File No. 812.516/156
The French Ambassador to the Secretary of State
Washington, December 28, 1916.
Mr. Secretary of State: My Government has communicated to me the text of the decree dated the 14th [16] of this month by which the Carranza Government orders all the banks of issue in Mexico which shall not have increased their metallic cash in hand as required by the provisions of the decree of September 15 last, to be put into liquidation by ministerial or judicial act.
As your excellency may have seen from a perusal of that document which I deem to be in your hands, far from amending or mitigating the previous one, the decree of December 14 [16] fully confirms it and rests on its provisions the institution of even more violent measures.
The Government of the Republic which never ceased to urge the repeal of the decree of September 15, advises me of its intention to enter the most formal and energetic protest both at Mexico with the Carranza Government and at Paris with the Legation of Mexico against these new measures taken against the banks.* * *
It was just at the time when it was seemingly negotiating an arrangement with the banks, as I had the honor to state in my letter of the 9th of this month to your excellency, that the Carranza Government was preparing against them the brutal spoliation measure it has just made public.
It is proper further to remark that there is all the less warrant for the measures just taken by the Mexican Government as, since the date of the last decree, it has bought of the National Bank upwards of one million silver dollars and on the other hand for over a month has been pressing the same bank for a loan of eight millions in coin.
Your excellency will easily admit that those transactions and negotiations wholly invalidate the reasons invoked in justification of the decree of December 14.
Be pleased [etc.]