter-American treaties and the occasional conferences formed a satisfactory structure for inter-American activities the efficacy of which had been most happily demonstrated recently in the settlement of the Haitian-Dominican dispute.19 Leger feared that any attempt further to crystalize and embody this system in a written document by the establishment of a League of Nations might easily engender the disadvantages which had been so unfortunately demonstrated in the League of Nations and which the present elastic inter-American system largely avoids.
I should much appreciate as early a reply as possible since my guess is that the Dominican Government has already approached Leger but that he desires to defer his reply until learning our attitude.
Repeated to Ciudad Trujillo.