837.51/749: Telegram
The Representative on Special Mission in Cuba (Crowder) to the Secretary of State
[Received 10:34 p.m.]
21. Memorandum accompanying my despatch of April 5th due to reach Washington noon today and upon which I hope to have the action of the Department Monday or Tuesday, stresses the necessity of the most energetic measures on the part of the President to bring about the enactment by Congress within very short time limits of adequate budgetary and related legislation. I have just finished and am ready to submit a second memorandum to President Zayas in which I have urged that the action considered by my Government as absolutely vital includes:
- First, the bringing of Congress to a full realization of the peril confronting the Nation if prompt and effective action is not taken in the enactment of an economical budget.
- Second, the urgent duty of the Executive to take the initiative in preparing and submitting to Congress definite projects of laws for reducing the fixed budget legislative and judicial branches; for reorganization of diplomatic service, Department of Communications, Army and Navy, so as to permit of further economies in these services of $500,000, $1,200,000 and $2,000,000, respectively, or a total of nearly $4,000,000 in these services alone; and for suspension of the civil service law so as to permit proper reductions and selection of personnel.
I have not hesitated in this memorandum to represent that my Government considers that the legislative budget is indispensable for the ensuing fiscal year; that no budget would be satisfactory to my Government which did not embody the foregoing reforms, eliminate all sinecures or botellas, and keep within a maximum of expenditures of $55,000,000, five million of which to be devoted to improvements of public highways, public instruction, sanitation and charity; nor would any budget be satisfactory which did not set at rest the charge almost universally made and never adequately refuted that from 60 to 70 percent of the personnel on the pay rolls of Cuba would in reality be sufficient for the efficient administration of the nation.
[Page 1020]I have concluded my memorandum with the following:
“My Government is impressed with the patriotic duty devolving upon Your Excellency, as the head of the Nation and as the one power within that Nation best informed as to the real situation of the Republic, to speak clearly, to act fearlessly in the attainment of a purpose, namely, the averting of a public danger which the Congress has probably not fully understood, and is perhaps not fully prepared to understand.
The compliance with this patriotic duty, the incorporation into the budget for 1922–23 of the necessary reforms, the congressional approval of that budget before June 30th next, would be heralded by my Government as a real demonstration in this field of successful republican government in Cuba; would definitely silence in this regard at least the constantly growing criticism which threatens to overwhelm and extinguish the existing self government in Cuba. The failure to give that demonstration under so clear a necessity would be fatal to the possibility of averting imminent financial disaster to the Cuban treasury; would place my Government in a position in which it could no longer avert the natural consequences and in which it could no longer ignore the accumulated evidence which has awakened world-wide attention and threatens to crystallize, definitely and adversely, world-wide public opinion.”
Request telegraphic advice as to whether this telegram and my despatch of April 5th respects limits as to ultimatum which the Department desires me to observe. See pages 9 and 10, concluding portion my despatch of September 7th, 192121 and the Department’s reply thereto in letter of Sumner Welles of October 7th, 1921 page 4.22
- Foreign Relations, 1921, vol. i, pp. 728–729.↩
- Not printed.↩