837.513/50: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Representative on Special Mission in Cuba (Crowder)
30. Your despatch of May 4, regarding lottery.
You are authorized to present a memorandum on this subject to the Cuban Government setting forth the situation as presented in despatch. This memorandum should be similar in tone to others recently presented, avoiding any appearance of threat or any demand so insistent that Department would be embarrassed by failure of Cuban Government to comply immediately. You may, however, state emphatically that a continuation of present conditions in the lottery would be regarded by this Government as a violation of Zayas’s commitments referred to in your despatch and as a most serious obstacle to any rehabilitation of Cuba’s finances. Emphasis [Page 1027] should be placed not so much upon Piatt Amendment as upon Zayas’s commitments to you and upon urgent need of the Cuban Government to avail itself of all available sources of revenue and to divert to the use of the Government the large sums which are now taken from the public by illegal methods. It is obvious that the sums so taken from the public materially diminish the capacity of the public to pay taxes to the Government.