File No. 422.11G93/967
The Acting Secretary of State to the Ecuadoran Minister ( Elizalde)
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of July 6, wherein you state that your Government accedes to the suggestions made by this Department relative to the setting apart out of the customs receipts and the depositing out of these receipts of an amount commensurate with the service of the interest on the Guayaquil & Quito Railroad bonds, in order that this Department might be in a position to use its good offices with the War Trade Board regarding the amount of cacao that the War Trade Board will allow to be exported from Ecuador to the United States.
Acting on your assurances that your Government had assented to the above-mentioned suggestions, the Department of State has been able to obtain from the War Trade Board, authorization for 7,200 tons of cacao to be imported to the United States from Ecuador, [Page 417] from July 1 to December 31, 1918. It required considerable effort on the part of this Department to secure this authorization from the War Trade Board, as that board had allocated a large proportion of the tonnage necessary to carry this amount of cacao to other purposes. The 7,200 tons of cacao to be imported during the last 6 months of this year, together with the amount imported during the first half of the present year, will make the total amount approximate Ecuador’s last year’s exports to the United States.
The Department of State and the War Trade Board having taken the above-mentioned action, this Department expects that the Government of Ecuador will resume immediately daily deposits in payment of the interest on the Guayaquil & Quito Railroad bonds.
Accept [etc.]