Judge Parker, of Texas, the then American Commissioner, retired. Nielsen was appointed his successor.

Fred K.

A

The Commission met on October 1, 1926, and only one small American case was ready for trial. Whatever excuse for delay there might have been up to that time because of much preliminary work, it is not perceived that there was such excuse at this time for failure to proceed with the work at this session. large force and abundant funds were available. The presiding Commissioner was exasperated with the situation and was anxious to proceed. In order that something might be done, he suggested that a number of rather simple cases might be heard, even though counsel had not completed their preparation. The then American agent objected, but the plan was adopted, and the Commission looked up the law.

After a small number of cases had been disposed of in this manner, the American agent, Mr. Bouvé, again pressed for an adjournment. The presiding Commissioner finally assented, since there was no way for the Commission to proceed, except to throw out the cases on some ground of default.

Finally, the presiding Commissioner emphatically insisted on disposing of the cases in that way. He took the position that it was the duty of the Commission to dispose of the cases within the time specified in the convention of 1923, even though they were not presented to the Commission by the documents required for a determination of their merits. That procedure would have meant the junking of practically all, if not all, the cases. Since the Mexican Commissioner sided with the Dutch Presiding Commissioner, the American Commissioner had great difficulty in preventing the claims from being thrown out in that remarkable

manner.

He contrived to effect a compromise. A courteous inquiry was made of the two Governments whether it was their intention to extend the arbitration agreement, so that the cases could be properly tried when counsel should find themselves in a position to prepare and present them. The Department of State of the United States strangely replied that it had no "present intention" of extending the convention. An extension at that time was the only way to have the work continue, and the progress of the work was thus further blocked. A delay of a year continued.

At the request of the American agent, the Commission had adjourned to meet March 1, 1927, but the American representatives had ready for trial but one case, and the Commission did not meet until March 10.

When the period fixed for the arbitration agreement for the performance of the work of the arbitration had nearly expired, after the delays above indicated, some interesting strategy was conceived. The Commission decided to adjourn just before the month of August. The representatives of the United States had argued merely a comparatively small number of cases, mostly simple ones. The presiding Commissioner was very reluctant to adjourn, but after a conference among the Commissioners and the counsel for both Governments, adjournment was decided upon by all. Thereupon the American agent addressed a letter to the Commission which I shall not describe, objecting to adjournment. It was explained by an official of the Department of State that such strategy could be used for the purpose of representing to Congress that the blame for the delay of the work rested with the Commission. There had been considerable apprehension that there would be a congressional investigation into the failure of the work. A thorough investigation of that kind would have been useful. It would be possible to continue to detail indefinitely incidents that blocked the work.

As has been pointed out at the beginning of this memorandum, Mr. Hackworth explained to the committee at the hearings on May 25, 1938, that the convention of September 8, 1923, was extended "to enable the Commission to complete its work," which it left incompleted.

Mention has been made of reports made by the Commissioners under the convention of September 8, 1923. It would seem that they contain information peculiarly pertinent to action by Members of Congress with respect to appropriations and other matters. On one occasion, it was explained that there were no available copies. Copies could have been made without expense to the Department of State in some spare moments available to stenographers. The few reports are brief.

PROCEEDINGS UNDER THE AGREEMENTS OF 1934 BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO

The

Mr. Hackworth had something to say regarding proceedings under the agreements concluded in 1934, one of them an agreement in the nature of a treaty, which was not sent to the Senate for its advice and consent. Mr. Hackworth could have furnished information regarding the grotesque proceedings conducted under those agreements. Mr. Hackworth could have explained how important claims were disposed of without examination of a single paper in a very carefully prepared case in which honorable American citizens had expended more than $3,000, for the sole purpose of printing a pleading. In that case, action previously taken by four able and experienced lawyers was upset in the manner just indicated. interested persons were deprived of the right, enjoyed by others having similar cases, to be heard before the so-called Special Commission created by Congress in 1935. Mr. Hackworth could have informed the committee of the methods used for that purpose. While the claimants were kept in the dark as to what was being done with their case, an outside attorney was being "tipped off" about it by a representative of the Department of State so that he could offer his services in the case. That was done by representations to the effect that it had been reclassified, so that some more work had to be done on it. It may be readily perceived that such activities of giving tips of information by a departmental employee may be very useful to him.

THE STATUS OF CLAIMS UNDER THE CONVENTION OF SEPTEMBER 8, 1923

From Senate report of the Committee on Foreign Relations, No. 3, Seventysixth Congress, first session, accompanying S. 326, a bill to pay certain awards, against Mexico, it appears that remarkable information was communicated to the committee as follows:

"In this connection, the State Department advised the committee informally that the unadjudicated claims are undoubtedly grossly overstated in amount and to a large extent lacking in merit, and that at the present time any diplomatic negotiations with Mexico in regard to the remaining unadjudicated claims is a matter which will be long-drawn-out and of dubious procedure." P. 5.

The Department of State could have furnished the Senate committee, informally or formally, with very different and useful information. It could nave explained that not so long ago the office of the Legal Adviser, so far from rating these cases as lacking in value and merit, represented them to be of such a character that Mexico's offer to settle them by a lump-sum adjustment in an amount greater than that accepted for the so-called special claims was rejected. Had that offer been accepted, American claimants having clearly valid claims under international law would at least have obtained something. In the Legal Adviser's office there was prepared a memorandum of approximately 300 pages by which determined efforts were made to block a lump-sum settlement of the claims under the important convention of September 8, 1923, and to bring about the grotesque proceedings conducted under the so-called protocol of 1934. Those proceedings, carried on at further great expense, resulted in leaving the claims still unsettled and in a so-called appraisal of 36 comparatively small American claims in favor of American citizens.

Mention was made during the hearings before the House committee of a settlement of claims against the Government of Turkey. The prostitution of honor and law in connection with this affair shows that some law officers and some others in the Department of State are not seriously concerned about exaggeration of claims. Indeed, it would be a grotesquely inadequate description to say that the grossest exaggeration known to international relations was perpetrated. One communication after another of absurd false statements regarding number and amount of claims was sent out in the name of the Department of State. I assume, of course, that the Secretary was not informed by law officers of the nature of these communications. A nation's honor and sound judgment with respect to law and fact must be back of an international claim.

Attempts were made to effect a lump-sum settlement of these claims at long range without producing any records for the examination of the defendant government. The method employed was to instruct an American diplomatic official, designated as Commissioner, to make wholesale grotesque, false representations as to the nature and amounts of the claims. Having before him no records to check on the statements he was directed to make, he obeyed instructions. False representations were made as to many hundreds of purely fictitious claims. Use was

made of a vast number of names of persons or organizations who had filed no claims. See American Turkish Claims Settlement, etc., pp. 733-775.

Use was also made of wholesale preposterous falsehoods and frauds emanating from dishonorable claimants. The majority of the claimants spent most or all of their lives abroad, being persons born abroad of American parents, or persons who came to the United States, became naturalized and then returned to Turkish dominions. Falsehoods with respect to amounts of damages and other matters were exceedingly grotesque and would be very amusing, if they did not relate to serious subjects, and if the Government of the United States had not been put back of them.

After the mess had been unloaded on a second Commissioner, those responsible for it let matters take their course. They even failed to file the claims within the time specified by the agreement. They blocked the Commissioner's efforts to effect an expeditious, efficient, and honorable adjustment; they did not perfect the agreement under which he had been told he was to function; they left his communications unanswered; and they smeared the Commissioner's decent name by filth put into departmental records.

The senior representative of the Department of State who was sent with the second Commissioner to Turkey informed him there were filed with the Commission only about 40 prima facie claims. Communications had been sent to the Government of Turkey, to the President of the United States, and to Members of Congress, stating that there were some 2,600 claims totaling about $55,000,000 or more. In the letter to the President, the amount was given as $75,000,000. The first-appointed Commissioner had been urging on the Department the necessity of furnishing some reasonably accurate information as a basis of a lumpsum settlement.

Not a thing was done to present the cases by the United States, except to make false statements regarding their amounts and character. These were labor-saving methods. Not even the most meager form of a single document of presentation was prepared.

Abundant time, a long period of years, had been available for the preparation of the cases. Other preoccupations were found more congenial, among them a "junket," to use Mr. Hackworth's own description, to try abroad at great expense a single case, such expense being defrayed out of the secret funds after Congress had failed to make an appropriation.

Among the methods employed in dealing with that case was the carrying on by the American chief counsel of a campaign of vilification which may be left undescribed, of an eminent judge, known and honored the world over; of eminent counsel whose exemplary conduct of a case was in itself a contribution to the cause of international arbitration; of honorable judges of a high court chosen through a process of unusually discriminate selection.

When a stop was put to these new methods of settling claims, an emininently satisfactory adjustment of all cases was effected.

DEAR MR. YOUNG: Here is the memorandum favoring prompt enactment of S. 2528 which I was graciously permitted to file in the record of the hearings on the matter of the Mexican claims.

I hope it will prove to be helpful.

With kind regards, I am,

Sincerely yours,

HOWARD T. OLIVER.

MEMORANDUM FAVORING PROMPT ENACTMENT OF S. 2528

My name is Howard T. Oliver, 441 Lexington Avenue, New York, N. Y. I am secretary-treasurer of the Mexico Pilgrims, an association of American citizens having past or present interests in Mexico. I have been a close student and observer of Mexican affairs and relations with the United States since 1908, having engaged in mining and railroad engineering and in opening extensive

outlets in Mexico for American industrial and agricultural products by means of private locomotives and freight trains which I operated over the tracks of the National Railways, 1915-22.

I have a substantial and outstanding claim that is comprehended within the provisions of section 5 (a) (4) of Senate bill 2528 with reference to article I (c) of the Claims Convention of November 19, 1941.

In approval of the provisions of S. 2528 so far as my own claim is concerned, and in behalf of other claimants who will prefer prompt settlement of their claims to the possibility of further protracted contests at this late date over their merits or the amounts of their awards, I respectfully submit the following observations with respect to the proposed "Settlement of Mexican Claims Act of 1942":

1. S. 2528 has obviously been drafted with painstaking care to serve as a final solvent of the many and varied problems involved in the highly complicated conglomeration of claims that had accumulated since 1868 to plague relations between the United States and Mexico. It represents the earnest effort of the Government to secure prompt, adequate, and effective compensation to many citizens for the losses they suffered for many years, and is designed to settle, finally and en bloc, the long troublesome question of the "small claims."

2. The removal of these claims from the field of international intercourse by the Claims Convention of November 19, 1941, has brought them within the sphere, exclusively, of domestic relations wherein there is assured to the claimants the maximum of justice. Their fair adjustment under these new circumstances poses unusual difficulties requiring the Government and claimants alike to exercise the spirit of give and take. Any inequalities in the present bill stem from errors of the past as, for example, in accepting for account of American citizens the same low ratio of settlement for "special claims" that certain European governments had accepted for their nationals, or, again, in permitting the long frustration of the General and Special Claims Convention of 1923. But such errors are now water over the dam, Mexico is no longer a party to the settlement of individual claims and a magnificent job has been done in S. 2528 toward composing conflicting interests, reconciling them to established precedents and seeking to provide practical means for the alleviation of the suffering of claimants who have long looked to their Government for relief.

3. Because the time element is of the essence to all claimants without exception, that feature of the bill which aims at a settlement of all claims shortly after January 1, 1943, will be unanimously approved.

4. With full sympathy for those claimants who entertain fears that the present provisions of the bill will be prejudicial to their interests with respect to anticipated awards, I urge its prompt enactment with a minimum of tampering, in order that the interests of many claimants who are willing to consent to its provisions may not be prejudiced by further delays that will attend the offering of conflicting amendments.

5. With respect to the several objections to the bill that have been raised by very able counsel who are properly seeking to improve its provisions by certain amendments they have proposed for consideration by the Congress and on behalf of the various classes of claimants they represent, I venture to suggest that. the time is inopportune to secure the changes or modifications advocated because it is not yet known how many nor what claimants of any classification to be affected by the new proposals are in favor of or opposed to them, nor what complications may be created.

6. To permit a just and prompt determination of whether the proposed amendments will result in overreaching the present limitation of $40,000,000 that will be available to the liquidation of all claims, or whether the revised awards to certain classes of claimants will encroach on amounts now calculated to be available to other classes, requires first that the total amount of the awards to be made to claimants who consent to the present provisions of the bill be ascertained and fixed. 7. Thereafter, it is reasonable to expect that consideration will be given to the correction of inequalities that are discovered in the remaining cases of unsatisfied claimants. Therefore specifically

To expedite settlements for claimants who consent to the provisions of the present bill; and

To permit a more accurate determination of the possible effects of amendments that are proposed; and

To provide for remedial measures that conceivably might be required in some cases and some classes of claims that may have been accorded inadequate consideration. I suggest the desirability of—

1. Prompt enactment of S. 2528, without amendments.

2. Public assurance in some appropriate manner to the effect that: After awards under the act have been made, published and otherwise made known to the claimants, and in the eventuality that some claimants decline to apply for payment thereunder, insist upon more formal review of their claims or interpose other meritorious objections for not accepting their awards, that supplementary legislation will be considered with a view to granting such relief to the dissenting claimants as may then be found to be just and equitable.

In other words: Let us settle as many claims as possible under S. 2528, but leave the door open for supplementary legislation to adjust any inequalities that may be discovered in the remaining claims.

Respectfully submitted.

HOWARD T. OLIVER.

EXHIBIT N

WOOLSEY, LESTER H., PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO H. R. 7096

A BILL To provide for the settlement of claims of the Government of the United States on behalf of Ameri can nationals against the Government of Mexico comprehended within the terms of agreements concluded by the United States and Mexico

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the "Settlement of Mexican Claims Act of 1942".

SEC. 2. For the purposes of this Act

(a) The term "General Claims Commission" means the Commission established purusant to the convention between the United States and Mexico signed September 8, 1923 (43 Stat. 1730), and

The term "general claims" means claims within the purview of that convention.

(b) The term "Special Claims Commission" means the Commission established pursuant to the convention between the United States and Mexico signed September 10, 1923 (43 Stat. 1722), and the term "special claims" means claims within the purview of that convention.

(c) The term "Agrarian Claims Agreement of 1938" means the agreement between the United States and Mexico effected by exchange of notes signed on November 9 and November 12, 1938, respectively.

(d) The term "Agrarian Claims Commission" means the Commission established pursuant to the Agrarian Claims Agreement of 1938.

(e) The term "person" shall include an individual, partnership, or corporation. (f) The term "United States" when used in a geographical sense shall include the United States, its Territories and insular possessions (including the Philippine Islands), and the Canal Zone.

(g) The term "American nationals" includes (1) persons who are citizens of the United States, (2) persons who, though not citizens of the United States, owe permanent allegiance to the United States, and (3) corporations incorporated within the territory of the United States.

SEC. 3. For the purpose of this Act, the following determinations heretofore or hereafter made with respect to claims of American nationals shall be regarded as final and binding:

(a) Decisions rendered by the General Claims Commission; or its extensions, except any decisions as to which the United States has filed a petition for rehearing. (b) Appraisals agreed upon by the Commissioners designated by the Governments of the United States and Mexico, respectively, pursuant to the General Claims Protocol between the United States and Mexico signed April 24, 1934 (48 Stat. 1844);

(c) Appraisals made by the Commissioner designated by the United States pursuant to the said protocol in those cases in which the two Commissioners failed to reach agreements;

If no petition for reappraisal is filed pursuant to section 8.

(d) Appraisals made by the Commissioner designated by the United States pursuant to the Agrarian Claims Agreement of 1938; and

If no petition for reappraisal is filed pursuant to section 8.

(e) Decisions rendered pursuant to this Act by the American Mexican Claims Commission established by section 5 hereof.

75427-42-15