714.1515/738: Telegram
The Minister in Honduras (Summerlin) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 26—1:52 a.m.]
78. Your telegram No. 50, June 15, noon. The following reply dated today has been received from the Minister for Foreign Affairs:
“The Government of Honduras has considered with the most profound attention the friendly reply of His Excellency the Secretary of State, fully appreciating the sentiments of cordiality which dictated it and which also motivated the proposals he made for the satisfactory [Page 752] and definite solution of the existing controversy. In full response to these sentiments my Government desires that there shall not exist the slightest misunderstanding with respect to the interpretation of the reply of the Department of State to the question which I ventured to ask in my note of June 12th to the American Legation.35
My Government is of the understanding that in the opinion of His Excellency the Secretary of State there is no existing signed protocol of arbitration between Honduras and Guatemala; but the Department of State does not pronounce [sic] itself in regard to the existence of an obligation to sign such a protocol, to be inferred from the declaration made in 1923 by His Excellency ex-Secretary of State Hughes.
In fact at the close of the Washington Conference of 1923 there existed in full vigor the boundary convention between Honduras and Guatemala signed August 1, 1914,36 which became effective on June 12, 1915, the date of exchange of ratifications, article 15 of the convention providing that it should have a duration of 10 years.
Article 9 of the convention stipulated that ‘if the Governments should not be able to agree on any one or more of the disputed points, they agree to refer the decision to an arbitrator who shall be the President of the United States of America.’ The naming of the Arbitrator was to have been made at the latest within 60 days of the publication in the official journal of the notice conjointly one of the contracting Governments suggested the nomination to the other; and in the event that this requisite should not have been fulfilled within the stipulated time the efficacy and force of the convention was in no sense invalidated, for article 15 declared conclusively that none of the time limits fixed in the convention should be final nor should they give rise to provisos of any kind.
The same article provided that the boundary question should not be settled by any other means.
With such unquestionable antecedents it is evident from every point of view that the obligation contracted by Honduras and Guatemala at Washington during the Conference of 1923 under the auspices of the Department of State was that of proceeding to the execution of the arbitration agreement and subscribed to in the boundary convention of 1914, an obligation which Honduras has been ready to satisfy in the terms agreed upon.
If Guatemala has not responded on more than one occasion to the suggestion of the Government of Honduras for the proper formalization of the arbitration, nevertheless, the Department of State considered always that there was pending an obligation, an opinion expressed on more than one occasion both orally and in writing. This obligation could not be other than that of 1914 ratified in 1923, and it could have been realized at any time by merely giving it form effective for execution, in view of the fact that the procedure and terms of the arbitration were laid down in article 11 of the convention referred to.
In the light of the above considerations, if, as my Government understands, the Department of State is of the opinion that there is lacking only a signed protocol, and given the sentiments of cordiality which it extends to the Central American countries together with its [Page 753] proposal that the existing question be settled by means of arbitration, I believe firmly that its efforts directed toward suggesting to both Governments the formalization of the protocol discussed above would meet with a ready acceptance from both, if there exists the desire for a sincere understanding. Thus would be avoided delays and difficulties perhaps unsurmountable which would arise in other procedures recently suggested.
While offering respectfully this suggestion in a spirit of true cordiality and with strong confidence in the high justice and strict judgment of His Excellency the Secretary of State, my Government awaits in any case the later decision of the Department before considering, always with the same breadth of view and with the same disposition for the equitable and friendly settlement of its differences, its definite reply to the proposal of His Excellency the Secretary of State contained in the American Minister’s note number 239 of June 5 of the present year.”37
Repeated to Guatemala and Salvador.