738.39/347
The Minister in Haiti (Mayer) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 6.]
Sir: I have the honor to refer to my despatch No. 175 of May 28, 1938, concerning Haitian-Dominican relations.66 President Vincent called me over to the Palace this morning to tell me, in great confidence, his suspicions concerning President Trujillo’s aggressive designs against Haiti.
President Vincent spoke at some length very much in the same vein as the Minister for Foreign Affairs67 had discussed the matter with me on May 28, expressing the hope that we would be willing to approve certain reasonable expenditures to renew the outworn armament of the Garde.
I told the President that of course it was a fact that the Garde was not armed in modern fashion, and this doubtless needed certain attention, and I felt certain the United States would understand and view this matter sympathetically in principle. Certain aspects of the situation, however, occurred to me and I felt certain he had himself already considered these. For example, if President Vincent’s suspicions regarding Trujillo were well founded,—President Vincent had just said that Trujillo was certainly not a normal man—would not an increase in the armament of the Garde, be it ever so reasonable, excite such an abnormal mind, perhaps giving it just the pretext it wanted and the provocation it would assume for taking precipitate action against Haiti? Secondly, it was a very serious step to start [Page 642] rearming, even from as low a scale as was now Haiti’s position and even with the justification from every point of view. I continued by saying that my own recent experience in Europe, especially at Geneva, had convinced me how serious a step this was, since the country or countries against which you are trying to create a just defense will never let the matter rest there, but will cap your moderate rearmament with just that much more in their own case, leading to an endless chain of arms competition, the conclusion of which is either war or national bankruptcy or limitation of armament. I asked President Vincent whether he had considered the last alternative as the first to be sought, namely, had he tried to discuss with the Dominican Republic the question of an arms limitation or an arms equalization arrangement. In fact, the limitation of armament of the two countries is mentioned among the essential provisions of the Agreement signed by the Haitian and Dominican delegates in Washington on January 31 for the settlement of the so-called Haitian-Dominican affair. President Vincent said that he recognized the correctness of what I had been saying but that he felt certain it would be impossible to come to any arrangement of this sort with Trujillo, implying that he had already made an effort in this direction unsuccessfully, and believed that the only alternative was to modernize the Garde’s armament. At this point President Vincent explained that new armament for the Garde was not only necessary from the point of view of possible Dominican aggression but also because the morale of the Garde and the internal policing of the country demanded this effort.
President Vincent said that he could scarcely feel that there could be any provocation in his desire to start modernizing the armament of the Garde and that he felt it very desirable, indeed necessary, to do something along this line in order at least to hold off an invasion for a few weeks until help could come to Haiti from the outside, as well as for the question of internal order alluded to above. I told President Vincent that naturally I would give most serious consideration to any detailed recommendation with regard to the armament necessities of the Garde which he might care to present to me for transmission to my Government.
I then saw the Minister for Foreign Affairs on another subject and he showed me a memorandum with respect to the modernization of the armament of the Garde and the Dominican threat which he had prepared for the President. M. Léger is furnishing me with a copy of this memorandum which I shall forward with a later despatch.
As a result of this memorandum, M. Léger said that the President had yesterday convoked himself, the Commandant of the Garde,68 the Minister of the Interior69 and, I believe, Major Armand, head of [Page 643] the Palace Guard, to discuss the Dominican situation. M. Léger said that he found the other members attending this meeting of exactly the same mind as himself, as they considered that the situation was a really serious one and required action on Haiti’s part. In this relation, the conferees discussed the question of asking for a small commission of American military experts to come to Haiti and give the Government here the benefit of their advice concerning the Garde, et cetera. The Minister for Foreign Affairs said that he expected to make some concrete, formal suggestions to me in this regard in the next few days. In discussing this phase of the matter, M. Léger said they did not intend to ask for a commission to take over the command of the Garde but rather to have a check up on the Garde situation, now that it had been some years since they had started out on their own, an action which they all thought would be beneficial. I told M. Léger that I should be glad to receive any request he might care to make for the consideration of my Government. I was not in a position to say, of course, what the Department’s attitude would be with regard to sending a military mission here. I felt confident, however, that should they fall in with any such initiative on the part of the Haitian Government it could only be in an advisory capacity and not in an executive one since, as the Minister for Foreign Affairs well knew, our policy was toward relinquishment of control in Haitian affairs rather than the contrary. M. Léger said that, of course, he understood this and felt certain that we had the same ideas in this respect.
In conclusion, the Minister for Foreign Affairs said that the President had decided, on his suggestion, to have a meeting of the same group, namely, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Minister of the Interior and members of the Garde, at least every two weeks and go over the Haitian-Dominican situation. M. Léger said the President felt this particularly desirable since, during his recent trip to Cape Haitian, the local Garde officers had communicated to him how uneasy they had all begun to feel again with regard to Trujillo’s designs. I might add that, in a recent trip to Cape Haitian, Mr. Zetek, an American agricultural expert, reported the same thing to me.
As I believe I have indicated informally to the Department, I am rather opposed in principle to military missions, since they are frequently hard to handle and, unless the personnel are well chosen, can create great confusion and difficulty, being occasionally more trouble than they are worth. On the other hand, as I have also indicated to the Department, there may be certain situations when the contrary is the case and their presence in a foreign country is desirable. This would be true for Haiti in my opinion if we considered, as I do under the circumstances, that the presence of an American military mission in Haiti would be an indirect protection [Page 644] for Haiti by preventing Trujillo from executing toward Haiti any of his quite possibly aggressive ideas. If this is the case, it might also be said correctly that the presence of a military mission here would be by way of being a certain real assurance against hostilities on this island which could only have most undesirable repercussions through Pan America and create a position of especial embarrassment for us. To the same end, the presence of an American military mission here would also indirectly act as a stabilizing factor in the internal political situation.
I shall comment further in the matter if and when the question of an American military mission should actually materialize.
Respectfully yours,