Office of the Historian

710.Consultation (3)/209: Telegram

The Minister in the Dominican Republic (Scotten) to the Secretary of State

Ciudad Trujillo, January 5, 1942—noon.
[Received 5:53 p.m.]

3. Referring to the Department’s number 4 January 3, 8 [7] p.m.31 The Minister for Foreign Affairs32 has asked me to inform the Department that he greatly appreciates its views as expressed in the telegram under reference and that the Dominican delegation at the Conference will act accordingly. He assured me that the program of the Dominican delegation has been drawn up with a view to flexibility …

The Department will be interested in the following declaration given by Trujillo33 in a press interview last night and published in the papers this morning.

“Our Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will attend the Conference at Rio de Janeiro; he will take with him among the projects which our Government proposes to submit to the consideration of that meeting, one by which all the nations of the American continent are invited to declare war jointly against the signatory nations of the Tripartite Pact”.34

Scotten
  1. Not printed; in this telegram the Department expressed its approval of a Dominican-sponsored resolution calling for a joint declaration of war by the American Republics against the Axis (710.Consultation (3)/149).↩
  2. Arturo Despradel.↩
  3. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, President of the Dominican Republic.↩
  4. Three-Power Pact between Japan, Germany, and Italy, signed at Berlin, September 27, 1940; for text, see League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. cciv, p. 386.↩