838.51/2661
The Minister in Haiti (Armour) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received June 26 (?).]
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of the Department’s air mail instruction No. 63 of June 17, 1933 with regard to the question of treaty negotiations with the Haitian Government. I note that, after consideration of the proposal outlined in the Haitian Government’s note of May 16, the Department authorizes me to proceed on the following lines: To refrain from making any written reply to the Haitian note of May 16 but orally to inform the Minister for Foreign Affairs that in order to lay this matter in more detail before my Government for its consideration I desire to know the terms of the protocol covering Haitianization of the Garde which the Haitian Government desires to propose, as well as the exact terms of the assurances which the Haitian Government will give as to the form of financial control to be embodied in a subsequent protocol, and that these assurances should be in writing.
[Page 749]The instruction then goes on to state, for my information, that should the assurances “appear reasonably satisfactory we could suggest to the Haitians that on the basis of these assurances we should proceed at once to draw up a definite protocol covering financial control.”
I was afraid that if I were to make a request for “further assurances” that the Minister for Foreign Affairs would reply that adequate assurances were given in the Haitian Government’s note of May 16. I therefore felt it advisable to eliminate the intervening step and informed the Minister that in order to lay this matter more in detail before my Government I desired to be acquainted with the exact terms of the accord which they would be willing to sign. M. Blanchet took the matter up with the President and yesterday informed me that the President hoped very much that the American Government would not insist upon this as it would take some time for them to draw up the text of the financial accord which they had in mind and the President felt that in the meantime it was important, for political reasons, to be in a position to announce the conclusion of an agreement covering Haitianization of the Garde and the withdrawal of the American Marine Brigade. He then handed me the text of the accord which they were willing to sign. A copy and analysis of this document are enclosed.58 M. Blanchet explained that the procedure that he and the President had had in mind in making their proposal of May 16 had been to reach an immediate accord on the Haitianization of the Garde and the withdrawal of the Marine Brigade, the announcement of which would, they felt, have an excellent effect on the general political situation, and, having thus disposed of one-half—albeit the simpler one—of the problem, to concentrate our efforts during the next months on reaching an agreement on the text of an accord covering financial control after 1936. He pointed out that their note of May 16 had given solemn assurance that they would reach such an accord and that they would use as a base for the accord the “principle of the guarantees already stipulated.” Furthermore, as he had orally informed me, and he wished once more to confirm this assurance, the Haitian Government, while unable to say so in writing the note for reasons explained on a previous occasion, was willing to give categorical oral assurance that they would, in addition to the bases referred to above, use Protocol B of the Treaty of September 3 as a further basis of the accord to be reached.
In view of these assurances, M. Blanchet stated that he was reluctantly forced to state that further insistence by our Government upon having in writing the exact terms of the accord covering [Page 750] financial control could only be interpreted as doubting the good faith of the assurances already given by the Haitian Government.
I replied to M. Blanchet that I did not feel that such an interpretation was justified by the facts; that while my Government was certainly prepared to accept in the spirit in which it was given the assurance contained in the Haitian Government’s note, it nevertheless felt that, as shown by past experience, the Haitian Government’s interpretation of the language used in the documents which they propose to have serve as a basis for the accord, notably the Treaty of 1915, the Protocol of 1919, the Loan Contract, and Protocol B of the unratified Treaty of 1932, differed widely from the interpretation placed by the American Government on the same documents: in other words, that the Haitian Government felt that the mutual obligations assumed by our two governments vis-à-vis the purchasers of the bonds could, under the guarantees mentioned, be discharged by the use of far less control on the part of the fiscal representative than the American Government felt should properly be exercised. Therefore, without in any way doubting the good faith of the Haitian Government when it stated that it was willing to reach an accord based upon these documents, I thought that my Government probably felt it would serve to prevent misunderstanding in the future if we could be informed of the precise terms of such an accord as the Haitian Government proposed to offer. I pointed out that if there seemed to be a meeting of the minds, as indicated in the Haitian note of May 16 and in my talks with the Minister, I could not see why a protracted period of negotiation, such as envisaged by the Foreign Minister, would be necessary to reach an agreement on the terms of the accord and I suggested that if the Minister would take the text of Protocol B in one column and note against it, in a second column, those paragraphs with which the Haitian Government was in accord and those in which it suggested a change in phraseology or form, I felt that there was no reason why he could not give us, perhaps not in finished form, the text of the accord that they were willing to sign.
M. Blanchet, however, seemed to be unconvinced by my arguments and returned to the same position that they felt that we should be satisfied with the assurances that they had given as to the accord that they were willing to make; that we should reach an immediate agreement on Protocol A and then concentrate our efforts on finding a solution to Protocol B along the lines indicated in their note of May 16. I asked M. Blanchet whether he wished me to consider this a final reply and so report to my Government but he asked me to wait until he had had an opportunity of discussing the matter further with the President and that he hoped within a day or two to be in a position to let me know their final decision.
[Page 751]With regard to the penultimate paragraph on page 2 of the Department’s instruction, that dealing with a settlement of the pending boundary dispute with the Dominican Republic, the Minister for Foreign Affairs stated that they had virtually reached an agreement with the Dominican Minister to proceed to reconstitute the boundary commission in order that the commission might proceed to a definitive demarcation of the boundary line between the two countries. In other words, M. Blanchet seemed to feel that this problem was well on the way to a solution, although I must confess that in view of the past history of this question and the present internal political situation, notably the relations between the executive and legislative branches of the Government, I am inclined to be less sanguine than M. Blanchet appears to be as to the probability of a solution at an early date.
To return to the question of the treaty, if I may present my own recommendation for the Department’s consideration, it would be that if the Haitian Government accepts our proposal to submit in rough form the terms of the agreement they are willing to make, if these prove satisfactory or if through subsequent negotiation we are able to reach agreement on such terms, we propose that a memorandum embodying these be initialed and that the final drafting and signing of the accord be left to a later date. As to the Department’s suggestion that the protocol covering financial control might be treated as an executive agreement not requiring ratification by either Haiti or the United States, the Minister informed me that while he had taken this point up with the President the latter had not yet reached a decision on it. M. Blanchet, however, seemed inclined to dispute the theory that because the Protocol of 1919 had been duly ratified that the accord providing for financial administration after 1936, which it envisages, need not be submitted for ratification. He stated that the Protocol of 1919 was of a purely provisional nature; that when it was signed a loan had not been effected and no loan contract was in existence. In fact, that it was not until three years later that the loan actually became an accomplished fact. Had the terms of the loan when made called for its final payment before 1936, that is prior to the expiration of the Treaty of 1915, there would have been no necessity to put into effect the Protocol of 1919. In view of this, he thought that the Protocol of 1919 furnished a weak basis for the argument that it carried with it the necessary legislative approval for a later accord covering financial control, such as that into which we now propose to enter. I took issue with M. Blanchet on this point on the ground that it seemed to me there could be no objection to concluding a protocol or treaty which envisaged the conclusion of a certain act as a condition precedent to the putting into effect of the treaty or protocol and that, in the case of the Protocol of 1919, the conclusion [Page 752] of the loan three years after the signing of the protocol automatically fulfilled the condition and put into effect the protocol.
I am expecting to hear from M. Blanchet any day with regard to the final decision of the Haitian Government on the above questions but, in the meantime, I thought it advisable to report my conversations to date and particularly to request the Department to inform me whether my interpretation of its instructions as contained in the last paragraph of page 1 of instruction No. 63 is in accordance with the Department’s views.
Respectfully yours,
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