Mr. Eustis to Mr. Olney.
Received your two cables of yesterday and have submitted to Clunet your question. There can be no misapprehension as to the view taken by me or by the French Government. The purpose of the requests for the evidence was explicitly stated in my dispatch of June 22 to Mr. Hanoteaux, which was approved by the Department. The French Government has never mistaken the object of our requests. Its refusal was based on the principle of French criminal law it invoked, and had no reference whatever to any hypothetical use we might make of the evidence. If the evidence supported the charges, we could not, of course, impugn the conclusion of the court. If the evidence failed to establish Waller’s guilt, I contended that in that case we had the right to inspect the sentence and demand redresses.