714.1515/785a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Honduras (Summerlin)
70. Please deliver following note textually to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, informing Department by telegraph of day and hour of delivery. The note will then be made public here:
“I have received Your Excellency’s note of July 27, a copy of which I have duly transmitted to my Government,44 and in reply I am instructed to inform Your Excellency of the deep disappointment with which my Government has received the decision of the Government of Honduras not to accept the proposal made by the Secretary of State as a friendly mediator in the matter of the boundary dispute between Honduras and Guatemala, for a settlement of this long-standing controversy through its submission unreservedly to arbitration by the International Central American Tribunal. This disappointment is all the more keen in view of the fact that the Government of Guatemala, as Your Excellency’s Government is aware, has already signified its unqualified acceptance of this proposal.
While at first glance it would not seem that the communication from the Honduran Government above referred to requires any further [Page 766] reply, nevertheless my Government feels constrained to comment upon certain of the statements made in Your Excellency’s note as forming grounds for the refusal by the Government of Honduras to submit this question unreservedly to arbitration.
My Government has duly noted Your Excellency’s statements concerning previous agreements and efforts to adjust this controversy but is convinced that no useful purpose will be served by recapitulation of past difficulties and efforts which have proved unfruitful. It was precisely because experience has shown the difficulty of bringing about a solution of this controversy based on previous agreements or on a continuation of the methods then employed, that my Government felt the best prospect of success lay in a new agreement to submit this question to arbitration by an impartial tribunal.
Your Excellency states that the panel of the International Central American Tribunal is incomplete and points out that only the Governments of Costa Rica and Nicaragua have sent in their lists of members, and further remarks that the latter list was drawn up by a decree dated June 27 of the present year. My Government has been informed that the list submitted by the Nicaraguan Government was prepared in 1923 and there would therefore seem to be no basis for any supposition that either the Costa Rican or Nicaraguan lists were drawn up with the present controversy in mind. With regard to the failure of the Government of Honduras to make its appointments I have no comment to make, but inasmuch as the Government of Honduras would not have been able to select any jurists chosen from its own list the absence of this list would seem to be of no importance so far as Your Excellency’s Government is concerned and does not limit the competency or the availability of the Tribunal in this case.
The Government of Salvador not having ratified the Convention establishing the International Central American Tribunal could not name a list of jurists; but nevertheless this Convention is in effect, with two lists of jurists nominated by countries not parties to the existing controversy.
As Your Excellency is doubtless aware, Article 26 of this Convention provides that the Convention shall take effect with respect to the parties that have ratified it from the date of its ratification by at least three of the signatory states. It was therefore foreseen that a case might arise in which resort would be had to this Tribunal when only the list of one state not a party to the controversy would be available for the selection of a tribunal.
There are now available for nomination as members of the Tribunal twelve distinguished jurists, the reputation and high moral worth of whom Your Excellency does not question, and of whom two are South Americans, eight are Central Americans and two are North Americans. Since the Tribunal would be made up of only three jurists one of whom could be selected by mutual agreement outside of the list of twelve mentioned above, it appears that it should not be difficult to select from this list the jurists necessary to form the Tribunal. My Government is fully satisfied therefore that if there is genuine desire to submit this question to settlement by the International Central American Tribunal no obstacle to the creation of an impartial tribunal exists.
To Your Excellency’s observations that the idea of arbitration is essentially of a judicial nature, my Government takes no exception. [Page 767] Nevertheless, though arbitrations are judicial in their nature, it has never been understood, nor has it been the practice, unless limited by the Protocol of Submission, that arbitrations of boundary disputes should not take into consideration the elements set forth in the proposal of the United States. After a careful study of the present controversy, with the details of which my Government is thoroughly familiar, it was felt that it would be to the best interests of both countries that a decision should not be based solely upon historical evidence purporting to set forth boundaries between Honduras and Guatemala before either of those nations existed as an independent republic. It was not intended that the Tribunal should ignore the judicial or documentary or historic proof on which the rights of the parties might rest but, on the contrary, all such documents and historic proof would be available to the arbitrators in this case. This could easily be provided for by the Protocol of Submission. It was to meet the practical considerations involved that my Government suggested that the arbitral tribunal should be authorized to take into consideration the existing political, economic and commercial interests of both states, thus permitting the tribunal to draw a boundary line which would be felt to be suitable under existing circumstances.
In suggesting that the tribunal be empowered to take into consideration the political, economic and commercial interests of both states in fixing a common boundary between them my Government did not doubt that this suggestion would be acceptable, in view of the fact that both Honduras and Guatemala, as a result of the mediation proceedings of 1917 and 1918, agreed to the appointment of a commission to make an economic survey of the territory in dispute. This survey was completed in 1919 and the report, which covered political, economic and commercial conditions, was communicated to both Governments, who, through their duly appointed representatives, presented arguments to the mediator based upon this report, thus making these elements a part of the controversy.
My Government has noted Your Excellency’s expressed willingness to accept arbitration under the President of the United States of America or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, or any other tribunal established in regular and permanent form. It was the opinion of my Government that this question, involving a boundary between two Central American republics, could and should be arbitrated by the Tribunal which had been created by the Central American republics for the express purpose of arbitrating just such questions as this one. For this reason the Secretary of State made the proposal in the form that he did, feeling sure that both countries, if they could agree to submit the question to arbitration, would welcome the opportunity to submit it to arbitration by a tribunal which they themselves established rather than by any foreign tribunal.
In conclusion I am instructed to say that my Government feels that the suggestion which the Secretary of State made on June 545 is still open to acceptance by the Government of Honduras and hopes that Government will give careful reconsideration to the matter.”