817.00/5662: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Nicaragua (Eberhardt)
114. For Eberhardt and Parker. Your 216, May 17, 11 a.m. and 218 May 17, 3 p.m. The Department has conferred at length with General McCoy and joins with him in expressing the sincere hope that the necessity for calling upon the National Board to decide, directly or indirectly, factional disputes within either party may be avoided. Certainly all legitimate expedients to that end should be exhausted. It is obviously in the interest of the whole country, as well as of both political parties, that complications of this nature should be adjusted by each party in its own way so that in accordance with previous practice and existing laws there should be but two candidates, [Page 492] each representing one of the principal parties. It is such an election that the Tipitapa Agreement clearly contemplated, and not an election involving a free-for-all contest among party factions, with the probability of throwing the result for determination into the Nicaraguan Congress, the membership of which is only partially involved in this supervised election. The task which the United States has assumed is that of doing its best to see that every citizen. of Nicaragua entitled to vote has a free and fair chance to do so for the next President of Nicaragua, and any political maneuvers designed to defeat that purpose and throw the choice of the President into the Congress cannot fail to be viewed with the gravest misgivings. You are authorized to use, in your discretion, as much of this telegram as you may deem proper in discussing the situation with the representatives of both principal parties.