of value (say, for financing on awards) and it is possible that appropriate action now would save litigation or legislation later. And may I not pay tribute to you for the very fair and patient treatment given to interested parties at the hearings. With compliments, WM. H. DUNN, Representative of Wm. A. Parker, an awardee-claimant. STATEMENT BY O. M. FITZHUGH OF SAN ANTONIO, TEX., IN SUPPORT OF BILL S. 2528 My name is O. M. Fitzhugh. I am an attorney residing in San Antonio, Tex., with offices at 622 Brady Building. I represent Mr. H. G. Venable of San Antonio, Tex., and Tampico, Mexico, on whose claim against Mexico an award of $140,000 without interest was given on July 8, 1927, by the General Claims Commission. I favor the passage of bill S. 2528 just as prepared by the State Department. It fully comprehends all of the pertinent facts, and provides fully for the protection of all interests involved. It will bring the entire Mexican claims matter to a just, prompt and final settlement if enacted in its original form as prepared by the State Department. Several changes in the bill have been proposed which are in the nature of a special favors to certain groups. The adoption of any one of those changes will throw the entire equitable settlement provided for in the bill into confusion and uncertainty, will lead to prolonged delay in the final adjudication of claims and in making payments to any claimants. It will also necessitate additional heavy expenses, and there will be no assurance that such changes will lead to settlements any different from those which will follow from the provisions of this bill. Furthermore, the facts and history connected with this matter do not justify any of those changes. Foremost among the changes proposed is one to discard the so-called Underwood appraisals of general claims and the so-called Lawson appraisals of agrarian claims, and reopen all of those claims and refer them to a new commission for rehearing and reappraisal. The pending bill accepts those appraisals and makes them final and binding. Some 850 general claims and several hundred agrarian claims are involved in this proposal, in fact about 90 percent of all the claims comprehended by the bill. The proposal is, therefore, almost equivalent to the reopening of the whole Mexican claims matter on which nearly 20 years have already been consumed. It is evident that the adoption of this change in the bill would inevitably postpone the conclusion of the appraisal of claims for several years, and all payments to all claimants would be likewise postponed. Such delay and the attendant additional expenses of the rehearings and reappraisals sought would be the rankest injustice to claimants under old and undisputed awards who have already waited many years without getting any payments on their awards while the Underwood and Lawson appraisals and the final settlement provided for in this bill were being procured and arranged for by the State Department. No substantial reason is offered for not accepting the Underwood and Lawson appraisals. No charge of incompetency or unfairness has been made against those men, and nothing has been pointed to which indicates the possibility that claimants would get more favorable awards from a new commission than they have gotten in the appraisals of Mr. Underwood and Mr. Lawson. The fact is that those who are asking that the Underwood and Lawson appraisals be discarded do not know what those appraisals are, as they have not been made public by the State Department; hence, the objections to them are imaginary, and not based on any knowledge of any injustice in them, or of any other fact which calls for setting them aside and having new appraisals made by a new commission, It is asserted that it was not contemplated, when Messrs. Underwood and Lawson were appointed Commissioners, that they would make their appraisals alone, and that their appraisals are not final and binding because they were not concurred in by the Mexican Commissioner. That is technically true, at least of the Underwood appraisals. But it is also true that both Mr. Underwood and Mr. Lawson were appointed Commissioners for the express purpose of making the appraisals, and, at least in the case of Mr. Underwood, the treaty under which he was appointed and acted, namely, the General Claims Protocol of April 24, 1934, required him to make his appraisals in the first instance separate and apart from the Mexican Commissioner, as the basis for subsequent agreed appraisals by him and the Mexican Commissioner. His appraisals and those made by Mr. Lawson were made under express authorization, and are official in exactly the same sense, and to the same extent, that appraisals or awards made by a new commission would be. At least the Underwood appraisals would have become final and binding without any action by Congress if they had received the approving nod of the Mexican Commissioner, and the pending bill provides that the default of the Mexican Commissioner shall be made up for by having this Congress give its approving nod to those appraisals. The fact that the Mexican Commissioner did not approve Mr. Underwood's appraisals certainly did not operate to the damage or disadvantage of the claimants affected. If he had acted, he most likely would have insisted on reducing the amounts of at least some of the appraisals; and it is conceivable that Mr. Underwood may have fixed the amounts of his appraisals in contemplation of just that possible action by the Mexican Commissioner, and some compromises resulting therefrom. The same things are true with reference to the Lawson appraisals so far as it was ever required that a Mexican Commissioner and Mr. Lawson should make agreed appraisals. Hence, all of the facts point to the probability that the appraisals objected to are unusually favorable to those claimants who are objecting to them. Certain it is that there has been no showing of any damage or injustice to any claimant by any of the Lawson or Underwood appraisals, and there is nothing on which to base any belief that new appraisals by a new commission would be any more favorable to claimants than those already made by Messrs. Underwood and Lawson. The request for the reopening of the claims appraised by Mr. Underwood and Mr. Lawson carries with it also the request that the records of those claims be reopened and claimants be allowed to present new pleadings, new proof and new briefs in support of their claims. This is a most unreasonable and unjustifiable request for special and preferred treatment for those claimants far beyond that given to any other claimant. Particularly is this true of the claims appraised by Mr. Underwood. Those claims were all filed with the General Claims Commission, and the General Claims Convention of September 8, 1923, and the rules adopted thereunder by the General Claims Commission required their records to be fully completed before the end of the term of that Commission, which was August 30, 1927. That was not done, but the way was still left open to claimants to complete such records through the additional 6 years the life of that Commission was extended. But the records were then still incomplete, and the protocol of April 24, 1934, was entered into largely and primarily for the benefit of those claimants. It gave them another chance, both to have their claims appraised, and the records of their claims completed; and, in addition to that, it reestablished the agency of the United States under the efficient management of Mr. Bert L. Hunt to assist them by repleading their cases, adding to and reshaping their proof, and rebriefing their claims. I have it on the authority of Mr. Hunt that the record of every claim on file was thus completed, and a full copy of every such completed record was furnished to both the American and Mexican Commissioners prior to April, 1937. Under such circumstances, it is unthinkable that the request of those people now for another reopening of the record of their claims should be granted. They have fairly had their day in court, and are not entitled to any other special favors and preferred treatment. It is also proposed that the pending bill be changed in that part of it which transfers to the Special Claims Commission certain claims which were filed with both the Special Claims Commission and the General Claims Commission, and requires such claims to be adjudicated and settled on the same basis as other special claims. This is objected to be cause of certain reductions which will be required in the appraisal of those claims to bring them in line with the treatment received by other special claims. The only question properly involved in this is the question of which group those claims in reality belong to. If they are special claims because of their origin and character, they have no right to be settled as general claims, regardless of what may be done to them under the rules controlling the settlement of special claims. Anything else would be highly preferred treatment. Those claimants were at least 50 percent of the notion that their claims were special claims, because they filed them with both the Special Claims Commission and the General Claims Commission. My information is that the General Claims Commission has held that at least some of them belong to the Special Claims Commission, and the State Department classes them as special claims, by the provisions concerning them found in this bill. The State Department is in the best position to know the character of those claims and the Commission to which they belong. Its judgment should control, and the provision in this bill relative to those claims should not be disturbed. Attention is also called to the fact that this bill does a very generous thing with reference to those claims in allocating nearly $500,000 of the money collected from Mexico to pay general and agrarian claims to the special claims fund specifically to apply on appraisals of these claims to bring the payments on them up to the payments heretofore made on other special claims. Special weight in favor of sustaining this bill in its original form should be given to the fact that the State Department negotiated its final settlement of these claims with Mexico on the assumption that the Underwood and Lawson appraisals would be accepted as final. The Senate was advised of that fact when it was considering that final agreement with Mexico, and, after being so advised, gave its unanimous approval to that agreement. The pending bill simply makes that agreement effective, but the proposed changes in the bill would in effect nullify that agreement and should not now be considered. It is estimated that the amounts to be paid by Mexico under the final settlement agreement will be sufficient to pay all of the principal on all of the claims and possibly some of the interest accrued to the date of the final settlement agreement on those which bear interest, if the Underwood and Lawson appraisals are accepted as final, as was contemplated by the State Department. That ought to be considered fair and equitable, and cause the rejection of the proposed changes in this bill which have, as their primary aim, the getting of more money on their claims than they have been officially adjudged to be worth. In view of all of the facts, I strongly favor the enactment of this bill just as drawn by the State Department, approved by the Treasury Department and the Bureau of the Budget, and recommended by the President to the Congress for enactment. EXHIBIT G Hon. ELBERT D. THOMAS, R. WOODLAND GATES, Chairman, Subcommittee of Committee on Foreign Relations, Re claim of Quimichis Colony, Hueneme, Ventura County, Calif., against the DEAR SENATOR: It was my intention to appear before your committee tomorrow morning to verbally supplement statements made in my letter of the 17th ult. addressed to the Honorable Tom Connally, chairman, Foreign Relations Com 75427-42--13 mittee; but upon return to my office this afternoon I received your message saying it would be advisable to submit my additional statement in writing. Therefore, I respectfully submit the following for the consideration of your committee: Having faith in the Secretary of State and the American Commissioner, Mr. Lawson, and believing that they earnestly endeavored to obtain for American claimants just compensation for property expropriated, we are willing to accept the determination and appraisal made by Mr. Lawson in our agrarian claim case. We filed our claim with the understanding that the determination therein by the Commission would be final. We respectfully assert that the determinations and appraisals made by the Commissioner are final as of their respective dates and require no Federal legislation to make them so. The agreement between the Governments of the United States and Mexico with regard to the settlement of agrarian claims of American nationals was that "immediately subsequent to the determination by the Commission of the final valuations * * * of American-owned agrarian properties * * * the two Governments will reach an agreement as to the amounts to be paid to the Government of the United States by the Government of Mexico annually for the account of such claims in the years subsequent to the year 1939." * * It will be noted that the lump sum fixed was agreed to after determination of values of American-owned agrarian properties in accordance with the agreement quoted above. It was not guesswork. The amount so fixed was specified after adjudication of all the individual agrarian claims that had been filed in accordance with the regulations issued by the Department of State, and the total amount was doubtless considered by the Secretary of State "just compensation for property * expropriated" insisted upon by him under the recognized rules of law and equity; otherwise, he would not have agreed to accept it. Now, as the lump-sum total was based upon the determinations and appraisals made in the individual cases, the moment that sum was accepted, the claimants whose claims had been thus adjudicated became the owners of a vested interest in the fund to the extent of 100 percent of respective amounts that had been earmarked for them. No new claimants (agrarian) can, in fairness, now be allowed to participate in the fund so created. In other words, the agrarian claimants in whose cases determinations and appraisals have been made, cannot and should not be called upon to donate any portion of their money to help pay new claimants who failed to file claims in accordance with the regulations issued by the Department of State. Ample notice and time were given all and the prompt claimants should not be penalized to assist modern Rip Van Winkles. When the amount to be paid for agrarian property by Mexico was fixed, both the Secretary of State and Commissioner Lawson had reason to assume, in view of notice given, that all agrarian claims had been filed. It must be remembered that the determinations and appraisals were to be final as against claimants, no appeal being given, and as they were final, the right of claimants to a vested interest in the fund attached immediately the sum to cover these agrarian claims was agreed upon. We believe that Congress may have the bare power to compel claimants to accept less than has been awarded them but not the legal right to do so. The awarding of certain amounts in the special Mexican claims cases several years ago, and then paying 57 percent of such awards only, thus compelling claimants to lose 43 percent of amounts actually awarded them by an American con mission in order, as we are informed, to allow new and tardy claimants to "cut in" on the fund, was unfair, unjust, and improper, and we hope no such act will be repeated in the instant case. All these claims are claims of American nationals against Mexico, not claims of American nationals against American nationals. Therefore, Mexico should pay them, and if the sum accepted by the Secretary of State in settlement of the agrarian claims in the belief, as doubtless it was, that the money Mexico agreed to pay was sufficient to cover all agrarian claims, is too small a sum to pay new claims, then Mexico should be approached for more money. No one can justify taking any portion of the money set aside to pay the successful agrarian claimants, in an effort to pay, or partially pay, a debt that Mexico owes. What was the use of appointing Mr. Lawson a Commissioner, keeping him at work for several years at claimants' expense (not at the expense of the Government), if a new Commissioner is to be appointed with power to revise downward Mr. Lawson's figures, arrived at after most arduous labor? If Mr. Lawson's determinations and appraisals are cut, will that be giving claimants the "just compensation" upon which the Secretary of State insisted? We do not know what amount the Secretary of State and/or Mr. Lawson found is "just compensation" in our case; but we filed our claim understanding that the amount so found due us is to be considered final; and knowing that we have not exaggerated our estimates, and believing that both these gentlemen earnestly desired to obtain fair and reasonable values for expropriated property, we are willing to accept their figures as to what sum is justly due us as of the original date of the determination and appraisals in our case, but we respectfully insist upon receiving 100 percent of such determination and award. If we have been found justly entitled to a certain sum, we are justly entitled thereto, and no one has the legal or moral right to deprive us of a cent of it. In my letter of June 17, 1942, addressed to Senator Tom Connally, I submitted a form of suggested amendment to the bill before this committee. My intention was to make section 3 of the bill as prepared by the Department of State so clear that there could be no doubt of the authorization of the finality of the determinations heretofore made and mentioned in subparagraphs (a), (b), (c), and (d) thereof separate and apart from determinations to be made pursuant to sections 5 and 10 of the act. I respectfully suggest that the word "hereafter" in said section 3 be stricken out, for if it be allowed to remain in, the redeterminations and reappraisals can be made in all categories of claims to the detriment of those claimants who have been adjudged entitled to "just compensation" by Commissioner Lawson, of which we are one. We respectfully ask the committee to consider my former letter and this communication. We believe our position is well taken. We hope that Congress will decide that the Lawson determinations and appraisals shall remain as of their respective dates and his figures shall not be revised downward. The determinations and appraisals of Commissioner Lawson, held to be binding upon us, should also bind the Government of the United States. As we were compelled to accept them as final, so should the Government be compelled to accept them as final and to recognize our right to 100 percent thereof. If they can be set aside to provide for payment of 60 additional claims, they can be set aside to provide for the payment of 160 additional claims. One can readily see that under such procedure, this settlement can be continued for years, all at the expense of the claimants. Mexico should be asked for more money, if there is not enough to pay the. amounts already determined to be justly due claimants. Mexico should pay claims of American nationals. American claimants should not be called upon to pay any portion of Mexico's bills. Respectfully submitted, R. WOODLAND GATES, Attorney for Quimichis Colony, Claimant (Agrarian). WASHINGTON, D. C., June 17, 1942. Re H. R. 7096 and S. 2528, to provide for settlement of claims against the Government of Mexico. Hon. Toм CONNALLY, Chairman, Foreign Relations Committee, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: In his letter of November 9, 1938, addressed to the Ambassador of Mexico, the Secretary of State, Hon. Cordell Hull, set forth the position of the United States Government with regard to the settlement of agrarian claims of American nationals, stating, among other things, that "My Government must insist that the recognized rules of law and equity require the prompt payment of just compensation for property that may be expropriated" and said that this position is "buttressed by law and justice." Further, the Secretary wrote: "It is my further understanding that immediately subsequent to the determination by the Commission of the final valuation the two Governments will reach an agreement as to the amounts to be paid to the Government of the United States by the Government of Mexico for the account of such claims in the years subsequent to the year 1939." (Italics mine.) * * * In reply to the said letter of the Secretary of State, the Mexican Minister of Foreign Relations (Mr. Eduardo Hay) said that "The Government of Mexico * * * is in agreement with the plan presented" and that "My Government is agreed that, once the representatives fix the amount of the indemnifications, the Governments shall agree upon the annual amount which the Government of |