A menacing rupture between Costa Rica and Nicaragua was happily composed
by the signature of a convention between the parties, with the
concurrence of the Guatemalan representative as a mediator, the act
being negotiated and signed on board the United States steamer
_Alert_, then lying in Central American waters. It is believed that
the good offices of our envoy and of the commander of that vessel
contributed toward this gratifying outcome.

In my last annual message the situation was presented with respect to
the diplomatic representation of this Government in Central America
created by the association of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Salvador under
the title of the Greater Republic of Central America, and the delegation
of their international functions to the Diet thereof. While the
representative character of the Diet was recognized by my predecessor
and has been confirmed during my Administration by receiving its
accredited envoy and granting exequaturs to consuls commissioned under
its authority, that recognition was qualified by the distinct
understanding that the responsibility of each of the component sovereign
Republics toward the United States remained wholly unaffected.

This proviso was needful inasmuch as the compact of the three
Republics was at the outset an association whereby certain
representative functions were delegated to a tripartite commission
rather than a federation possessing centralized powers of government
and administration. In this view of their relation and of the
relation of the United States to the several Republics, a change
in the representation of this country in Central America was neither
recommended by the Executive nor initiated by Congress, thus leaving one
of our envoys accredited, as heretofore, separately to two States of the
Greater Republic, Nicaragua and Salvador, and to a third State, Costa