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Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)

The Mexican Ambassador called to see me this afternoon at his request.

As the Ambassador rose to leave, he asked me if I had seen the statements made by President Cárdenas with regard to the arbitration of the expropriation of the oil properties issue.

I said that I had seen the statements as reported in the press, but that, of course, I could not conceive of either one of our two Governments being unwilling to submit to an impartial arbitration differences which arose between them which it had been found impossible to settle through the diplomatic channel and which resort to the Mexican courts seemed also incapable of settling. I said that from what the Ambassador himself had stated to me on previous occasions, the Mexican Government believed that it had all the necessary evidence to justify the valuation which it had itself fixed as the proper valuation of the properties taken from American nationals, and that if this were the case, surely the Mexican Government could have no reason to object to the submission of its case to an impartial tribunal. I said, however, that this was a subject upon which I hoped to have the opportunity of conferring further with the Ambassador in the near future.

S[umner] W[elles]