File No. 812.00/3690.
The Acting Secretary of State to the American Ambassador.
Washington, May 1, 1912.
Sir: The Department acknowledges the receipt of your despatch No. 1364, of the 17th ultimo, with which you transmit a copy of a note to the Mexican Government which you presented to the Minister for Foreign Affairs in pursuance of the Department’s instruction of April 14, 3 p.m., relative to the responsibility of Mexico and the Mexican people for American lives and property in Mexico and the treatment of Americans captured as prisoners of war.
Inasmuch as the representations which the Department desired to make had received the approval of the President in the form in which they were telegraphed to you, and were given to the press textually and undoubtedly so reached the Mexican Government through that medium, and as the copy of your note to the Mexican Government which accompanies your despatch under acknowledgment shows you to have made certain alterations and omissions in the text quoted to you in the Department’s telegram, the Department desires you to file at the Foreign Office, in addition to your original note, a note communicating to the Mexican Government textually the instructions quoted to you above referred to.
I am [etc.]