1915, August 13–24: (The High-Water Mark: The Draft Treaty, Montague’s Verdict, and Lansing’s Confession): The draft treaty Dartiguenave was expected to swal…

1915, August 13–24: (The High-Water Mark: The Draft Treaty, Montague’s Verdict, and Lansing’s Confession): The draft treaty Dartiguenave was expected to swallow represented a high-water mark of its kind among American treaties either proposed or concluded with neighbors in the Caribbean. Combining elements of the Platt Amendment and the customs receivership the U.S. was then trying to tighten on the Jiménez regime next door in Santo Domingo, the United States would nominate — no pretense of consultation — a customs receiver, customs personnel, and a financial adviser with extensive powers; would organize and officer a native gendarmerie; would designate American sanitary engineers to clean up Haiti; and would aid in development of Haiti’s agricultural, mineral, and commercial resources. Haiti for its part would be bound not to surrender any territory under any condition to any foreign power save the United States, and to negotiate and settle outstanding foreign claims. All points involving discretion were left to the United States. Yet even so inclusive a bill of fare had gaps: the presence and status of U.S. occupation forces was not expressly recognized, public education was not made subject to American advice or control, and neither were courts and judiciary. More fundamentally, as Ludwell Montague pointed out, the result was a system that had neither the virtues of a treaty regime based on true agreement nor those of a clean-cut military administration like that established at Santo Domingo, but only the bad features of both — the regime in Haiti left the United States embarrassingly restricted by a treaty but was actually based on force. On August 13, even before Davis broke the news to Dartiguenave, Lansing confessed to Wilson that this method of negotiation, with Marines policing the Haitian capital, was high-handed, that it did not meet his sense of a nation’s sovereign rights and was more or less an exercise of force and an invasion of Haitian independence — from a practical standpoint, however, he could not but feel that it was the only thing to do. Wilson, mind made up, remained untroubled and wrote back that it was necessary and had his approval. Dartiguenave — with Sannon nipping at his heels — felt Haiti should have some say, and threatened to resign if no modifications were permitted, but this was a bluff and was so recognized. On August 24, Davis was instructed to warn the president that he was playing with fire: if further stalling ensued, Washington would either find a more cooperative regime or just establish straightforward military government — a prospect, Montague wrote, fearful to patriots and unbearable to politicians.