IN MEXICO
SAMUEL GUY INMAN
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INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
INTERVENTION IN
MEXICO
SAMUEL GUY INMAN
Foreword by Professor William R. Shepherd
ASSOCIATION PRESS
NEW YORK: 347 MADISON AVENUE
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
SAMUEL GUY INMAN
7
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1 i
CONTENTS
Page
Foreword vii
I. Various Aspects of the Problem ... I
II. Is the Present Disturbance in Mexico
a Real Revolution? 43
III. What Kind of a Man Is Carranza? . 80
IV. What Mexicans Think of Americans . 117
V. The Present Situation in Mexico ... 162
VI. Future Relations between Mexico and
the United States 204
Appendix 244
FOREWORD
A professor is sometimes defined as a person who
thinks otherwise. Not many years ago an emin-
ent American statesman who was once a professor
bade the people of Mexico Godspeed in gaining for
and by themselves true political freedom, and
pledged himself that, so far as he could prevent it,
no one should interfere with them. Has the situa-
tion of our southern neighbor changed so mate-
rially since then, or are we thinking otherwise?
There was a time in our history when civil war
nearly rent the nation asunder. Luckily, we had
all of our political troubles that had to be settled
by fighting packed into four years. In this respect
the only difference between Mexico and ourselves
is that the fighting has been spread over most of a
century. When the struggle was on in our own
case we called it a war and made it conform some-
what to the Sherman definition. So have the
Mexicans, only more so.
Happily for us, in our great civil convulsion the
foreigners who lost their lives or property because
of the destruction that accompanies warfare were
few. Unhappily for Mexico, the number of such
foreigners is considerable. For European states
whose citizens had suffered in our conflict through
no fault of their own, indemnity could be secured
viii INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
by peaceful processes. None of them ever thought
of declaring war upon us as a means of gaining
redress. For one thing, the United States was
strong enough to resist. For another thing, it was
and is a country different from Mexico.
\ In the world at large, Mexico is recognized as an
independent sovereign nation. Whatever the
complaints raised up against it because of the mis-
conduct or misfortune of its rulers and people, the
fact remains that it is not a colonial region in-
habited by an altogether backward folk in sore
need of correction. That may be the popular view
taken by the outsider, but it is not the official one.
It is quite true, however, that the attitude of our
Government toward Mexico during the last eight
years of disorder and turmoil would seem to indi-
cate that the country is neither an independent
sovereign nation nor yet on the order of certain
of its smaller sisters in and around the Caribbean
Sea a ward of the United States. No, it is some
anomalous thing that lies in between.
Does Mexico belong in the category of a real
foreign nation, and is it to be treated as such, or
does it in fact come within the "domestic policy" of
the United States and hence form part of our
Caribbean household? To interfere or not to
interfere, that has been the question answered
usually in the affirmative! Is it to be succeeded
by "to intervene or not to intervene?"
FOREWORD ix
Now, if Mexico is an independent sovereign
state, it has an absolute right to adopt a constitu-
tion whenever it pleases, and to do so in its own
way. That its way is not ours does not alter the
right in the matter. Even if the new constitution
does set aside laws, statutory or constitutional, and
replace them by others that may violate privileges
of private ownership conferred by such pre-
existent laws, even if the procedure under them is
held to be confiscatory by the persons and govern-
ments adversely affected, the Mexican people,
nevertheless, are quite at liberty, should they so
choose, and in their own fashion, to incur all the
international risks that action of the sort may
bring forth ; but they can not be denied the right
to change their laws as they see fit; War may be
made upon them in consequence; they may be
conquered and their country may be annexed or
converted into a protectorate. In that case they
would suffer the fate that many a weak nation has
undergone at the hands of a strong one. But if
Mexico has lost the quality and distinction of being
an independent sovereign nation, or perhaps in
reality has never had them, and all along has been
subject to the operation of our "domestic policy,"
"intervention" doubtless is technically more or less
of a suitable expression to use, though conquest is
what would take place.
x INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
And why should we "intervene"? Chiefly be-
cause certain vested interests, American and
European, do not wish to obey the existing Mexi-
can constitution, which apparently seeks to
nationalize the properties concerned. Formerly
the holders of those interests paid taxes ; now they
are asked to pay royalties or rentals. The one
means that they were the owners of the property;
the other, that the state owns it. Admitting that,
if actually carried into effect, a procedure of that
kind on the part of the Mexican Government
would amount to confiscation, does that justify us
in conquering Mexico, with all the expenditure of
blood and treasure which war involves?
The cry is raised that hundreds of American and
European men, women, and children have been
murdered or outraged by Mexicans in a country
that is slowly recovering from the disasters of a
terrible civil war. Will the loss of thousands of
liyes of American soldiers atone for them?
With a fine disregard for the plea that Mexico
may cherish grievances against the United States
on its own account for a variety of acts of inter-
ference in recent years, and with no effort to
ascertain what the real sentiments of the Mexican
leaders and people have been toward the war in
Europe, it is asserted that Mexico has been
"pro-German," and hence must be punished. Is
there not just a possibility that the Mexicans and
FOREWORD xi
their Government have been "pro-Mexican" in-
stead? Is there a faint chance to believe that the
present administration of the country is not the
choice of its people so much as the will of the
Government of the United States?
We shall be told that "intervention" will be a
good thing for the Mexicans. They will bless us
for it later, just as Cubans, Dominicans, Haitians,
Nicaraguans, and Panamanians presumably have
done. Perhaps.
Let us not assume that the task, if undertaken,
would be an easy one. What we have been doing
in the little republics in and around the Caribbean
is no criterion for what we would have to do in a
huge country like Mexico, among a population
seven-eighths of which is Indian and half caste.
Let us not imagine, also, that the nature of the
work would be free from more than the usual
horrors that beset even the most justifiable of wars.
"Intervention" in Mexico would be nothing other
than the entry of an army of invasion. History
tells us what that signifies for both invaded and
invader. Worse still, the fighting could not fail to
become essentially a conflict of race and color.
We know only too well what that means.
Is there no way out? Mr. Inman, who knows
Mexicans and yet remains an American, thinks
that he has found it. Hear him!
WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD.
CHAPTER I
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM
Mexico is again occupying the front page of the
newspapers. England, France, and the United
States have organized an international committee
of bankers to study the Mexican question ; various
oil interests have formed the National Association
for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico;
Congressmen are demanding reports and closer
vigilance from the State Department in reference
to Mexico; the Council on Foreign Relations
appoints a committee of distinguished citizens to
hear reports from any one who has ideas on the
subject; a capitalist appropriates $100,000 for
assisting a group of university professors to investi-
gate Mexican social and educational matters.
These and various other things indicate the interest
of the United States, as well as our ignorance on
the question.
Newspapers only add to our confusion. Des-
patches assure us that Villa is about to make a
formidable attack on the Texas border and that
the Constitutionalists have complete control of
the country; that Carranza intends to carry out
his promise of an amicable adjustment with the
2 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
foreign property owners, and that a decree has
been promulgated at Mexico City ordering the
instant payment of the royalty taxes on oil ; that
the "Bolsheviki dominate Mexico," and that
Carranza is in league with the I. W. W. to over-
throw what order there is ; that the Diaz counter-
revolt is sure to win and gain possession of the gov-
ernment, and that Zapata and Blanquet are
killed.
One is reminded of the confusion of the poor
man from China in the siege of Torreon, at the
beginning of the Madero Revolution. The insur-
gents attacked the city, which was held by the
Federals. There was in the city a large Chinese
colony, which had no idea but that the Diaz forces
would be the victors. When the rebels had fought
their way into the best part of the city, a Chinese,
fleeing for his life, was challenged by a soldier
with the regular formula, "Quien vive?" ''Viva
Diaz" he replied. But he was face to face with a
Madero soldier, who promptly knocked him down
with the butt of his rifle. Getting up again, the
poor Chinese was running with all his might,
when he was accosted by another soldier with the
challenge, "Quien vive?" Remembering his former
experience, he responded, "Viva Madero!" But
this was a belated Diaz soldier who hadn't yet
abandoned the city, and he promptly gave the poor
Celestial an awful blow on the head. The latter
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 3
finally picked himself up and was limping along
when he was challenged by a third soldier, "Quien
vive?" But the Celestial was wise by this time and
replied, "Tu digas primer o" (You say first).
This well illustrates the confusion in which most
people find themselves in reference to the whole
mixed, muddled Mexican question. In endeavor-
ing to contribute something toward clearing up
such an involved matter, which has a thousand
ramifications that few recognize, I am fully aware
that my judgments are fallible. What I hope to do,
however, because I have had special opportunities
of knowing it, is to present the Mexican side of the
question. Most people in the United States look
at the whole question, judge every act involved,
in the light of its effect on this country. But we
shall never understand or help very much to solve
the Mexican question until we know what the
Mexicans are thinking and doing about it. This
is not easy. We are likely to misunderstand
Mexico for at least five reasons:
First, a lack of knowledge of geography and history.
Most of us have no historic background from which
to judge Mexico. We take it for granted either
that Mexico has had about the same chance to
develop as we have and was too lazy to take it,
or that "the Mexicans are a bunch of Indians who
have never done anything for themselves or any-
body else, and never will." Even the judgment of
4 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Americans living in Mexico is often marred by the
lack of historical perspective. Many went to the
country in the heyday of the Diaz r6gime, when
material prosperity was general, and the life of
the foreigner was easy. They did not penetrate
below the surface and take cognizance of the
abuses to which the Mexicans themselves were
subjected. So they did not understand that it
would be natural some day for the Mexican to
seek to rid himself of political and economic serf-
dom and to direct his own country; and that
when such a movement finally materialized there
would be the "devil to pay" for a period of years,
just as there has been in all nations where his
Satanic Majesty has forced autocracy for centu-
ries. We fail to appreciate the terrible handicaps
of inheritance and the combinations of conserva-
tism that have kept Mexico back, in spite of the
incessant struggle for liberty on the part of a
small minority, who have displayed wonderful
brilliancy and the devotion of martyrs.
If the Constitution of 1857 were better known,
there would not be nearly so much misunderstand-
ing of the Constitution of 1917, to which it is very
similar. If we knew that the progressive part of
Mexico is in the north and the conservative toward
the south, and that the southern Indian states
have very seldom exercised any important in-
fluence in the country's political life, we should
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 5
know better how to judge the value of news arti-
cles, which seek to alarm us by stories of "Indian
uprisings" in Campeche and Bolsheviki in Yuca-
tan ! Below I quote a statement which succeeded
in "getting by" the keen editor of one of our lead-
ing magazines, because the author supposedly
knew all about Mexico, as he had traveled on mule-
back through the Indian states of Yucatan,
Campeche, Oaxaca, Vera Cruz, and Morelos,
talking to many of the big Indian chiefs! Those
who know Mexico can credit such an author with
any honesty whatever only by supposing that
he had touched none of the big progressive centers
of the north, where the new democratic life of the
country had been developing for many years.
The article from which this statement is taken
was translated and published in a Mexico City
daily without comment, in order to show on what
absolute absurdities the people of the United
States were willing to feed:
"Granted fully that Wilson has sought from the
start to help Democracy in Mexico, nevertheless
it is absolutely true today that his policy has
utterly failed; that its sole result has been to
continue for yet more years the crucifixion of the
country, almost to exhaustion; that he has not
won the confidence of the people in the least degree,
for all his words on their behalf for they see only
the results; and that Mexico is falling inevitably
toward a contest, to intervention. . . Not a
6 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
single hope of Woodrow Wilson's has been grati-
fied; and only one or two incidental results:
Huerta was driven out and Americans did not
have to come back. Mexico is still quite a strenu-
ous and difficult country for Americans wherever
the Carranzistas are; elsewhere it is all right. But
if Carranza, Alvarado, etc., have been an obstacle
to American business men, to Mexicans they have
been fire and sword. It is impossible to exaggerate
interior conditions today, or the hatred of the
common people for the Carranzistas. The people
have security and any degree of happiness only in
the mountains and interior districts, where they
are protected by their own revolutionary armies of
Diaz, Zapata, and others." World's Work, March,
1919.
Such a quotation immediately suggests that a
second reason why outsiders have difficulty in
understanding the Mexican situation is their
ignorance of the internal political currents of Mexico.
This is not to be wondered at. Pity the foreigner
who tries to understand United States' politics
today, with Wilson, the ideal of the outside
world, at home the most criticized man since
Lincoln! Just as in this country it is always an
open question how much an official's act repre-
sents himself, how much the pressure of the con-
stituency, and how much it is an endeavor to
secure backing for other policies, so it is in Mexico.
The claim of some Constitutionalists that Carranza
was not in favor of the most radical parts of the
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 7
Queretero Constitution, and accepted them only
because he did not think it wise to oppose the
radicals too far, was generally denied by those in
this country who had only the general opinion that
Carranza was an anti-foreign bigot. It puts a
different interpretation on the whole question when
one hears the following from a New York attorney
for American interests in Mexico, who says:
"I also have the best of reasons to believe that the
Queretero Constitution went farther than Car-
ranza intended : that reason being that I have the
text of the Constitution as presented to the Con-
vention by Mr. Carranza, which text contains
none of the extreme provisions and is in all a
statesmanlike document."
Constitutions remind one of a third difficulty
we have in understanding Mexico the difference
between Anglo-Saxon and Latin psychology. The
secretary of a community club once expressed it
in this way: "If a young American comes in to see
us about joining the Club, he wants to see the
swimming pool, the gymnasium, and the night
classes. If a Latin comes for the same purpose,
he wants to see our Constitution." With the Latin
the theory must be perfect, whatever the practice.
; A political constitution, to the average Latin-
American, is an ideal toward which the country is
to work. It is not at all embarrassing to him to
know that the ideal is a long way from the real.
8 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Again, certain articles are framed that they may
be used when necessary, and only at such times.
It is hard for the square-headed, direct Saxon to
understand this. During President Diaz's admin-
istration, some American missionaries began wor-
rying for fear they were disobeying the reform
laws by holding meetings in private homes. They
went to the President about it. He asked if they
had been molested. They replied in the negative.
"Very well, then," he said, "go ahead with your
work." If they insisted on a ruling, the strict
interpretation of the law would be against them.
But why worry, as long as the authorities did not
molest them?
In the same way when the Constitution of 1917
was adopted, with still more strenuous laws con-
trolling religious activities, Carranza officials ex-
plained to American missionaries that they should
do their work as before. "Es cuestion de adminis-
tration" was the explanation, which meant that
the provision was there to be invoked at any time
when a religious organization began to meddle
with political affairs. In fact, the general princi-
ples of the Constitution usually become applicable
only when Congress passes special laws defining
the mode of their operation. There is also fre-
quently found in Latin-America the attitude dis-
played by one of our own politicians, in the familiar
expression, 'What is the Constitution among
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 9
friends?" But this thing that I am pointing out is
not at all a lack of honesty, as the Saxon is likely
to judge it, but simply the Latin way of looking
at things.
A fourth difficulty that Americans have in
judging this subject is the impossibility of our
separating the Mexican question from our own
political and economic life. If one is Wilsonian,
he is pretty sure to favor patience in the matter.
If one is Rooseveltian, he condemns the revolution
and calls for order to be restored immediately.
An editor noted for his broadmindedness, with
whom I recently discussed the Mexican question,
said to me : "The trouble is that some of us don' t
trust our President's judgment in foreign affairs,
so we can not favor the government he supports."
This is manifestly unfair to Mexico. If we
Americans believe as a general principle in help-
ing weak and backward nations through their
tedious and often bloody struggles toward light
and liberty, and are willing to give our all to favor
such nations across the sea, then we should be
very careful not to allow party prejudices to with-
hold such help from a neighbor who happens to
be so near us that she can not help figuring in our
national affairs. It is not right to idealize the
Armenian and the Pole, because they are too far
away for us to see their frailties, and damn the
Mexican because he is too near for us to see his
io INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
good points and to sympathize with his pathetic
struggle for democracy.
It is doubtful if anything in Mexico itself more
complicates the Mexican problem than the fact
that that nation, wonderfully rich in natural
resources, but backward in ability for self-develop-
ment, is next door to the most powerful nation on
earth. We are particularly interested in Mexico
because her stability affects our pocketbooks.
The price of meat could be kept from soaring too
much if the great cattle ranges of northern Mexico
could be scientifically developed. Our manufac-
turers count on the vast resources of Mexico's
mines. Thousands of Americans count on stable
economic conditions for their daily bread. And
millions of Mexicans are dependent on American
capital for their support. Before the Revolution,
an official of that country told me there were
about 800,000 Mexicans dependent alone on the
Guggenheim and allied interests one out of every
twenty of the population. Much has been said
concerning the influence on the Revolution of the
strong competition between American and Brit-
ish oil interests. President Diaz first sought to
develop the physical resources of Mexico by a
lavish treatment of American investors. Later on,
however, he became somewhat alarmed by their
power and sought to offset it by giving privileges
for railroad building, oil exploitations, and the
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 1 1
like to British syndicates. This led to the claim,
by some, that the Madero-Diaz struggle was
simply a struggle between the American and
British oil interests. While that was a superficial
judgment, since there were fundamental moral and
political questions involved, yet that conflict has
had no doubt an influence on Mexican politics.
Just now all foreign capitalists, at least the oil
companies, have united to oppose Carranza in his
supposed desire to attack their interests. However
right they may be in protesting against the taking
away of their profits by the new Government, from
the standpoint of the Mexicans the pacification of
the country has been deterred by their determined
opposition to Carranza, the one leader who shows
any ability to stabilize conditions. Carranza's
own feeling about the matter has been expressed
in a recent interview published in the San Antonio
Express, as follows:
"The bandits are kept in existence by foreign
interests that have a purpose against the establish-
ment of law and order through a stable govern-
ment. The spasmodic outbursts of these outlaws
do not form a military problem, but one created by
various interests in the hope of bringing inter-
vention. And it does not imperil the Government.
Inasmuch as foreign interests have been exerting
themselves in the interest of this or that candidate,
and have been fomenting political unrest in Mex-
ico, when the paramount need for the peaceful
12 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
and progressive future of the republic is a stable
government that will be allowed unhampered to
work out the many and difficult problems of the
reconstruction of the country, it is very clear that,
for the good of Mexico and the good of the relations
between the United States and Mexico, we must
avoid any foreign influence already at work in
Mexico or outside of Mexico.
We do not want to see in our politics other peo-
ples trying to influence the candidates, for the
reason that such meddling is perilous to the
friendly relations of the two peoples. We people
of Mexico must fight our own political battles
without foreign interference.
It is to be regretted that there is so much mis-
understanding in the United States regarding
Mexico and its problems. It is to be hoped that
the press of the United States will see us with
clear eyes and open mind, and watch us, but not
interfere with us. I do not mean by this that the
press is not perfectly entitled to watch the progress
of our elections with the same interest as we watch
the elections in the United States. Is it not, how-
ever, common sense to agree that a people of dif-
ferent blood, racially apart, with many differing
characteristics due to tradition and environment,
can not advise wisely another people? Can they
enter intimately and with full understanding into
Mexico's complex questions? No, I submit that
Mexicans alone can do this."
How far the ramifications of foreign capital have
brought about the last factor that will be men-
tioned as obscuring our understanding of the Mexi-
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 13
can problem, I do not know. But probably the
biggest single difficulty in this matter is the fact
that the American people with rare exceptions do not
get the truth about conditions in Mexico. Of course,
we expect some sensations or we wouldn't buy the
papers. The world owes certain reporters a living,
and that accounts for other misrepresentations.
Then, the keen agents of the various opponents of
the Carranza Government will, once in a while,
slip over a story on even the editor who is after
only the news that's fit to print. But making
allowances for all this, it is hard not to believe,
to express it mildly, that there is a determined
policy on the part of some of our leading American
dailies to paint as dark a picture of chaotic condi-
tions in Mexico as it is possible to do.
Here is only one illustration. Two years ago,
when the United States declared war on Germany,
I was in Mexico City. From there I went to
Havana, where I got my first New York papers
and found on the first page, "Mexican Revolt
Report Carranza has been Overthrown Obregon
in Power." On that very day the papers in
Mexico City were reporting the details of the war
discussions in Washington, and there was absolute
calm in the National Palace, where General
Carranza was transacting business as serenely as
ever. That this was not simply a slip-up is shown
by the fact that I have a large pamphlet in which
14 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
are printed the letters that were written to this
paper, requesting the correction of flagrant mis-
representations of conditions in Mexico, yet not
a word of such correction was ever printed. One
who will check up the number of rumors printed
each week by the American press concerning dire
happenings in Mexico, which a short lapse of time
proves to be untrue, will be ready to question
seriously what influence is directing our press.
Much more could be said concerning the dif-
ficulty the American people have in understanding
the Mexican situation. In spite of these difficul-
ties, there is a widespread demand in this country
that the United States assume the responsibility of
settling Mexico's complicated problems. This
demand is becoming more and more insistent.
Let me cite a few recent quotations from our news-
papers and public men concerning this matter.
The New York Globe says:
"American intervention in Mexico can not, in the
opinion of the best informed people, be long post-
poned, unless it is determined that American inter-
ests and influence in that country shall be entirely
sacrificed. Organized Bolshevism, taking the
form of confiscation and distribution of property
under color of legal proceedings, is becoming the
rule. Carranza is hostile to American and British
interests, and while since the armistice his leaning
toward German influence has been discontinued,
his attitude toward Americans and English has
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 15
not been modified. If anything, it has become
more bitter."
The New York Sun comments:
"Just one thing emerges as certain, beyond a
doubt, and that is that Mexican affairs are in a
chaotic state. No one party appears strong enough
to gain full control. No one trusts any of the
others. It is a condition of things that threatens
anarchy. Can we afford to allow it to continue?" 1
Senator Porter says (New York Sun, December
30, 1918):
'While the War was in progress it overshadowed
all other events to such an extent that the Ameri-
can people are not generally informed of the high-
handed proceedings undertaken by the Mexican
Government in the name of constitutional revision.
But now that the War is over we should turn our
attention to Mexico and serve notice upon Car-
ranza that the long line of outrages upon American
citizens and their interests must cease. In no
circumstances should we sit supinely and permit
the confiscation of American property.
Steps should be taken at once to prevent it, and
if the Carranza Government persists in its course
it will be brought to terms. The time has come for
straightening out our relations with Mexico, as has
been intimated by European investors. Matters
cannot be permitted to drift along as they have
been doing. We must insist upon our rights and
secure protection for American lives and property.
1 Quoted in New York Tribune, March 23, 1919.
16 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
While the American Government might stand
passively by during the destruction of physical
properties in revolutionary disorders, it can not be
passive in the face of deliberate destruction of title
to property by governmental act. Physical de-
struction may be unavoidable, but deliberate
annulment of title is a voluntary act of authority
which can and must be forestalled."
In a report of a recent dinner of the Council on
Foreign Relations, the Vice- President of the Guar-
anty Trust Company is quoted 2 as saying :
"Thanks to a careful censorship, little real news
has come out of Mexico publicly in the last two
years, but from private sources we learn that
conditions there have become intolerable. Ameri-
can business institutions with large interests in that
territory have recently been compelled to organize,
for the purpose of calling this situation to public
notice and, if possible, to secure some measure of
protection from our Government.
The distressing fact to all those sincerely inter-
ested in the welfare of the Mexican people, and
who would like to see the Mexican people develop
themselves, is that Mexico has not the seed within
herself to achieve what manifestly must be accom-
plished before it can enjoy a free and enlightened
government. It must seek assistance outside of
itself to lift it out of the chaotic conditions now
existing.
The new Mexican Constitution, recently
adopted, is Bolshevik in its theory and provisions.
It decrees that the holding of property is a social
2 The World Tomorrow, March, 1919.
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 17
function, and provides for the bald confiscation of
property rights, as Americans and all civilized
governments understand such rights."
The informant of the New York Times, 3 was
positive in his assertion that President would soon
deal with the matter in a special message to
Congress and that intervention in Mexico would
probably be recommended. The statement was
added that in dealing with the Mexican situation
from this time the United States Government
would act not for itself alone, but also for Great
Britain and France.
"A canvass of the situation seems to indicate
that American intervention in Mexico, not for the
purpose of interfering with the sovereign right of
Mexicans to govern themselves, but to protect the
lives and rights of foreigners in Mexico, and to
restore law and order, may be only a matter of
months, if not weeks.
The statement was made that when the Ameri-
can Government next intervenes in Mexico there
would be no turning back, that the army, navy,
and air service would cooperate, and all the
machinery of civil government would be taken
over, including the courts and custom houses,
under a guardianship for the benefit of all for-
eigners, as well as to end the intolerable situation,
which continues despite the repeated protests
made by the State Department to the Carranza
Government. . . .
For months no other international question in
which this country has been interested, not con-
8 New York Times, July 10, 1919.
18 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
nected directly with the proceedings at Paris,
has been so much in the mind of State Department
officials and members of the diplomatic corps."
The average North American has had too little
contact with the outside world to realize the in-
fluence that casual statements made in his own
country about international relations have in
other nations. I happened to be in Mexico City
when some of the statements just cited about
chaotic conditions in Mexico were repeated in
big red headlines in the Mexico City papers the
next morning after their utterance in New York,
in order to show that Americans would not stop
at the basest falsehoods to misrepresent Mexico.
No doubt the statements were made in a kind of
careless way by those who thought they should
exaggerate a bit in order to emphasize the bad
conditions sufficiently. But in Mexico, where
people actually are living in conditions entirely
different, it appeared as nothing less than damna-
ble lying for a purpose. When some reporter
wants a "scoop," or some Congressman wants to
please his constituency, or some after-dinner
speaker needs to wake up his fellow-diners, Mexico,
being a subject in which everyone is interested and
about which few know anything, offers a fine field.
Such needy gentlemen hardly realize in their
innocent provincialism what far-reaching effect
their words may have. I saw recently more than
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 19
a hundred dray-loads of old American newspapers
being carried across the international border to
be sold to Mexican merchants for wrapping paper.
Quite enterprising, I thought at first. But after-
ward my mind went to the hundreds of young
Mexicans, who, as I know from experience, would
get hold of these papers and spell out the headlines,
many of which would contain insulting references
to Mexico. I was introduced to an audience at a
big eastern university the other day, as one capa-
ble of speaking on Mexico, since I knew "Carranza
and several other bandits."
When one begins to estimate how much of this
kind of thing reaches the sensitive Mexican, one
can not be surprised that German propagandists
found such fallow ground in that country. A
Mexican now living in this country, writing to the
New York Globe, has expressed it as follows :
"Under the title 'The Salvation of Mexico Lies
in Annexation to America', a New York paper
publishes an editorial today calling attention to
an article written by the correspondent of another
New York paper, which purports to tell of terrible
conditions in Mexico, and President Carranza's
political end.
While you Americans are sending your boys to
the trenches to fight for democracy, for the salva-
tion of the small peoples, so that they may have
the fullest expression of liberty, as set forth by
your noble President, such articles as this reprinted
20 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
in my country as expressions of the real and un-
masked feeling of the American people toward
Mexico would certainly be the best medium and
the very ideal material for some unneutral propa-
gandist to bring to the Mexican people's mind that
the United States is to be feared and hated.
The editorial pictures the success of the Mexican
States taken as a 'prize of war' in 1848, and sug-
gests that similar action is the only solution at the
present time to bring peace to the half of Mexico
you 'permitted to remain Mexican', forgetting
that your American sons are battling across the
seas for the principles of 'democracy without
annexations, without indemnities'.
Having lived for several years in the United
States, I know that the feeling for the conquest of
Mexico, as set forth and hoped for by the writer of
the editorial in question, does not exist. As a
subject of Mexico, I know, too, that the feeling of
hatred for the Americans does not exist in my
country. But such a publication is quickly seized
upon by propagandists hostile to the United
States, translated into the Spanish tongue, repub-
lished in the newspapers all over Mexico and also
in pamphlet form, and read there, unfortunately,
as the real expression of the sentiment of the
people of the United States. As an anti-climax,
these statements were given out in the United
States as 'unfriendly propaganda'."
Another serious aspect of this loose talk about
Mexican intervention is its effect on all Latin-
America. In 1914 I made an extended trip to
South America and saw the intense feeling stirred
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 21
by our landing troops in Vera Cruz, and I was
impressed by the general feeling of antagonism
toward the United States. On a later visit in 1917,
I was struck by the disappearance of prejudice
everywhere and the desire for closer relations with
the United States. The reasons for this change
seemed to lie in four directions. First, of course,
was our entrance into the World War for democ-
racy. Following that in importance were second,
the increased commercial relations and third, the
exchange of students and professors. But every-
where I was impressed with the new confidence
in the United States that had come because,
fourth, of our refusing to intervene in Mexico.
My experiences corroborated fully the following
words of W. L. Saunders, Manager of the Ingersoll-
Rand Co., whose world-wide experience in organ-
izing manufacturing enterprises and whose unusual
grasp of world trade make him peculiarly capable
of speaking on the subject. I quote rather exten-
sively from an article by him in The Americas,
April, 1916, because it is important that we should
understand the matter involved. He says :
"A great deal has been said and written of late
about what we should do to get an increased busi-
ness in Central and South America. Much aca-
demic and some practical reasoning has been
indulged in by public speakers and magazine
writers, societies have been formed, advertising
22 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
has been resorted to and sundry steps taken to sell
American products in the countries to the south
of us. Little has been said or written about what
seems to be the first and most important step-
one far-reaching in its influences. I refer to the
act of the present Administration in cultivating
the good opinion of Latin-Americans through our
Mexican policy.
It is well known among those familiar with
Central and South American conditions that the
United States has been looked upon with jealous
suspicion. We are so large and so powerful that
they have feared our domination. No matter
what state authorities may have said in public
documents it has remained true that up to a
recent date a large majority of intelligent Latin-
American people have felt that the people of the
United States, with a singleness of purpose in
chasing the mighty dollar, were anxious so to en-
circle the little countries to the south of us that we
might use their resources to fatten our purses.
They have looked upon us as eminently a practical
people and in that respect as differing from the
old Castilian idea of chivalry and honor. We
know that they are mistaken in this, and that the
ethical code of the American business man is equal
to that of any other in the world, but our visits to
Latin-America and our public statements have
had little effect. When we took Cuba they were
certain that we expected to retain and milk it,
and when we gave if back to the Cuban people
they were surprised and mystified. When we took
Panama and declined to pay for it they turned
to each other and nodding their heads said: 'Ah!
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 23
I told you so. This is the true policy of the United
States. Let us take care that our independence is
preserved against them'.
When one people fear and dislike another it is
difficult for them to cultivate either business or
social relations. Latin-American countries were
always glad to get United States money for invest-
ment in their country, but other things being equal
they preferred foreign capital. American investors
showed no great anxiety to go into countries
where the people were more or less hostile, so that
except in mines and a few other special enterprises
no investments on a large scale were practiced.
About three years ago the policy of the United
States in regard to Mexico began to attract the
attention of our neighbors. They have been
watchfully waiting, expecting us to take advantage
of Mexican weakness and helplessness to draw the
country under control. That we have not done
this has puzzled them, and they are now beginning
to look at us in a new light a condition which
promises to do more than anything else for the
industrial prosperity and peace of all the Americas.
During the recent Pan- American Scientific
Congress held in Washington I spent one week
as a delegate, reading a paper on a scientific sub-
ject, and mixing with the people. My chief aim
was to find out what they really thought about
us, and in expressing the sentiment of Senor
Francisco Peynado of the Dominican Republic I
believe that I am giving the true feeling of most
of the delegates from these countries. Senor
Peynado is a man of great intelligence, an eminent
international lawyer, commended as such by John
24 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Bassett Moore. He said to me that there never
had been a time when the feeling of Latin-Ameri-
can people toward the United States was so cordial
as at present and that this was due mainly to our
policy in regard to Mexico. He said that they
knew that we had Mexico in our power, that it
was directly in line with what was generally sup-
posed to be our ambition: namely, to get control
of all states as far at least as the Panama Canal.
They knew that we would have no difficulty in
taking Mexico if we wanted to, and at first they
thought we had some motive in postponing the
day, but after three years they were becoming
convinced that the United States really did not
seek Latin-American territory; that we were
friends and not enemies; that our cooperation
with them in an effort to settle Mexican affairs
showed a spirit which they had no idea that we
possessed one which if continued and established
would go further than anything else to unite all
the Americas. Words and promises could not
be expected to go as far as actual deeds in a
matter of such importance. That what we had
done, and what we had left undone, was beginning
to take root, and that it was likely to result in a
fruitful harvest.
What can be more important than this? It
makes for prosperity during peace and for mutual
protection and strength against invasion. Any
other course in regard to Mexico than that which
has been followed might have resulted in either
retaining or intensifying the old feeling of suspicion
among our neighbors. Posterity alone will prove
either that the policy of the Administration toward
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 25
Mexico has been one of 'weakness* or of far-reach-
ing wisdom and importance."
Professor W. R. Shepherd of Columbia Uni-
versity, after pointing out three courses of action
for the United States in dealing with Mexico, the
appointment of an international commission to
find out the facts, the exercising of financial pres-
sure, and intervention, says:
"But if armed intervention and the setting up of
an American protectorate be the action chosen,
the United States, in my judgment, will forfeit
the friendship of every country in Latin- America."
There is another result of intervention talk
which comes closer home to us and that is the
divisive effect it has on our own oeople, at a time
when we shall need every bit of the wisdom and
unity we can possibly summon to solve our own
problems. The following quotations may be as
exaggerated as those quoted in favor of inter-
vention. But there is no doubt that they repre-
sent the opinion of a very large number of people
in this country, some of whom would sooner fight
the interventionists than fight Mexico.
The New York Call, (March 21, 1918), says:
"Perhaps the most efficient machine capitalists
ever constructed is that described by a correspon-
dent of the World from Mexico City. Its object
is 'a deliberate, widespread, and more or less well-
I
26 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
organized campaign' to 'force American interven-
tion in Mexico*. There is one obstacle in the way
of this, but it may be overcome with proper
'efficiency' work. This is the fact that the great
masses of the people here do not care two hoots in
hades for the dollars invested in Mexico. . .
Speakers have been hired to speak at conferences,
congresses, and forums. Headquarters have been
secured at Washington, and for a time a 'grape-
vine' connection was maintained with a certain
bureau at the United States Government. 'News'
about Mexico and the Mexicans is supplied to
journals in all parts of the country from time to
time. Attacks on President Carranza are inspired
in the newspapers, and occasional 'atrocities' are
featured which occur only in the consciousness of
the press agent. The next Congress has a scent of
petroleum about it, and this is regarded as the
last item in this efficiency campaign. After it is
organized, orders will be given and a pretext will
be found for waging war upon Mexicans. . . .
In other words, the capitalists and financiers
interested in this thing do not hesitate to kill
thousands of Mexicans and have thousands of
Americans killed for the sake of American dollars
invested in Mexico. Every detail of this dirty
enterprise has been planned and organized, accord-
ing to this story, with the care for detail that is
taken in organizing a corporation. The coming
months will witness a progressive development of
propaganda along these lines, and many of us
may be given the glorious privilege of dying for
the greater glory of American investors."
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 27
The World Tomorrow, representing another class
of people, says: (Editorial of March, 1919,
number)
"The time to stop a war is before it begins. Our
war with Germany is over. . . For a while at
least most of humanity has ceased its ghastly self-
slaughter, and men's hearts and minds are filled
with hopes and plans for a better and an ordered
world. We have entered upon a breathing space
during which, if public opinion will but steady
itself, inform itself, and concern itself with realities
instead of with chimeras, we may actually stop
the next war before it begins. The next war!
How can there be a next war? We have just won
the war that was to end war. The Kaiser lan-
guishes in exile. Prussian militarism is over-
thrown. Who, then, must we fight and what are
we to fight about? With a full realization of the
seriousness of what we are saying, our blunt
answer to the first question is, Mexico, and to the
second, American investments.
What are the grounds upon which we base these
assertions? The facts are not far to seek. Even
our Military Intelligence Department could hardly
fail to discover them. Let us marshal here a few
of the most revealing facts for our readers' own
interpretation and judgment. "
We have gone a long way in many matters
concerning international relations during the last
four years. Does the old doctrine of intervention,
as our fathers interpreted it, still stand? Perhaps
we had better not say, "as our fathers interpreted
28 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
it," for our own fathers would not stand for it a
minute, when England and Germany during our
Civil War intimated that, in the name of humanity
and for the protection of their property and
citizens, they should put a stop to a bloody
fratricidal war that was dragging out through the
years. We have just confiscated foreign property
by the millions by passing the Prohibition Amend-
ment, yet no one would think that that gave a
foreign government the right to intervene in our
affairs. But would that be true if we were the size
of Costa Rica? The constitutional President of
that country is an outlaw today, and a revolution-
ary government rules, because certain American
interests did not like his land tax and his refusal
to be bribed for certain concessions.
Has the World War, our fight for the rights of
self-determination for weak and small nations,
changed in any way the old doctrine of inter-
vention by a strong nation in the affairs of a weak
nation? It is a question on which every fair-
minded man will ponder.
The opinion of President Carranza on the matter
of intervention is given in a clear statement made
by Sr. Antonio Manero, who, as the official
representative of the Mexican President, made a
trip through Latin - America recently, giving
lectures, which are published in a volume called
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 29
Mexico y la Solidaridad Americana La Doctrina
Carranza. Sr. Manero says:
"Nearly all laws, national as well as interna-
tional, in Latin-America have a common origin-
the effort of the stronger nations to exercise con-
trol over the weaker ones' affairs in defense of the
interests of their nationals, who are either immi-
grants or investors. The problem of Latin-America
and, in large part, that of the United States, con-
sists in finding out how it can give entrance to all
foreign activities and capital without placing in
danger the peace and stability of the nation and
without losing its national characteristics. It is
a rare country that today does not insist that
foreigners shall be subject to the laws of the
country in respect to their property and civil state.
There have been discussions concerning this in
various international congresses, suggesting that
the foreigner be subject to all the laws of the
country in which he lives; but in reality such a
doctrine has not had a constitutional basis until
it was recently expressed in the new Mexican
Constitution. In 1915, when the international
questions between Mexico and the United States
were about to be solved, Carranza said: 'Our
struggle will be the beginning of a universal strug-
gle which will mark the entrance into an era of
justice with the establishment of the principles of
respect which great nations should have for small
nations. All the exclusive claims and privileges
ought to be abandoned little by little. The indi-
vidual who goes from one nation to another ought
to subject himself to the consequences of his own
30 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
condition and not to have more guarantees or
more rights than the natives of that country have.
True justice will reign on the earth when every
citizen, in whatever part of the planet he is, finds
himself within his own nationality'."
Before we ever considered a League of Nations,
the Calvo Doctrine and the Drago Doctrine,
named for their authors, two distinguished South
Americans, had received favorable consideration
by international jurists.
The Drago Doctrine, which may be said to be
supplementary to the Monroe Doctrine, was
formulated, as is well known, as the result of the
coercive action taken against Venezuela in 1902
by a number of European powers. The cardinal
principle of the doctrine is that public debts give
no right to armed intervention or to a material
occupation of American territory by a European
power. As Oliveira Lima says, in his book on
Pan- Americanism, proof that this doctrine or
policy was welcomed by the world's authorities
on international law and recognized by them as a
principle of effective and real value in the life of
the continent, as well as that of the world in
general, is to be found in the fact that the theories
formulated by Dr. Drago were accepted, with
very slight modifications, by the International
Peace Conference at the Hague.
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 31
/
The Calvo Doctrine, called after its author, is
referred to by John Bassett Moore as a most
important development of international law. This
doctrine denies the responsibility of governments
for losses and injuries experienced by foreigners in
times of internal disturbances or of civil war.
Has the League of Nations helped at all to
clear up this matter of our intervention in the
small states to the South?
Latin-Americans were very much in hope that
the League would solve the problems of the
relations between them and the United States.
At first there was practical unanimity in favor of
the League in every one of the southern republics.
It seemed to offer a way out of the embarrassing
contradiction as it seemed at least to many of
them between Pan-Americanism and the Monroe
Doctrine. Now Latin-America has no objection
to the Monroe Doctrine if it means simply that
Europe is not to meddle in American affairs. But
they fear that it means, as they can amply demon-
strate by extended quotations from North Ameri-
cans that it does, that the United States retains to
itself the right of controlling this continent.
As President Lowell says: 4
"According to that view Central and South
America are a game preserve, from which poachers
4 World 'Peace Foundation, "League of Nations Series," Vol. II.
No. 2.
32 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
are excluded, but where the proprietor may hunt
as he pleases. Naturally the proprietor is anxious
not only to keep away the poachers but to oppose
game laws that would interfere with his own
sport. With their professed principles about
protecting the integrity and independence of
small countries, the nations that have drawn up
the Covenant of Paris can hardly consent to a
claim of this kind. Nor ought we to demand it. A
suspicion that this is the real meaning of the
Monroe Doctrine is the specter that has prevented
the great South American states from accepting
the doctrine. It has been the chief obstacle to
mutual confidence and cordial relations with them,
and the sooner it is definitely rejected the better.
Some Americans, while professing a faith in the
right of all peoples to independence and self-
government, are really imperialists at heart.
They believe in the right and manifest destiny of
the United States to expand by overrunning its
weaker neighbors. They appeal to a spirit of
patriotism that sees no object, holds no ideals, and
acknowledges no rights or duties, but the national
welfare and aggrandizement. In the name of that
principle Germany sinned and fell. The ideas of
these American imperialists are less grandiose, but
at bottom they differ little from hers. It would be
a calamity if we should have helped to overcome
Germany only to be conquered by her theories
and her errors."
The insistence of the United States that the
League of Nations recognize the Monroe Doctrine,
will, in my judgment, lose us the opportunity (of
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 33
proving to Latin - America that that Doctrine
means now only what it did originally, the exclu-
sion of Europe from America, with the understand-
ing which John Quincy Adams, the probable
author, put upon it:
"Consider the South American nations as inde-
pendent; they themselves and no other nation
have the right to determine their own conditions.
We have no right to dispose of them, rieither alone
nor in combination with others. Nor has any
other nation any right to dispose of them without
their own consent."
The other day when Mexico was reported as
saying she did not accept the Monroe Doctrine,
the comment often heard in this country was,
"She has nothing to do with the Monroe Doctrine.
It is impertinent for her to say anything about a
purely American doctrine." True, if it is inter-
preted in one way ; but she, and Chile, and Colom-
bia, and Nicaragua, and other countries and
countless individual Latin-Americans believe
and we must not forget that they sustain this
contention by quotations from our own authorities
-that it means not "America for the Americans"
but "America for the North Americans," giving
the United States the privilege of dictating the
policies of all other American countries. With
this interpretation, Mexico has as much right to
be interested in the Doctrine as I have in my
34 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
neighbor's doctrine that my property is for his
service.
There will no doubt be a pretty universal
disappointment among Latin-Americans because
of the adoption of the Monroe Doctrine amend-
ment to the League Covenant. This might
have been mitigated if a declaration had been
made that would have excluded the sinister
interpretation referred to.
The necessity of doing something to clear up
the meaning of the Doctrine has been recognized
by President Wilson for some time. In an address
to the Pan-American Scientific Congress in Wash-
ington, January 6, 1916, he said:
"The Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed by the
United States on her own authority. It has
always been maintained, and always will be
maintained, upon her own responsibility. But the
Monroe Doctrine demanded merely that European
governments should not attempt to extend their
political systems to this side of the Atlantic. It
did not disclose the use which the United States
intended to make of her power on this side of the
Atlantic. It was a hand held up in warning, but
there was no promise in it of what America was
going to do with the implied and partial protec-
torate which she apparently was trying to set up
on this side of the water, and I believe you will
sustain me in the statement that it has been fears
and suspicions on this score which have hitherto
prevented the greater intimacy and confidence and
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 35
trust between the Americas. The states of
America have not been certain what the United
States would do with her power. That doubt
must be removed. And latterly there has been a
very frank interchange of views between the
authorities in Washington and those who repre-
sented the other states of this hemisphere, an
interchange of views charming and hopeful,
because based upon an increasingly sure apprecia-
tion of the spirit in which they were undertaken.
These gentlemen have seen that, if America is to
come into her own, into her legitimate own, in a
world of peace and order, she must establish the
foundations of amity, so that no one will hereafter
doubt them."
The following words spoken to the Mexican
editors at the White House, June 7, 1918, give us
a yet clearer idea of the President's thought in
the matter:
"Gentlemen, I have never received a group of
men who were more welcome than you are, because
it has been one of my distresses during the period
of my Presidency that the Mexican people did not
more thoroughly understand the attitude of the
United States toward Mexico. I think I can assure
you, and I hope you have had every evidence of
the truth of my assurance, that that attitude is
one of sincere friendship. And not merely the
sort of friendship which prompts one not to do
his neighbor any harm, but the sort of friendship
which earnestly desires to do his neighbor ser-
vice.
36 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Some of us, if I may say so privately, look back
with regret upon some of the more ancient relations
that we have had with Mexico long before our
generation; and America, if I may so express it,
would now feel ashamed to take advantage of a
neighbor. So I hope that you can carry back to
your homes something better than the assurances
of words. You have had contact with our people.
You know your own personal reception. You know
how gladly we have opened to you the doors of
every establishment that you wanted to see and
have shown you just what we were doing, and I
hope you have gained the right impression as to
why we were doing it. We are doing it, gentlemen,
so that the world may never hereafter have to fear
the only thing that any nation has to dread, the
unjust and selfish aggression of another nation.
Some time ago, as you probably all know, I pro-
posed a sort of Pan-American agreement. I had
perceived that one of the difficulties of our rela-
tionship with Latin- America was this: The
famous Monroe Doctrine was adopted without
your consent, without the consent of any of the
Central or South American states.
If I may express it in the terms that we so often
use in this country, we said, 'We are going to be
your big brother, whether you want us to be or
not'. We did not ask whether it was agreeable to
you that we should be your big brother. We said
we were going to be. Now, that was all very well
so far as protecting you from aggression from the
other side of the water was concerned, but there
was nothing in it that protected you from aggres-
sion from us, and I have repeatedly seen the uneasy
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 37
feeling on the part of representatives of the states
of Central and South America that our self-
appointed protection might be for our own benefit
and our own interests and not for the interest of
our neighbors. So I said, 'Very well, let us make
an arrangement by which we will give bond. Let
us have a common guarantee, that all of us will
sign, of political independence and territorial
integrity. Let us agree that if any one of us,
the United States included, violates the political
independence or the territorial integrity of any of
the others, all the others will jump on her*. I
pointed out to some of the gentlemen who were
less inclined to enter into this arrangement than
others that that was in effect giving bonds on the
part of the United States, that we would enter
into an arrangement by which you would be pro-
tected by us. ...
Peace can come only by trust. As long as there
is suspicion there is going to be misunderstanding,
and as long as there is misunderstanding there is
going to be trouble. If you can once get a situa-
tion of trust, then you have got a situation of
permanent peace. Therefore, every one of us, it
seems to me, owes it as a patriotic duty to his own
country to plant the seeds of trust and of confi-
dence instead of the seeds of suspicion and variety
of interest."
It is devoutly to be hoped that the President,
who is the prime mover in the establishment of
the League of Nations, has in mind some plan
along the line suggested to the editors that can be
put into operation very soon, in order to counteract
38 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
the unfortunate interpretation of the Monroe
Doctrine again made prominent by the insistence
of the United States that special mention of the
Doctrine should be made in the League Covenant.
This should be done quickly. There has been
shown in the last few months in Mexico a more
general desire for friendship with the United
States than I have ever known before. It is the
most encouraging thing I found in my last trip
to the Republic, and should be quickly turned to
advantage. It is well summarized in the following
article translated from El Universal, one of the
leading dailies of Mexico City:
"The United States and Mexico have passed
through large and painful difficulties, largely on
account of the internal situation in the last-named
nation. The United States has not been able to
appreciate sufficiently the Mexican crisis, not
attributing it to causes of a general order, to a just
desire of the people to recover their liberty, but to
a supposed desire of ambitious persons, to foreign
intrigues, to a disorderly spirit. It is the same old
question. Although separated by short distances,
Saxon-America and Latin-America understand
each other with great difficulty, because of the
influence of their two distinct psychologies. It is
sad to affirm, but it is strictly true, that when a
North American statesman or functionary speaks
of public questions in the Latin-American repub-
lics he assumes an astute attitude, and when the
leaders of the states of the south speak of the
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 39
United States they take upon themselves an
expression of jealousy. Mexico and the United
States are found in this situation in the most
critical form. History justifies this condition, but
in this moment it is necessary to change, to take a
new road toward harmony. Statesmen can not be
poets, living eternally in paradise, or in the remem-
brance of the beautiful old days. Governors must
think of the future and of the happiness of the
people whom they govern. The moment for a
solution of this question is now, when the United
States has placed itself at the head of the humani-
tarian movement to create the society of nations,
when the North American spirit denies itself all
idea of conquest and fixes the principle that public
and private morality ought to be ruled by the
same laws, when Wilson goes to Europe, breaking
every precedent of American politics followed from
the time of Washington, in order to preach there
the ideas of social justice applied to international
law, which until today seemed a subject not to be
submitted to laws of order and right.
Between the United States and Mexico there
are two great problems one of frontiers, and the
other of a civil order referring to foreign fortunes
invested in Mexico. The first has been settled up
to the present time with good judgment on the
part of both. Much more difficult do we find the
second, which refers to the foreign interests in
Mexico. A foreign government can not pretend
that its citizens should have better treatment than
the natives, nor that they should not pay propor-
tionately their part of the taxes, nor that they
should not obey the law. On the other hand, a
40 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
national government can not refuse proper pro-
tection to the lives and the interests of other
nations, much less can it violate those interests by
unjust and confiscatory laws. Evidently these
general principles encounter great difficulties in
practice, but if those governing the two countries
are men who understand these precepts and desire
to practice them, such difficulties will be reduced to
a very small minimum.
The good faith, the honor of governments will
solve problems which legal formulas can not solve
and never will be able to solve. If in Mexico and
in the United States there are reciprocal preju-
dices, it will be difficult to solve the problems aris-
ing from their close proximity; but if, on the
contrary, there is established a current of sympa-
thy, all will be easy, even the gravest problem.
The actual situation, full of resentment and
jealousies, practically all of which are unjustified,
is irrational. The United States and Mexico will
do well to convince each other that, on the one
hand, the Mexicans are a people worthy of modern
civilization, and, on the other hand, that the
United States does not care to conquer territory in
Mexico. When the one has understood the first,
and the other the second, they will both live in
better understanding, the United States being
satisfied to have so close to it one of the richest
nations in the world, and the Mexicans content to
receive the influence of the most progressive and
just of all nations."
In this chapter I have tried simply to open up
the whole question of our relations to a sick and
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM 41
suffering neighbor. I recognize fully that the
problem is a complicated one. I do not claim
that my judgments are altogether correct, but I
want to help my fellow-Americans to understand
something of the way the Mexicans feel about it.
Our understanding of the problem is complicated,
I repeat, by our lack of knowledge of the history
and geography of Mexico and of her internal politi-
cal currents, by the difference between Anglo-
Saxon and Latin psychology, by the difficulty of
separating the question from our own political and
economic life, and by the false reports which we
get through the press.
Notwithstanding all these difficulties in under-
standing the subject, there is yet a wide demand
that we undertake the settling of these questions
by a military occupation of the country. This
talk about intervention causes serious difficulties
in Mexico, in all Latin-America, and in the
United States. Since we are just emerging from a
world war, fought for the rights of small nations,
the question arises as to whether in the new day
we shall still follow the old doctrine of intervention
to protect property. Latin-Americans believe
that foreigners should have the same protection as
nationals, but no more. The help the League of
Nations promised to give will probably be limited
somewhat by the introduction of the Monroe
Doctrine clause, which will be inclined to restore
42 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
the old suspicions Latin-Americans had of the
United States. President Wilson has told the
Mexicans that he desires that all American
nations shall have the same rights and privileges,
and a Mexican editor, expressing feeling general
among his people, desires a settlement of differ-
ences between the two countries and a mutual
friendship and respect.
We will consider more fully in the last chapter
some of the ways in which the United States
might help Mexico to solve her problems. At this
stage in our discussion let us simply make our own
the words inscribed on the walls of the building of
the Pan-American Union in Washington: "God
has made us neighbors. Let justice make us
friends."
CHAPTER II
IS THE PRESENT DISTURBANCE IN
MEXICO A REAL REVOLUTION?
I saw a cartoon the other day that represented
beautiful Miss Liberty giving a lecture to a
desperado, who, as he flourished a revolver,
seemed to be trying to make out who the young
lady was. On the brim of his large sombrero was
written "Mexico," and he was saying "No Com-
prendo." The disturbed conditions south of the
Rio Grande are proving only too clearly that
indeed he does not understand. The deep truths
of democracy are yet beyond his ken. He has not
learned how to accept defeat with grace, to discuss
issues without personalities, to confide in his
fellowman, to unite factions for the common good.
He has not learned to go two miles with the man
who compels him to go one; that the man who
hears and does is the man whose house stands;
that before the tower is built one must sit down
and count the cost ; that he who puts his hand to
the plough must not look back; that only he who
loses his life shall find it again.
All this we must candidly admit. But whose
fault is it that he does not know these things?
44 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
His own? The Mexican learns when he has a
chance. But collectively he has never had a
chance. His "No Comprendo," far from being the
flippant response of a don't-care, the subject for
the funny column of a newspaper, is really the
wail of a neglected soul, rent with grief and
passion, who finds no one to explain to him the
deep mysteries of life.
In the first place, the Mexicans are a dislocated
people. When Spain established herself in the
country the respective tribes occupied a definite
place in social evolution. They had a well organ-
ized religion, agricultural system, and government.
These three indispensable items of normal develop-
ment were wholly disrupted by the Spaniards, who
endeavored by force of arms to substitute in
their place an exotic feudalism. The Indians were
left without any incentive to conform to the new
system, and kept from any sort of knowledge or
freedom to acquire any sense of their new social
environment. And up to this day this confusion
of social organization exists and opposes progress.
In the second place, the Mexicans are an
exploited people. The land baron and the priest
have continued their unholy alliance from the
days of the Conquistadores till the present,
playing alternately the one into the hands of the
other, to keep the people in ignorance, superstition,
and debt, so that the exploitation, both by padre
A REAL REVOLUTION? 45
and amOj would be sure and easy. Foreign
capitalists, with their immense concessions, have
usually been willing to join the system of exploita-
tion. And the unestimated resources of the
country, along with its people, have been made
to pay tribute down through the years to these
privileged classes. And yet we seem to be as-
tounded at the "horrible atrocities, disgraceful to
all civilization," witnessed today in Mexico, and
cry out in the name of humanity for them to be
stopped. It would seem, rather, that we ought to
rejoice that the people have finally gathered
strength enough to protest against their wrongs.
Historically, the Mexicans are a hard-working,
land-loving, peaceable people.
"Current impression that they are given to
revolt as sparks fly upward fails to realize what a
large part hunger, homelessness, low wages, and
lack of confidence play in men's willingness or un-
willingness to fight. Personally, those to whom the
republic is dear fear that they will stop fighting
too soon as soon as they are eased of their
intolerable discomfort. When General Blanco,
after the earlier victories, began parceling out the
land, most of those who were fortunate to get a
piece of it resigned from the army. Prosperity
never made any people warlike. It only makes it
possible, when they do fight, to go on fighting
longer. But when any people has actually more to
hope for from war more things to eat, more to
look forward to and live for then revolution
46 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
may become a habit. For a long time Mexico
has been in that condition. Her short, sporadic
revolts are simply the index of the desperation of
the people and the short shift of their supplies.
Because they are fighting for relief they snatch up
any leader that comes handy, Zapata, Madero,
Villa, just as the French peasants caught up
bill-hooks and scythes when no better weapons
were to be had."
In the third place, the Mexicans, as a backward
race, are suffering from being brought into forcible
contact with more advanced peoples. The Span-
iards, advanced in the arts of war, with a few
hundred men and horses and guns, so astounded
the Aztecs that they were utterly confused and a
few Spaniards were able to conquer and rule
millions of Indians. The aborigines were at such a
disadvantage that they made no endeavor to
resist their powerful masters, but lived in practical
serfdom. After three hundred years they were
again brought into violent contact with another
more advanced group, the Creole leaders, who,
struggling for political supremacy against one
another, compelled the poor people to fight "for
liberty" so-called. But the only result was that
again the peon suffered the shock of violent
contact with a superior force, with all its evils, but
with no one to teach him any of the real signifi-
cance of the continuous struggle between central-
ists and federalists, clericals and liberals, and the
A REAL REVOLUTION? 47
hundred other factions which compelled him
ignorantly to fight for them from the time of
Hidalgo down to Diaz.
When these political struggles finally left the
Mexican in peace under Diaz, then, still in his
ignorance of past centuries, he was put into
violent contact with what is probably the most
baffling of all superior forces modern capital.
Just as the Spaniard told him he would be im-
proved by his new contacts and made over by
superior gods, and the caudillo insisted that the
new doctrine of rights and liberties would give
him the longed-for haven, so the modern capitalist
conies to promise him a complete salvation. But
neither his religious, his political, nor his economic
saviour has ever stopped to teach him anything of
the principles involved in the new advanced life
into which he is forcibly injected.
So the Mexican has had no man to guide him.
Education and self-expression have been denied
him for four hundred years since the white man
first set foot upon his soil. Let us take a rapid
glance at these years. The names of four men
Cortez, Hidalgo, Juarez, Diaz with the gaps
filled in by political oppression and revolution on
the one hand, and the constant intrigues of the
priests to keep the people in ignorance on the
other these make up Mexico's history. Cortez,
who conquered the aborigines in 1520, was one
48 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
of the most astute and unprincipled adventurers
the world has ever known. Accompanying him
were a band of priests. The natives were com-
pelled to bow to the Spanish king and the pope
at the same time. "Christianity, instead of ful-
filling its mission of converting and sanctifying,
was itself converted. Paganism was baptized.
Christianity was paganized. n The people lived
in practical slavery for three hundred years.
On September 16, 1810, Miguel Hidalgo raised
the cry of revolt against this terrible oppression.
But his love of liberty was not accompanied by a
genius for leadership, and soon he and his fellow-
leaders were captured and shot. Then followed a
continuous revolution for fifty years, in which
Mexico's independence from Spain was gained
only to be lost in strife between her own unprin-
cipled leaders.
Out of this carnage of blood and disorder
appeared one of the greatest men ever produced
by the Americas. Benito Juarez laid the ax at
the very root of the tree. He saw that his country
could never have political liberty until it had
religious liberty. He confiscated large amounts of
church property, separated completely church and
state, repelled the French invasion, and was
about to establish a series of reforms and an
educational system for which the people had
waited all these centuries, when he was suddenly
A REAL REVOLUTION? 49
cut off by death. Fresh struggles for the presi-
dential chair finally resulted in its occupancy by
Porfirio Diaz, who retained it from 1876 till 1911,
with the exception of four years. His strong hand
forced peace and brought about marvelous mater-
ial progress. But free speech was still repressed,
and while a few more people learned to read, they
must still reply in large measure to the ancient
question, "Understandest thou what thou readest?"
with the wail, "How can I, except some one shall
guide me?"
Is it any wonder, when the country was so
suddenly changed from a despotism to a democ-
racy by the Madero revolution, that it has been
impossible to keep down disturbances? The
change was needed, but it was too sudden. A
period of trial and stress must be passed through.
History emphasizes this to us repeatedly. Think
of the long, dark days of the reconstruction period
after our own Civil War. Yet we began learning
our lessons in democracy in 1215, when King
John granted the Magna Charta.
If there were ever a time when we should be
able to see the dangers of pharisaical condemna-
tion of Mexico for her disorder, it is now. We
have just fought a war for making the world
safe for democracy, and won. Yet the world in
all its history has never known such a chaotic
condition as exists today in practically every part
50 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
of the globe. Mexico is far quieter today, life is
safer, food is more plentiful, business is more
sound, the government more secure than in
Russia, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Turkey,
the Balkans, Syria, Korea, and other disturbed
parts of the world. China began her revolution
against the Manchu dynasty at about the same
time Mexico began hers against Diaz, and took
about the same time to overthrow the reactionary
government. Her revolution has continued be-
tween the northern and southern sections, just
as Mexico's has, but, instead of quieting down as
in Mexico, the struggle today is worse than ever.
As with Mexico, her next-door neighbor has
wanted to intervene. But the United States has
continually opposed such action, insisting that
the territorial integrity and sovereignty of China,
with her right to work out her own problems, must
be maintained.
The present upset condition of the world should
help us to recall what periods of reconstruction
have always been. What sovereign country today
has not had a period of civil war and reconstruc-
tion, during which foreigners have suffered, along
with nationals, the destruction of millions of
dollars of property and hundreds of lives? Yet
when fundamental wrongs existed, that stood
squarely in the way of progress and could be
removed only by war, then war it was, and
A REAL REVOLUTION? 51
foreigners had to be crucified with citizens, and
all go down into hades that the resurrection of the
nation might come.
The United States arrived at a time when it
could not exist half free, half slave. This country
was not only on a false economic basis, but on a
false moral basis. Slavery gave the lie to our
constitution, as slave labor gave the death blow
to competitive free labor. All our great resources
have been developed, our big business created, our
moral leadership in the world gained, since
the slavery question was settled. The capital
lost in that struggle, both by foreigners and
nationals, has been regained a thousand fold, and
the country has been put on a basis of permanent
peace which guarantees continuous progress. But
this could not be seen for a long time. Following
Sherman's march to the sea, and a hundred other
military expeditions that crushed the life out of
the South and subjected innocent women and
children and foreigners to unmentionable horrors,
there came the terrible years of reconstruction.
Liberated Negro slaves, led by white politicians,
over-ran entire communities. Churches and
schools were destroyed, and social life of all
kinds was disrupted. Plunder, robbery, and rape
were common. These conditions lasted for years
in many communities. Gangs of train robbers
52 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
like the James boys terrorized the unsettled West
for more than a decade.
A half century after our own experience, Mexico
is repeating it. At least she has begun it, but
things move more slowly there, and we may
well expect it to require a good deal more time.
By the brilliant light of the twentieth century,
Mexico was revealed to herself as holding on to
an old feudal system. Outside of a few hundred
thousand privileged classes and the three to five
million pure Indians, the whole population was
in economic and practically legal slavery. Her
political constitution was made a lie. Both her
false economic foundation and her moral basis
had to be changed. The issues involved have not
always been clear-cut, as they were in our struggle.
The individualistic Latin naturally follows leaders
rather than parties. Furthermore, the original
issue both of slavery and of constitution was
immeasurably more complicated with the Mexican.
But there have persisted pretty clearly all through
the struggle these two ideals economic freedom
and enforcement of the constitution. Each of
these two principles has generally been expressed
in a twofold way, with the following four points
most often mentioned as the principles for which
the revolution was contending :
I. Breaking up of great landed estates for
benefit of common people.
A REAL REVOLUTION? 53
2. Readjustment of taxes.
3. Right of suffrage.
4. Elimination of the political power of the
church.
Both the economic and the moral principle in a
broad way have now been won. No more peons
are held for debt, nor do they work for dos reales
diarios (two reales a day). The constitution is at
least observed in that there are free elections in
the greater part of Mexican territory. Mexico is
now in the period of reconstruction. Villa is
proving as difficult for the Mexican Government
to catch as the James boys were for us. Raids on
ranches and out-of-the-way towns and attacks on
trains are almost as frequent as they were in our
western towns in the *7o's and *8o's. But Zapata
is gone. Blanquet is dead. Felix Diaz counts
only in the minds of a few press agents. Carranza
controls all state capitals at the time that this is
written, as well as every town of over 5,000 people
in the Republic. ]
But our interest is not so much in Carranza or
any other individual, providing we can feel that
there has been a real social revolution in Mexico,
and that the country is on an upgrade to a demo-
cratic life. Even if that road does seem a long,
hard one, requiring many years to climb, the
people of the outside world would be willing to
stand firm against the interventionists, if it
54 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
could be shown that Mexico had not forfeited
her sovereign right to settle her own affairs in the
way most likely to bring permanent results.
International law has always allowed civil war
without interference, unless it is waged with
unrestrained irresponsibility, and without any
seeming fundamental principles at issue. As Pro-
fessor Wells, of Clark College, says:
"Mexico undeniably presents the basic condi-
tions without which a struggle should not be
viewed as a true civil war, namely, the existence
of issues which are of vital concern to the people ;
and the abuses which give rise to them have been
so tyrannical as to justify a revolution in the
government, and, if necessary to that end, a
violent purging of the nation. The revolt on these
issues is under the guidance of leaders, civil and
military, representing nearly all grades of society
and many walks of life. They include men of
character, who typify the most substantial prod-
ucts of Mexican civilization." 1
Let us look at a few of the changes that have
been wrought already by the Revolution. They
may be seen in politics, in economic and social
conditions, and in educational matters.
The jefe politico was one of the most despicable
individuals in the Diaz regime. He had no standing
1 Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science,
Vol. 54-
A REAL REVOLUTION? 55
in the constitution, but practically he was the most
important official in any district. Diaz practically
appointed the governors of the different states,
and the governors appointed these political bosses
for the various districts. They represented both
the President and the Governor, and were more
powerful than any regular elective official. Army
officers, legislators, presidents of municipalities,
collectors of customs, and practically all the
people in the district were subject to these jefes.
Sometimes these men were appointed after they
had gained great power and understood the
machine well. Other times they were sent to out-
of-the way districts because they had strong per-
sonalities and would be able to "nip in the bud"
any political disturbances. So long as they did
this, their methods were not likely to be questioned.
In one of the communities where I lived the
most prominent gentleman of the town, who
owned the most real estate and who controlled
hundreds of thousands of acres of farming land,
was called "Colonel." After several years' resi-
dence I learned how this title came to him. He
was sent to this center some twenty years before
as jefe politico. He organized a band of ruffians
who would ride over the country and collect herds
of sheep and cattle for him. If the owner of a
little herd of cattle saw them being driven away,
and demanded, 'Who told you to drive these
56 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
cattle off?" The reply would be, "The Colonel."
If the owner were audacious enough to go into the
city and present himself before the authorities to
demand that this gang be punished, before whom
would he appear? Why, the Colonel. If he
insisted on demanding his rights, he would be
thrown into jail and kept there until he recognized
the Colonel's supremacy. Thus the jefe politico
not only got his title "The Colonel" but amassed
an immense fortune.
When the revolutionists, many of them the
very same men who had been robbed by the
Colonel, ten, twenty, or thirty years before, went
into his beautiful home in the city after he had
abandoned it and requisitioned a few desks and
beds for their headquarters, their acts were
telegraphed all over the United States to show the
barbarity of the revolutionists.
In the later days another type of political
boss was developed, represented by a gentleman
whom I knew very well. He held court in his own
office. Every official in the community paid him
so much to hold his job. He controlled the licenses
for the saloons and the red light district, he levied
heavy taxes on all kind of vice, he sold gambling
privileges for the public plaza at certain seasons
when excursions were run from different parts of
Mexico and the United States to witness the wide
open town, and in various ways he collected an
A REAL REVOLUTION? 57
income of two or three thousand Mexican dollars
a month. Whenever he went out he was accom-
panied by a few strongly armed men, to protect
him against the not infrequent assaults of the
people who suffered from his oppression. Those
who dared make any resistance whatever were
summarily disposed of. The saddest part of his
whole dictatorship was the fact that he commanded
the bodies of young women whom he would send
for, especially those of the lower classes. It seems
incredible that such a man could wield continued
power in the latter years of the Diaz regime. It is
useless to cite more examples of this kind, though
they could be found in all parts of Mexico.
We have often been told of the abuses of the
peon on the great haciendas. These immense
holdings had either come down to their owners
from colonial times, or had been given to them for
some political service, or had been taken from the
Indians who held and worked them as common
tribal possessions. When one of these estates was
sold, one bought not only the land and the houses
but practically the peons also, for these latter
were always kept in debt. The law said that as
long as they were in debt they could not leave
their employers. If they ran away they might be
hunted and brought back. Their wages, of course,
were so low that they could never pay their
debts.
58 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
I remember talking with one of these poor
fellows who was on the rear platform of a passenger
train stealing a ride. I asked him how much he
got a day. "Dos reales diarios (twelve and a half
cents, American, per day)" he replied. "Have you
a family?" "Yes, a wife and twelve children."
"Are you married?" (This is not an uncommon
question at all to ask a Mexican peon, who very
often is not able to have the costly ceremony
performed by the church and does not believe in
the value of a civil ceremony.) "Yes," he replied.
'Were you married by the State or by the church?"
"Oh, by the church, Senor." "How much did you
pay the priest for the ceremony?" "Doce pesos"
(six dollars, American). Naturally such a man
never had any idea of bettering his condition. It is
not likely that he ever thought of its possibility.
The peon is far from being the pugnacious
fellow most people think him. He is the most
submissive, passive, patient individual you would
meet anywhere. If we had to wait for the uprising
of these peon classes of the lowest order, we would
wait a long time indeed. The Revolution was
started not by them but by the few thousands in
the gradually developing middle class, aided at
times by people who had been associated with
the Government but for various reasons had lost
their places, or by young men, sons of the govern-
ing classes, who had gone to foreign countries
A REAL REVOLUTION? 59
and seen how far Mexico was behind the rest of
the civilized world in the matter of self-govern-
ment.
The matter referred to above namely, the
taking of young women by officials in the Diaz
r6gime was altogether too common. A young
girl whom I knew very well, the only daughter of a
widow living near us, was one day called out to
the high-power automobile of the general of the
local garrison, compelled to get in, and driven
to the general's headquarters. She was kept in
captivity ten days. The poor mother madly
besought her release, as did those friends who were
brave enough, and she secured it only after she
had lain on her face at the door, imploring so
piteously that the general dared not face the
publicity of his beastly act any longer.
This is one thing that Carranza and his close
associates have gone after in the most vigorous
way. Of course, there has been raping at times
by his soldiers, but I have known personally of
his ordering executions because of this. Carranza
respects womanhood and his whole movement
has stood for a new place for women. The young
women who are school teachers and the few others
who are in business have come to receive new
respect, and the old feeling that any woman
who is unaccompanied is prey for a foul male is
opposed with all Carranza's power. Mexican
60 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
men have too long preyed upon their women-
kind for it to be true that it has disappeared,
but the old assumption that an official could com-
mand any woman of the humble class that he
wanted without fear of reproval from his superiors
has certainly been swept away.
I recently asked a young Pullman conductor
if he thought there had been a real revolution in
his country or if the disturbance were simply
the matter of "the outs wanting in." With the
quickness of thought typical even of the less
educated Mexican, he replied promptly that
there has been a real revolution, that has brought
about changes along at least these five lines :
\ I. Free elections. While there are still some
abuses, yet in a large number of cities and states
elections are held with absolute freedom to vote
for any candidate one pleased. Twenty of the
twenty-seven states now have civilian governors,
elected by the people.
2. Liberation of the peons. These have been
released from their slavery because of debt,
mainly by an increase in wages. Day laborers
both in the city and the country are getting three
or four times what they got before the Revolution.
3. Improved condition of the skilled laborer.
In the old days threatened strikes were immediate-
ly suppressed by the military. Workmen had
no way of demanding more pay or shorter hours.
A REAL REVOLUTION? 61
Now, however, many trade unions are being
organized and labor is allowed by means of
strikes and in other ways to demand better treat-
ment. This is explicitly provided for in the Con-
stitution of 1917. Higher wages, shorter hours,
accident insurance, improved sanitation, and other
advantages are being gradually secured, as the men
show their ability to stand together. The alliance
recently formed with the American Federation of
Labor is proving of great help to Mexican labor.
4. Reform in the Church. The priests used
to exert too much power in politics and controlled
too much property. The Revolution has been
directed against the temporal power of the
Church and its influence toward reaction, and in
certain places the Revolution has gone to the
extreme in its opposition. But the Church has
learned a necessary lesson and is now being
allowed to function freely in spiritual matters.
5. The use of a larger element in government
service. In the old days the Government was
confined to a few intellectuals. Now many men
from all walks of life are called to fill the offices.
Even many of the old Diaz regime, who have long
been expatriated, are now returning and some of
them are being used in the Government. ^j
In connection with this last point it is interesting
to note the composition of the last National
Congress, according to professions, which was as
62 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
follows: Ten lawyers, twelve doctors of medicine,
ten civil engineers, eighteen professors of public
instruction, ten newspaper writers, two historians,
seven railroad men, fifteen export office men,
fourteen members of the Army, three industrial-
ists, sixteen merchants, fourteen workingmen,
and nine agriculturists. The remainder are men
who are not specialists in any of the branches
mentioned, but are engaged in various activities
in banking, commerce, and industry, and as
members of university faculties.
In pointing out the facts that show there has
been a real social revolution in Mexico, no one, of
course, can fail to recognize the many abuses
practiced at the present time by Mexican officials,
the badly run-down condition of the country
after these years of terrible civil war, the need of
money for rehabilitation of railroads and public
utilities and for education, and the many problems
on every hand that yet remain to be solved.
The principal abuses which the Government
must clear up before it can expect the full con-
fidence of the outside world are: first, the over-
riding of civilian rights by the Army; second,
graft; and third, banditry.
The recent improvement in regard to each of
these abuses gives ground for hope that they will
gradually disappear. Great gains have been made
A REAL REVOLUTION? 63
in overcoming the first and the last, but graft is
still very widespread.
A real social revolution, which, while it over-
turns in the present, is laying deep foundations
for the future, must have in it a large element of
youth. The outstanding thing about the present
revolution in Mexico is the fact that it is carried
on by young men. President Diaz was surrounded
by men mostly over sixty. He once expressed
great surprise that such a young man as a certain
gentleman who was forty-five could think of
becoming Governor of his state. The opposite is
true of Carranza. Seldom do you find an official
who is not a young man, and most of them are
very young.
Boys whom one knew in school only a few years
ago one now finds as councilmen, mayors, secre-
taries, governors of states, and even ministers to
foreign countries. They are often, very often,
without experience. Still, they are forward-
looking fellows, and a majority are free from the
old hardened politician's scheming and graft.
Very noticeably are they coming to the front in
the field of education.
Many of them have studied either in American
schools in Mexico or in the United States. The
Director of the National Preparatory School is a
young man of twenty-eight, a graduate of Wash-
ington and Jefferson College. The principal
64 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
advisor to the National Government in educational
affairs is a young man who has spent eight years
in Columbia University, last year married . a
New York girl, and is now giving his services to
the Government. If there were time I could run
through the list of educational authorities in
Mexico, from Monterrey on down through the
different states, and show that these leaders are
largely young men who understand our educational
system and who know the real heart of the Amer-
ican people.
Let us look at a few of these young fellows.
Not long ago I went into the central office of the
primary schools of Mexico City. The councilman
who, as Secretary of the Municipal Committee
on Education, was the head of this office was a
young fellow that looked to be hardly out of his
teens. He showed me through the various offices
and explained the work, including an up-to-date
card system he had put in to show various facts
about each of the 2,000 teachers under him-
the time work was begun, amount of salary, grade
of work done, and other details. When I saw how
the teachers listened to his judgment and how the
office force respected him, I looked again for some
appearance of age. No, he is just twenty-four
years old. But, with Latin brilliancy and early
maturity, he is giving the enthusiasm of his youth
to this complicated work. By the records he shows
A REAL REVOLUTION? 65
that there are now more students in the primary
schools in Mexico City than there were in the
days of Diaz. He then turns to tell me of his
struggle against the Pan-Latin campaign of
Manuel Ugarte, who came to Mexico when this
young man was president of the Mexican Student
Association, to appeal to the students to join with
all other Latin-American students in a league
against the influence of the United States. The
struggle was a memorable one, ending in the
triumph of Pan-American sentiment over Pan-
Latinism among the Mexican students. The
greatest ambition of this young man now is to go
to the United States for several years' study.
There is nothing that we could do that would be
more helpful in Mexico's development and in the
promotion of friendship between the two countries
than to create scholarships to bring such students
to the United States.
The present Governor of the State of Coahuila
is one of the most interesting of the group of
young men who are now causing their influence
to be felt in Mexico. One can hardly believe that
such a young man as Sr. Mireles could be entrusted
with the governorship of a state and yet, as you
look into his official work, you are convinced that
he is fully capable of carrying the job. His great
passion is education. Coahuila has for many
years occupied a first place among the states in
66 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
education. But Governor Mireles now claims
that there are 100 per cent more teachers and
100 per cent more money being spent on public
schools this year than there were in the year 1910-
the last of the Diaz regime.
While Carranza was Governor, the state voted
a subsidy to several private American schools.
Governor Mireles a few days ago called the
American Directress of the Colegio Ingles to his
office and told her that it was his desire to restore
again the subsidy of 100 pesos a month to her
school. He also assured her that, if she would
begin the erection of the proposed new building
for the school, he would see that all the materials
brought from the United States entered free of
duty and would also help her in purchasing at a
reduced rate the materials bought in Mexico.
One is reminded here of another well-known
educator who began his work in Saltillo, the
capital city of Coahuila. Some twenty-five years
ago Governor Cardenas of that state decided that
it was time that they had a public school system.
He selected about fifteen young people to go to
the Normal School at Bridgewater, Massachusetts,
and prepare themselves for leading in the new
movement. There was a young Methodist min-
ister who had a private school that had attracted
the attention of the Governor. The latter,
therefore, made a proposal to the director of this
A REAL REVOLUTION? 67
school that he should chaperon the party of young
people that was going to Bridgewater, adding that,
if he cared to take any of the courses himself,
he would be at liberty to do so. The young
parson did take the courses along with the other
students and also took all of the honors. When
he returned, therefore, he was appointed director
of the new normal school and superintendent of
the public school system of the state. He began
with practically nothing but his title, but he
ended by building up for his state the best public
school system in Mexico and erecting in the city
of Saltillo the most modern normal school in the
Republic. Toward the latter part of the Diaz
regime he was suspected of being too liberal.
A commission from the President waited upon
him and asked for a declaration of loyalty. He
told them that if he could change his political
convictions as easily as he could his coat, he would
be willing to give such a declaration as the one
asked for, but that that would be impossible.
He was, therefore, forced to leave the country
and spent several years in post-graduate work and
teaching at Vanderbilt University. Three years
ago he returned on the invitation of President
Carranza as the Director of Secondary Education
for the Federal District, which amounts practically
to being the minister of education. Recently
he has been appointed Governor of the State of
68 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Tamaulipas, because his ability and his sympa-
thetic understanding of American life were especially
needed in working out some difficult problems
in connection with the American oil interests in
that state.
Another one of these young men with the
modern viewpoint is the Governor of Zacatecas.
When I called on him to express my hope of
having the United States help Mexico in her
educational problem, he said that I had arrived
at a time oportunisimo.
"Mexico, as all the rest of the world, is looking
today to your great President, Mr. Wilson, who is
unquestionably the leading citizen of the world,
because we all have confidence in him. Closer
relations must surely come between our country
and yours, as they have already come between all
the rest of Latin-America and the United States.
A cartoon in one of our papers the other day may
have exaggerated in a humorous way the Presi-
dent's popularity, but it has a great deal of truth
in it. The cartoon represented the sun as tipping
his hat to President Wilson and asking if the
President would still allow him to keep his central
place in the solar system. Here are some leaflets
containing the speeches of President Wilson, for
which I sent to your Committee on Public Infor-
mation in Washington. Look here what he says
about Russia. A man who can see the question in
that large way can certainly be trusted by all the
nations who have great problems of reconstruction
before them."
A REAL REVOLUTION? 69
When asked about his friendship for the
working people, the Governor smiled appreciative-
ly and explained, with the refreshing enthusiasm
of one who has given himself to a great cause,
what he has been doing to give the laboring
classes an opportunity to own land in his state.
He said :
"Before the Revolution, this state was owned by
a few great landlords, an average estate being from
twenty-five to fifty thousand hectares (a nectar
is about two and a half acres). There was one
proprietor who has an hacienda of 600,000 hec-
tares. These hacendados live in Mexico City or in
Paris, employing overseers, with instructions to
raise simply enough to give the owner what he
needs for his income. No attempt is made to use
modern machinery, to improve the property, or to
intensify cultivation. I have known many peons
who received for their daily wage five quarts of
corn that is, the feed for a horse. During my
military life, in dealing with the Indians all the
way from Sonora to Yucatan, I found that their
one desire was for land. They could see no
reason whatever why these proprietors should
have all the benefits and they themselves should
work from early morn till late at night for nothing
but a few tortillas and frijoles. I, therefore, re-
solved that, if I ever got an opportunity to help
in alleviating their situation, I would do it. When
I became a candidate for the governorship I put
up a simple platform, concerned principally with
agrarian laws. When I was elected I said to my-
70 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
self, 'Now we Mexicans generally forget all about
what we have said we would do when we come to
take office; so the one business of my official life
shall be to carry out my platform and to see that
the laws are obeyed'. That is a very simple plan
and my only ambition is simply to do that
thing.
As you know, the question of the distribution of
lands, which the Constitutionalists have always
advocated, is left for the several states to work
out. Our law here is different from that of any
other state. In outline it is as follows: Any labor-
ing man, native or foreign, has a right to buy from
three to two hundred hectares of land according
to whether it is very rich for intensive cultivation,
or whether it is mountain land, good simply for
grazing as this is about the amount of land that is
necessary to maintain a family. When the man
has selected the land, he can either buy it from the
proprietor or, if the proprietor refuses to sell it, the
Government will sell it to him at the price that the
proprietor has estimated the land to be worth
before the appraiser of taxes. If the Government
is forced to make the sale, it guarantees the pay-
ment to the owner, the purchaser paying so much
through a term of years until the land is paid for.
At first the large landowners fought me with every
possible weapon, and sometimes even the central
government was unfavorable. The question of
the constitutionality of our law has been carried
all through the lower courts, which have constantly
sustained it, and it is now before the supreme
court of Mexico, where there is little question that
it will be decided in our favor.
A REAL REVOLUTION? 71
The landowners have now come to the point
where they will sell any land that a poor man
wishes to buy. They see that it is a good deal
better for them to sell at a fair price than to have
the Government force the sale at the price on
which they have been paying taxes, which, of
course, is practically nothing compared to the real
value. Now all we have to do is to write to these
proprietors in Mexico City, proposing the sale, and
we get back word by telegram authorizing the sale.
During the year we have placed about 2,000 families
on 'plots of land'.
Military conditions in the state have changed
entirely. This land distribution has created such a
good feeling among the common people that, in
spite of having hardly any federal troops to keep
order, the common people themselves in the vari-
ous towns organize their own militia for protec-
tion."
I have given this interview rather in detail
because it touches one of the greatest problems
in Mexico, one which has been at the very heart
of all of the revolutionary disturbances. A little
comparison with present conditions in Russia
and in other parts of the world will indicate that
the revolution begun by Madero in 1911 which
can hardly yet be said to have ceased entirely
anticipated the world revolution against the
domination of property interests, which is working
out in its worst forms in the Bolsheviki movement
of Russia. The Mexican has studied little Social-
72 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
ism as it has been studied in Europe. He knows
little of the theories of Karl Marx, and it is
fortunate that the leadership of this revolution
has not been of the extreme type which would
lead Mexico into the terrible conditions in which
Russia finds herself today. It might be pushing
the parallel too far to say that if Villa had succeed-
ed instead of Carranza, we would have a Bolshe-
vist reign in Mexico now just as in Russia. There
are, however, several points in common.
I have intimated before, and any one who has
known Mexico for years can not help but be
impressed by the fact, that the power today is
in the hands of an entirely different class of people
from that of Diaz's time. His party were called
Cientificos, "Scientists", and they gloried in their
intellectual ability. When they fell, Demos
took the saddle, and there were times when a
man known to be intellectual was for that very
reason under suspicion. Practically all of the
intellectuals left the country, and the Government
was left largely in the hands of the rising young
middle class. Of course it is very clear that if
Mexico is to succeed in developing a democracy,
the best of both of these classes must be used.
One of the best indications that Mexico is
returning to the normal, where both the intel-
lectuals and the rising young generation forming a
middle class are to take part in the direction of
A REAL REVOLUTION? 73
the country, was given me by a large landowner.
He was returning to Mexico City after inspecting
some of his large estates in the north. After giving
me a most interesting account of how he had
passed the several years of revolution, first in
Paris and afterward in New York, he told me
that he is now living, with no molestation what-
ever, in Mexico City, and that the Government is
offering guarantees to many of the intellectuals
who have heretofore been political refugees.
"Every day I meet in the streets," he said, "old
friends of mine who belonged to the former
regime, and all report that they are treated well.
Sometimes, when some lesser official attempts to
persecute them, they appeal to President Car-
ranza and he arranges matters for them. I have
a young nephew, who has one of the most brilliant
minds Mexico has ever produced, who has been
living in exile in Arizona for several years, earning
scarcely enough to keep his family together. I
have written him, saying that he should return
and that he would find no persecution whatever.
His reply is that from all he can read in the
papers in the United States, conditions are as
bad as ever in Mexico, and he can not feel that it
would be safe for him to return. He could
have plenty and to spare here in Mexico and
enjoy his intellectual pursuits to the fullest ex-
tent."
74 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
The struggle of these young men against the
old order in education is well illustrated by the
following summary of arguments given in a
recent pamphlet, 2 in which the young men now in
charge of the National Preparatory School are
arguing against a threatened return of the school
to the old order:
The National Preparatory School was estab-
lished in Mexico City on two false principles,
one administrative and the other pedagogical, to
wit: first, that the preparatory school ought to
have for its object the preparation of the scholar
to enter a professional school; second, that the
course of study ought to proceed from the abso-
lutely abstract (mathematics) to the absolutely
concrete (zoology). The people were left with-
out a secondary school of general culture, as
not all can follow a profession; and there was
adopted a plan of studies making the sciences and
logic the arbiter, forgetting absolutely psychology.
These two false principles explain the evident
failure of the National Preparatory School in
Mexico.
Statistics show that of each one hundred pupils
in the school eighty failed in their studies, and of
the other twenty probably one has distinguished
himself in the professions. The rest have become
members of the great army, every year growing
2 La Escuela Preparatoria, Mexico, 1917.
A REAL REVOLUTION? 75
larger, of the proletariat of the frock coat. It is
evident that a school that gives to society only
one really useful man from every one hundred of
its pupils, or, in order not to sin, let us say gives to
it twenty, is a failure from every point of view.
On the other hand, what has been the social
attitude of this small group of graduates? They
have formed the intellectual and professional
classes, and they are a group absolutely distinct
and therefore easily observed. In the war of the
liberals against the conservatives, nearly all the
intellectual class was on the side of Juarez.
In the revolution against Diaz, and in the more
just one against Huerta, where were the intel-
lectuals? It is well known that generally they
were on the side of Diaz and on the . side of
Huerta.
In the United States there are 13,000 secondary
schools, approximately one for each 7,000 of the
population. In Mexico, the old system advocated
only one preparatory school, and, in fact, up until a
short time ago there was only one for all the
Federal District, which has about 700,000 inhab-
itants. It is very clear then that, while the United
States has formed the preparatory school for the
people, Mexico has followed another way.
The pamphlet just referred to contains a
valuable critical study of the whole subject of
secondary education in Mexico.
76 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
On a visit to the National Preparatory School,
of which this criticism is made, I heard an address
by the young Governor of Qoahuila, which is so
indicative of the way the present educational
leadership considers the problem, that I venture
the following summary:
"When I entered the director's room this
morning, I saw upon the walls the picture of that
great educator, Gabino Barreda, the founder of
our normal school and undoubtedly the man who
influenced, more than any other, our Mexican
education. Although born outside of the country,
he very soon drank deeply of our national spirit.
He was a positivist and with his strong doctrinal-
ism broke down the old theological ideas in our
educational system. This positivism at that time
served a great purpose in that it freed us from the
old, narrow, clerical bondage, but as it developed
and came more and more to pervade our education,
its influence became detrimental. It produced an
intellectual class whose members believed that
there was no such thing as idealism. They thought
they could measure everything by a rule and solve
all problems by mathematics. When this intel-
lectual class was told of the aspirations of the
common people, of the democratic ideals that were
beginning to develop among the common people, of
the national aspirations of the lower classes, they
laughed at such suggestions. To them there was
no such thing as the soul. Truth was a matter of
diagram, of mathematics, of scientific demonstra-
tion. This is the explanation of the fact that the
A REAL REVOLUTION? 77
intellectuals of Mexico never took any part in the
Revolution. It was impossible for them to under-
stand the longing of the common people, and until
the very day that these people, by their united
efforts in every part of the nation, became vic-
torious, the intellectuals were entirely unaware of
the people's strength. It is one of the most
curious phenomena of history that a great revolu-
tion could take place among a people and the
intellectuals be untouched by it. Herein is a great
lesson for those of us who are leaders in this new
life.
If we are to have a new nation, education must
make it. But if we are not to fail like our prede-
cessors, we must realize the absolute necessity of
educating the soul. If we leave out the spiritual
and the idealistic we may expect to fail, just as
our predecessors have failed. Far more important
than teaching what the books say, than teaching
certain theories of philosophy and science, is the
work of developing the soul of young people in
order that they may really love and serve their
country. We young men who are leaders in the
Revolution have been charged with being idealists,
Utopians, with nothing practical in our program.
We indeed are idealists. We have made many
mistakes. We have failed often to be practical,
and yet I say to you that we are not ashamed of
being young or of being idealistic. Mistakes we
shall make in the future, but we will never make
the fundamental mistake our predecessors made
in thinking that all is materialistic, that the people
have no soul, that they are incapable of enthu-
siasm and of fighting for an ideal.
78 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
If I am permitted to mention one of the great
dangers in education which we must fight abso-
lutely until it is conquered, it is the matter of
having education too closely connected with
politics. The teacher must be absolutely as-
sured of his position as long as life lasts. He
must not be subject to the caprices of any political
office-holder. In other words, the teacher must
be so situated that he can give himself absolutely
to his work as a life task, being assured that he is
appreciated enough to be continued through life,
with a sufficient salary to give him the ordinary
comforts. This condition is not easy to bring
about, especially in a young, turbulent democracy
like ours. But to this end we must strive, and to
this end I am willing to give my whole life. As
different circles of revolutionists have arisen in all
parts of the country, they have placed upon their
banners a thousand different mottoes of reform.
But every one of the thousand is comprehended
in the great problem of education. If we solve this
problem, those thousand ideals will be realized."
This struggle of the young educational leaders
for the thorough reforming of the basic principles
of education is typical of their program for all
departments of life, and illustrates, perhaps as
well as anything could do, the fundamental
character of the revolution we have been dis-
cussing.
We conclude then that the present trouble in
Mexico is not simply the matter of personal
ambitions of military leaders, but that it is a real
A REAL REVOLUTION? 79
social revolution. The Mexicans, who have been
an exploited people for four centuries, have
finally risen against conditions which long ago
disappeared in most of the civilized world. The
first part of the Revolution, the destruction of the
old, has about been concluded, and Mexico now
faces the more difficult part, that of reconstruc-
tion. Encouraging progress has been made.
The forward-looking young men who are engaged
in rebuilding the nation along modern lines,
although often mistaken in judgment, are working
with enthusiasm and devotion to solve Mexico's
problems. The country can never return to the
old order, when a strong man will enforce peace
and economic activity at the price of moral
stagnation and social and political reaction. If
the present reform government should be over-
thrown, it would only mean the continuing of the
struggle until another progressive government,
strong enough to stand, should be set up. In the
difficult period of reconstruction, we shall need to
have patience with a weak people and help them
to speed up their process of nation building.
CHAPTER III
WHAT KIND OF A MAN
IS CARRANZA?
My acquaintance with Sefior Carranza began
in 1911, when he came to the international bound-
ary line to meet Don Francisco Madero, who was
making his triumphal entry into Mexico after
his revolution had been won. When I saw these
two men embrace, I could not help wishing that
the big, stalwart, well-poised man of logic, instead
of the little, excitable man of vision, were going
to the capital to direct the affairs of the nation.
At this time he visited the People's Institute at
Piedras Negras, of which I was director. On
being told by the municipal president that all the
leading men in the new democratic life of the
district had been trained in the debating club, the
lecture courses, or the night classes of the Institute,
he became interested in the multiplying of such
institutions, and had developed definite plans
for this when he was suddenly stopped by the
Huerta coup d'etat.
Since our common interest in this kind of
education led to our friendship, which was not in
any sense political, I feel that I knew the real
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 81
Carranza, especially during the time he was work-
ing out the problems of the governorship of Coahuila.
I never saw a man enter into the hard task of
bettering labor conditions, equalizing taxation,
and extending the educational work of his state
with more enthusiasm and apparently with a
greater desire to serve his people. Several times
he mentioned to me that he had been called to
Mexico City by the Madero Government, but
he said that his greatest ambition was to work out
the problems of his own state, and that only the
direst necessity would cause him to abandon his
work as Governor for any other position. I
would say that the greatest disappointment of
his life came when he was compelled to abandon
these administrative reforms to take up the
duties of a soldier.
He has a very delightful family, consisting of a
wife and two daughters. While he was in Piedras
Negras, his wife and daughters were with him for
a while and, living across the street from each
other, our families visited back and forth, and
learned to know one another very well. Senora
Carranza and the two young lady daughters were
quiet, unpretentious people, of what we would
call the upper middle class. When the fighting
got so bad that the General had to put himself at
the head of his troops, and it was no longer safe
for his family to stay in Mexico, it was our sad
82 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
privilege to take them in our carriage across the
international bridge into Texas. In its center,
where the monument marks the boundary be-
tween the two nations, the husband and father
bade good-by to his loved ones. It was one of
the most affecting scenes, though with little out-
ward show of emotion, that I ever witnessed, and
gave me a new respect for the man.
In all these intimate relationships I never saw
anything in Senor Carranza that led me to
believe that he was not sincere in his professions
of love for his people. It happened that a hundred
or more of the young men whom I taught in
Mexico entered the Constitutionalist Army, which
is almost entirely an organization of young men.
From them I have always heard the highest
praise of the personality of Senor Carranza.
I do not hold a brief for his political opinions nor
justify the many abuses committed by his follow-
ers, which, as one reads history, are found to be
very similar to what has happened in all other
nations in periods of violent political eruption,
but I do believe firmly in the purity of his motives.
Venustiano Carranza was born fifty-nine years
ago in the city of Cuatro Cienegas. His father was
a colonel under Juarez. Carranza began to study
law, but was seized with a youthful desire for life
in the open, and gave himself to agriculture and
herding on his father's estate. By this means and
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 83
by a visit to an oculist in the United States, he
conquered an infirmity which threatened to limit
his whole life. In 1887, he was elected Municipal
President of Cuatro Ci6negas. The success of his
agricultural efforts and his publication of a few
pamphlets on agriculture and herding, decided
his fellow-citizens to elect him Municipal President
at a time when that office was filled by the powers
in Mexico City. The Governor of the state asked
him to give a report which would show how his
city was progressing. Carranza refused to give
any report that did not show the economic reforms
that were necessary. So he resigned his office.
When Cardenas became the popular candidate
for Governor of Coahuila, and the central govern-
ment began by despotic means to suppress his
candidacy, Carranza and several other Liberals
took up arms to obtain the right to elect their own
governor. On hearing that Diaz considered his
action simply that of a bandit, Carranza went
alone to Mexico City to discuss the matter with
Diaz. The result of the interview was that
Diaz agreed to withdraw his candidate and
Cardenas became Governor. Carranza himself
was later elected a member of the State Legis-
lature, and following that a member of the Federal
Senate. In 1908 he was designated by Congress
to substitute for the Governor of his state for a few
months. He founded a number of hospitals and
84 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
schools, and prosecuted maladministration to
such an extent that he was asked to run for the
governorship the next term. He was requested
by Diaz to withdraw his candidacy, but he
refused.
It was this campaign of Carranza's which first
enlisted Francisco I. Madero in active politics.
Madero made speeches for Carranza and contri-
buted to his expenses, only to see Carranza meet
the fate of all opposition candidates under the
Diaz system he was counted out. The young,
idealistic Madero, seeing how the system operated,
plunged then heart and head into the campaign for
electoral reform, which led to the revolution
against Diaz. Madero said, just after the success
of his revolution, that to the example of Carranza,
and to his ideals in politics, he owed the inspiration
that led him into taking up the sword against
Diaz.
Madero once elevated to the presidency by
means of free election, his administration was
quickly beset by intrigue and treachery on the
part of the group who pretended to be his friends.
These men, who protested an ardent and patriotic
desire to forget the past and to cooperate in
upholding the new government and its proposed
reforms, seemed to do so only to obscure their
purpose of discrediting the latter and to cloak
their treasonable intent to overthrow the con-
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 85
stitutional chief magistrate. The conspiracy
assumed such proportions that Madero, believing
as he did in those who pledged their honor to his
support, was rendered helpless for the time being
in carrying out the program of the revolution.
At this moment the conspirators, assisted by a
large group of corrupt officers of the Army,
struck the blow known as the insurrection of the
Ciudadela, which offered to General Victoriano
Huerta, commanding general of the government
forces, the opportunity treacherously to assume
the dictatorship of Mexico. The President and
Vice- President were brutally put to death, and a
reign of terror inaugurated that horrified the
world. Such were the incidents that induced the
Constitutionalist movement of today, a movement
which is simply a continuation of the revolution
of 1910.
While certain governors of states and a majority
of the military commanders accepted Huerta in
the role that he assumed, Venustiano Carranza,
who in the meantime had been elected Gov-
ernor of the State of Coahuila, refused to be
cowed. He boldly declared himself in oppo-
sition to the dictator and his so-called govern-
ment, and, with his state militia, commenced
immediate operations for armed resistance. He
announced that he regarded his action as a struggle
to the death. Madero had failed, Carranza
86 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
believed, because of compromise with the reaction-
aries. He would stake all on the struggle, as the
following words, uttered at that time, show:
"I am the only leader recognized as supreme by
all the chiefs of the revolution. What we fight
for is the Constitution of our country and the
development of our people. Huerta outraged the
Constitution when he overthrew and murdered
President Madero. He continues to outrage it
by attempting to govern despotically as Diaz did,
and refusing to administer fairly the laws, which
are equal for all. This revolution can not cease
until either we, the Constitutionalists, triumph,
or until Huerta triumphs completely over us.
Even in the latter case it would only cease for
the moment, for the revolution has its roots in
social causes."
To the question, "What kind of a man is
Carranza?" one might answer, offhand, that he
is very much the same kind of a man that Presi-
dent Wilson is. At least they are strikingly alike
in certain respects. Take for instance, the matter
of set ideas or, to use a less complimentary term
of opponents stubbornness. Carranza has never
varied in his program since the very first day that
he tacked his little thesis up on the door of the
Custom House in Piedras Negras, when he
began the revolution against Huerta. Having
read what he said in 1913, I realized when I saw
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 87
him last, six years later, in the National Palace,
that he had the same ideas still and the same
determination to carry them out. How many
times during the intervening years have we
supposed that Carranza was "done for!" It was
triumphantly alleged that Huerta had eliminated
him. When Villa turned against him, it was
declared impossible for Carranza to continue.
By others he was pushed on out of the country
until he finally found himself in Vera Cruz
only one more step would plunge him into the
deep blue sea! But Carranza is today occupying
the National Palace and people everywhere-
even those who two years ago assured me of the
impossibility of his holding out are now saying
that there appears to be no one of sufficient
strength to threaten his power. Obregon told a
friend that when he first met Carranza he was
very much put out by the First Chief's insistence
on reading every little word of every little dis-
patch or document that he was to sign. He was so
deliberate and so slow that it seemed he would
never get anywhere. "But," said Obregon, "as
I came to know him more intimately I began to
regard him as a machine, something like a steam
roller, which, as it moved over the ground, did
not neglect the smallest particle, but left each
detail packed down in the right place, as it moved
slowly but surely toward the accomplishment of
88 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
its object." Carranza's stubbornness, or his
insistence on keeping to the same program,
even if the whole world were against him, could
hardly be called a Latin-American characteristic.
It is the same, however, that was responsible for
the final triumph of Juarez, and is probably an
Indian inheritance.
Reverses never seemed to suggest anything to
Carranza but fighting on to the bitter end.
Several months after he had established his
headquarters at Piedras Negras at the beginning
of the Revolution, he wished to join the growing
armed forces in Sonora. He intended to go through
the United States by rail, but learned that if he
did so he would be arrested for violating the
neutrality laws. He decided to make the trip
by horseback and rode for sixty days through the
worst kind of country, covering about 3,000
kilometers. It was reported everywhere that he
was killed, as no word was received from him
throughout the trip. But his stubbornness and
his iron constitution scored again.
Two years later, after incessant struggle, he
succeeded in approaching Mexico and laying
siege with his army. The Minister of Brazil,
representing the various diplomats of the capital,
sought an interview with him, which was granted
on the condition that the only topic discussed
should be the surrender of Mexico City and the
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 89
dissolution of Huerta's army. During the inter-
view the Brazilian diplomat attempted to deflect
the conversation to other issues. He offered
General Carranza recognition by the governments
of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the United States,
if, when the city was surrendered, Carranza
would guarantee the freedom of all of the inhab-
itants of all political creeds and would incorporate
in his army the officers of Huerta's army. Car-
ranza replied that he had agreed to the interview
on the condition that no other subject but the
surrender of Mexico City should be discussed.
The Minister countered with the threat that he
would see then that Carranza was not recognized
by any of the governments he represented. The
General rose from his chair, brought his fist down
on the table, and told the Minister that he might
do whatever he wished and that the interview
was concluded. It was only a few days later that
Carranza entered Mexico in triumph. The same
refusal to yield, often when the odds were entirely
against him, has been repeatedly shown.
In the first part of the Revolution, Don Venus-
tiano counted greatly on the help of his brother,
Don Jesus. While the latter was in Tehuantepec
inspecting troops, he was betrayed into the
hands of the enemy. A telegram was sent im-
mediately to the First Chief, giving him a choice
between the shooting of his brother and the other
90 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
prisoners and entering into a compact with the
reactionary party. Carranza immediately an-
swered that principle was greater than life, even
the life of those dearest to him, and refused to
compromise. The enemy coldly calculated how
they might bring the greatest pressure to bear.
The shooting of each prisoner was telegraphed to
Carranza. First came the members of the personal
staff of Don Jesus, afterward some of his family,
and finally the old General himself. Days after-
ward loyal troops found the remains in the
mountains, and took them to Vera Cruz, the
headquarters of the First Chief, for burial.
As a Mexican writer says: "This heroic city
received them with consternation and with full
admiration for an immortal one, the glory of a
race which had inspired Cuahtemoc to lie on
his bed of torment for its admiration during five
centuries of time. Don Venustiano Carranza
received the remains and conducted them to the
cemetery. His face was the face cut out of granite
by the hand of the Aztec. Perhaps only in his
eyes was reflected the profound suffering of his
soul, as he followed silently on foot the undecor-
ated casket." 1
The international policy of the United States
in relation to the Latin-American countries is
1 Antonio Manero in Mexico y la Solidaridad Mexicana, from
which other material in this chapter has also been drawn.
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 91
generally one which desires order and peace above
all else. On August 13, 1915, in union with six
other American powers, this Government sent
an invitation to all the generals commanding the
different revolutionary forces in Mexico to meet
in conference, in order to come to a decision that
would pacify the disturbed Republic. All of them
accepted the invitation but Carranza. The
following extract from the reply of his Minister
will intimate the why of his "stubbornness" as it
was called in this country and his intransigencia
as it was called in Mexico :
"He can not consent to a discussion of the
domestic affairs of the Republic by mediation or
on the initiative of any foreign government what-
ever. . . Mexico is now stirred by a genuine
revolution which aims at doing away with the last
vestiges of the colonial times, as well as with all
the errors and excesses of past administrations, and
to satisfy the noble yearnings of the Mexican
people for well-being and improvement. . .
Started by Don Francisco I. Madero, the revolu-
tion of 1910 could not be carried out because of the
compromise effected at Ciudad Juarez with the old
regime. The treaties there concluded allowed the
enemies of the people to stand and were one of the
main causes of the tragic events of February, 1913,
which are surely known to Your Excellencies and
in the contriving of which no small part was taken
by several foreign ministers accredited to the
Government of Mexico. . . I have no doubt
that Your Excellencies will draw from the fore-
92 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
going statement the intimate conviction that by
entering into agreements with the vanquished
faction, the First Chief would relinquish not only
the victory won at the cost of so many sacrifices
but also the First Chiefship of the Constitutionalist
Army and the executive power of the nation and
thereby foil the faith and confidence reposed in
him by the Mexican Army and people. Further-
more, Your Excellencies must not forget that the
yearning of this people for freedom and democracy
is entirely legitimate and that nobody has a right
to prevent their enjoying the fruit of their trying
struggles in the not distant future." 2
On another occasion, when many were deserting
his standards and everything looked discouraging,
he said to his followers : "For serving the country
there is never a surplus of individuals, nor is
anyone ever missed who leaves its service."
Carranza's critics say that he selects his advisers
not because of their intrinsic worth but because
of their willingness and ability to do the will of
their chief. It is said that a few nights after
Carranza had decided to lead the revolution in
opposition to Huerta, several friends gathered in a
room in the Hotel Coahuila in Saltillo to talk over
plans for the coming campaign. One of the men
said to the Governor: "It seems to me that now
in the beginning of this important business is the
time for you to surround yourself with some wise,
2 World Peace Foundation "The New Pan-Americanism."
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 93
trusted advisers." The reply of Governor Car-
ranza is reported to have been, "I am my own
adviser." As I write today there is in the Mexican
Cabinet no Secretary of Foreign Relations, no
Secretary of the Treasury, no Secretary of War.
These portfolios are all handled by sub-secretaries,
young men who have been with Carranza since
the beginning of the Revolution and in whom he
has implicit confidence that they will do without
question what he tells them.
There are two kinds of leadership. One is the
kind that sees a vision and places the responsibility
of carrying out that vision upon carefully selected
men, who are made to feel the responsibilities of
the great tasks before them. The other is the
kind that assumes openly and without reserve
the responsibility for carrying forward the task
and selects lieutenants, whose greatest recom-
mendation is the fact that they will be absolutely
true to the leader and the cause that he represents.
Whether or not the latter is the better type, it is
preeminently the type represented by President
Carranza.
Another characteristic of the President is his
dignity and reserve. He prefers to sit behind
closed doors and operate by the power of his
logic and the force of his ideas rather than to go
out before a crowd and hear their cries of Viva el
Presidente! I remember the old days when he
94 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
was running for the governorship of Coahuila. His
campaign was the first one ever conducted in that
state by an open appeal to the public in general.
He wished to inaugurate open campaigning
because he wanted the people to realize that
Mexico was coming into a new democratic life,
when the people themselves must judge be-
tween the candidates. However, Carranza himself
scarcely ever made a speech. He had three fiery
young orators two of them now governors of
states who accompanied him on his campaign.
When he got to a city these orators answered the
addresses of welcome, made speeches before all
kinds of gatherings, and used all the tricks of
campaigns learned from the United States, while
Senor Carranza would sit quietly by and look
pleased. Most of his time in each of the towns
was given to , conferences with individuals of
importance in the community. So, today, he
very seldom makes an address or publishes a
statement.
Another outstanding characteristic of the Presi-
dent is his nationalism. This is shown first in his
profound belief in the Mexican people and their
ability to govern themselves. The type of
nationalism incarnate in Carranza is that which is
common to the leading patriots and political
ideologists of the Latin-American countries. This
important matter North Americans generally fail to
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 95
realize. It is patriotism of an intense and severe sort,
passionate for progress according to the national
norm, desirous of assimilating helpful elements
from abroad, but jealously guarding disintegration
of the indigenous culture by forces inimical to the
Latin conception of democracy. This idealistic
nationalism which breathes through the political
programs of the Hispanic-American republics has
been set forth in an illiminating manner by the
Argentine author, Ricardo Rojas. 3 Nationalism
he defines as patriotism with its territorial base,
the land, and its political base, the nation. Its
elements are solidarity and the consciousness of
tradition and of language. He regards as "active
factors of national dissolution," Jewish schools
where lessons are given in Hebrew, "colleges of
religious congregations, Protestant establishments,
and German and Italian educational institutions
which obey foreign governments." Discouragingly
he describes a growing "cosmopolitanism in men
and ideas, the dissolution of the old moral nucleii,
indifference concerning public business, and in-
creasing forgetfulness of traditions, the popular
corruption of language, ignorance of our own
territory, lack of national solidarity, anxiety for
riches without scruple, the worship of the most
ignoble hierarchies, the disdain of higher accom-
plishments, the lack of passion in struggle, the
'Rojas: "La Restauracion Nacionalista."
96 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
lowering of suffrage, superstitious regard for
exotic names, and blasting individualism and
depreciation of ideals."
Analogous to Rojas's dream for the Argentine
is Carranza's confidence in the latent power of
Mexico to develop a large and vigorous life out of
indigenous roots and springs. Our own experience
with German permeation will help us to understand
this attitude.
The essential points of Carranza's doctrine are:
first, "No nation should intervene in any form or
for any reason in the affairs of another"; second,
"Nationals and aliens should be equal before the
sovereignty of the country in which they reside";
third, "Diplomacy should not serve to protect
private interests."
The principle of emancipation from foreign
coercion, exploitation, and domination, and the
right of self-determination and self-direction have
been affirmed in no less clear and emphatic terms
by the President of the United States. Speaking of
Latin-America as a whole, Mr. Wilson said in his
Mobile address (quoted in New York Times) :
"What these states are going to see, therefore, is
an emancipation from the subordination, which
has been inevitable, to foreign enterprise, and an
assertion of the splendid character which, in spite
of these difficulties, they have again and again
been able to demonstrate. The dignity, the
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 97
courage, the self-possession, the self-respect of the
Latin- American states, their achievements in the
face of all these adverse circumstances, deserve
nothing but the admiration and applause of the
world. They have had harder bargains driven
with them in the matter of loans than any other
peoples of the world. Interest has been exacted
of them that was not exacted of anybody else,
because the risk was said to be greater; and thus
securities were taken that destroyed the risk an
admirable arrangement for those who were forcing
the terms! I rejoice in nothing so much as in the
prospect that they will now be emancipated from
these conditions, and we ought to be the first to
take part in assisting in that emancipation."
President Carranza believes that the Diaz
r6gime had given Mexico largely over to foreigners
and the Mexicans themselves had had little
opportunity to reap any benefits from the enor-
mous material riches of their country. From the
very first, he has felt that Mexico must be ruled
for the benefit of the Mexicans. This actually
seems strange to some foreigners. Many think
Carranza's first interest should be to please the
United States, that whenever any question comes
up for decision his first thought should be, "How
will this affect Americans?" We would understand
many of his actions a great deal better if we could
put ourselves in the place of the Mexican people.
Opponents of the present Mexican administra-
tion have not been slow to turn to their own
98 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
advantage the President's uncompromising adher-
ence to the principle of state integrity and cohesion,
as over against selfish individualism and non-
cooperative exploitation. This they have done
by distorting the Government's attitude toward
individual rights and enterprise. Senor Manero,
official interpreter of Senor Carranza to the Latin-
American countries, says:
"One of the most advertised pretexts in foreign
countries against the policies of Mr. Carranza has
been the lack of individual guarantees, which
always ought to be the inseparable norm in all
political mechanism or government. Mexican
citizens who have abandoned the country have
claimed this, and, in the same way, foreigners
formerly resident in Mexico who yet have certain
interests there have taken this pretext to provoke
for the Mexican Government difficulties of all
kinds to hinder its organization and consolidation.
There has been a special reason why this was
the theme most often appealed to by the reaction-
aries. Those who make relations difficult between
foreign governments and the Constitutionalist
Government have found their most powerful aid in
making difficult the interior political situation
as it is well known that the moral assistance of the
world's opinion in favor of or against a government
is an important factor, not only in its international
relations, but also in its interior development.
Reactionaries always played upon this theme be-
fore the White House, in order to create an atmos-
phere of suspicion in the American Government
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 99
toward Mexico, and the press everywhere has been
used as a powerful element to alarm foreign capi-
talists who have had interests in Mexico. The
reactionaries have never made distinctions between
legitimate properties of nationals and foreigners
and those which have been acquired by dispos-
session, by political influence, and by force.
It is impossible to believe that respect will be
paid to the colossal holdings of some fortunately
very few who have deprived the ancient Indian
owners of their legitimate possessions. . . It is
impossible to believe that respect will be shown for
monopolies founded in financial intrigues with
former secretaries of state. . . It is impossible to
believe, finally, that respect will be shown for the
personal safety of foreigners who, without any
right whatever, have mixed in the political ques-
tions of the country and have furnished money,
material, and moral influence for committing real
crimes, as was done in the battle of Mexico City
and in the assassination of Madero and Suarez.
But it is still more difficult to believe that the
life and liberty of honored foreigners who have
complied with their duties of neutrality and social
obligations will not be respected, and yet more
difficult to believe that their property, secured
by their hard work and legitimate rights guaran-
teed by the Mexican Constitution, will not be
respected. The manifesto directed to the nation
by Mr. Carranza, on the nth of June, 1915, in
Vera Cruz, at a time when, from a military point
of view, the reaction dominated the country, very
clearly explains this matter. It contained these
words: 'The Constitutionalist Government offers
ioo INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
to the foreign residents in Mexico the guarantees
to which they have a right, according to our laws,
and it will protect amply their lives, liberty, and
enjoyment of their legal rights and their property.
According to the indemnization for the harm that
the Revolution has caused, wherever such indem-
nization is just, the Government will assume the
responsibility of financial obligations which are
legitimate'." 4 j.
One of President Carranza's most recent utter-
ances, as the spokesman of his government, is
contained in an interview published in the San
Antonio Express:
"There has been much misunderstanding, or
ignorance, in regard to Mexico's foreign policy.
It has been represented that the new constitution
leads to an attack, tantamount to confiscation,
upon foreign-owned property in Mexico. Nothing
could be farther from the facts. The truth is that
foreign capital coming here under the present laws
and abiding by the present laws will find not only
an open door, but protection. Under the old con-
stitution foreign capital had more privileges than
had Mexican capital itself, a system manifestly
unfair and unjust. Under the new laws foreign
capital is welcomed and protected, but the Mexi-
can investor is also protected and given a fair
chance for competition and legitimate profit.
One of the great works of the Mexican Govern-
ment, hinging upon thorough reconstruction of the
country, is the breaking up of the old system of
4 Manero: Mexico y la Solidaridad Americana.
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 101
vast tracts of land which were owned or acquired
by a few individuals and upon which a state of
practical serfdom existed. This vicious system is
being done away with. The Government is
starting to buy or otherwise legally to acquire
these lands, in order to give them back to the peo-
ple at small cost with long-time payments. It is
bringing the latest scientific farming machinery
and implements into the country, and is demon-
strating to the farmer their use by what may be
called movable schools on the railroads. The
Government is helping the farmer to buy these.
With independence coming from his own land,
the farmer will put part of his profits back into the
soil, reaping richer harvests, and with his children
being taught at the schools we are to establish, the
Mexican home will be the basis for a better citizen-
ship. In the increasing number of elementary
schools is to be found tangible evidence of the
Government's progress in fostering public educa-
tion. The bill has just been signed for the reopen-
ing of the National Agricultural College. The
eagerness of the people to learn and their general
response are gratifying signs of their appreciation
of the true democracy which it is the pledge of my
administration to give my country.
Mexico is going rapidly ahead. It is at peace.
The reports spread abroad of unrest and of out-
rages committed on trains and passengers have
given the impression, helped by exaggerated state-
ments, that the country is generally disturbed.
Such is not the case. Two or three men blow up a
train, a hundred or two hundred men stop a
freight train in isolated places, but this does not
102 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
mean that it is general. These hold-ups or rob-
beries may be compared to what the United States
experienced for some years after your war of
secession and before the law authorities could
bring about complete order. The bandit gangs
were daring and many, holding up coaches and
railroad trains. While this was going on in the
southern and western parts of the United States, the
north and the rest of the country were peaceable and
progressing and flourishing. So it is with Mexico.
In those days the United States had more than
60,000,000 population and many more resources
at its command than has Mexico at the present
day. And the United States was better able to
cope with the train robbers than is Mexico, but the
train robber still exists. His gangs had to be de-
stroyed before the country was safe. We are
working on the same problem and making pro-
gress, but the difference is great, in that the United
States was not hampered by foreign interests
which gave aid and arms and ammunition to the
bandits, as in the case of Mexico."
That Mr. Carranza has been able to make his
nationalism a practical success so far as Mexico's
financial status is concerned can not be gainsaid.
During 1917-1918, all expenses of government
were paid from the federal revenues. The most
sweeping monetary reforms have followed a
scientific investigation of the methods and results
of taxation. As the correspondent of the New
York Tribune, writing from Mexico City, said: 5
B In the issue of March 12, 1919.
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 103
"Mexico has been trying to work out a financial
system adapted to present-day conditions. To
this end President Carranza appointed a Comision
de Reorganization Administrativa y Financier a,
which at once availed itself of the services of for-
eign economists. A preliminary survey of the
Mexican revenue problem, with suggestions for
the reconstruction of the system, was published
in July last by Dr. Henry Alfred E. Chandler,
Professor of Economics in Columbia University,
with a foreword by Professor Edwin R. A. Selig-
man, of the same institution. Professor Seligman
pointed out that 'a fundamental defect of the old
system was the multiplicity of taxes'. And he
asserted that 'just as the French Revolution swept
away at one blow the heterogeneous mass of the
complicated medieval taxes in order to replace
them by a small number of well selected imposts,
so the first task of the fiscal reformer in Mexico
must be to introduce simplicity in the tax system.
A few carefully chosen resources of revenue will be
preferable to a jumble of partial and ineffective
imposts'.
This statement, much amplified by Professor
Chandler, has been deeply pondered by Mexican
statesmen. Just the opposite of this principle was
applied in the Diaz government, when every little
pedler had to pay for the privilege of selling his hand-
ful of sweets or what-not, whereas the great landed
proprietors and big firms paid little or nothing."
To prevent waste of public funds and provide
a modern system of accounting, an expert from
New York was invited to bring to Mexico a
104 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
staff of accountants in order to install an audit
office. There has been strenuous opposition to
this procedure from the grafters, and I understand
that they have recently succeeded in ousting some of
the American experts. But the system still stands.
The federal income shows encouraging increase.
One of the most astonishing items is the receipts
from pulque, which were 140 pesos 6 a month in
1910, and in February of 1918 were 140,000 pesos.
During the Diaz regime this national drink traffic
was largely controlled by government favorites
and had paid practically no tax.
No interest on the national debt has been paid
for several years. That debt and the unpaid
interest on the same pending in the spring of 1919,
was about $265,000,000 (U. S. currency). To get
Mexico's total debt, the just claims of foreign inter-
ests on account of damage to property during the
Revolution would have to be added. No one knows
what these will be, but probably nothing like the
large sum held in the popular imagination. One
authority has estimated this damage at $100,000,-
ooo, with the total debt, including $50,000,000
for internal improvements, at $450,000,000. Thirty
dollars per capita is not a large national debt. 7
The increasing prosperity of Mexico may be
judged by the fact that the total receipts by the
A peso is worth about fifty cents United States currency.
7 Trowbridge, "Mexico Today and Tomorrow."
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 105
Government in 1918, as shown by a statement
issued by the Mexican Treasury on March 8, 1919,
were $149,141,378.65, the largest receipts of any
year in Diaz's administration being $105,203,000
(pesos). 8
President Carranza's confidence in the country's
solvency is so firm that there has been no disposi-
tion to repudiate any legitimate claim. It is
true that at the beginning of the Constitutionalist
Government it was resolved to repudiate all the
s The Financial Agent of the Mexican Government in New
York recently issued the following statement (New York Sun,
July 14, 1919):
THE PUBLIC DEBT
The external and internal debt of Mexico, estimated up to
the last day of the month of June, 1919, is, in the United States
currency, as follows:
Principal Interest
External Debt $143,472,125.68 $34,001,469.33
Internal Debt 69,397,775.00 17,914,672.62
$212,869,900.68. $51,916,141.95
Grand Total $264,786,042.63 U. S. currency
This amount of a little more than a quarter of a billion dollars
is distributed among a population of sixteen millions or therea-
bouts. At the close of the Civil War the United States, with a
population two and one-half times as great, had a total indebted-
ness of three billions of dollars. Canada, with a population of less
than one-half that of Mexico has a present indebtedness of two
billions of dollars, and is now increasing it in order to care for its
home-coming soldiers.
Mexico has always paid what she owed, and the longer her
creditors have waited for her to pay, the more costly it has been
to Mexico. It is estimated that the Government revenues for
the present year will yield one hundred million dollars United
States currency.
106 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
loans Huerta might have made abroad, but, to
quote President Carranza's recent message to
Congress :
"Nevertheless, the Constitutionalist Govern-
ment does not shirk the recognition of all legiti-
mate obligations contracted previous to the
Revolution, and consequently considers as out-
standing the debts covered by Huerta's adminis-
tration with bonds or funds acquired by means of
unlawful loans."
Carranza has insisted on his government's
paying its own way, and he has made no foreign
loans. This rigid economy has been at the
expense of efficiency in some of the most vital
parts of Mexico's life. It is particularly noticeable
in the conduct of the railroads and the schools, the
equipment of both being fearfully "run down at
the heel."
Carranza intimates that he will borrow only
sufficient funds to pay the nation's debts, and will
continue to cut the garment of national expendi-
ture according to. the cloth of actual income. To
the best friends of Mexico, who would like to see
the process of reconstruction hurried, this attitude
would seem as unfortunate as are some other
indications of the President's extreme nationalism.
It is all right to be economical, to keep out of the
grasp of creditors, but there are times when it is a
very bad business policy for either an individual
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 107
or a nation to go to an extreme in this. These
are days of "big business," and not all of it,
by any means, is bad business. It would seem
that the devoted teachers of Mexico should not
be made to wait weeks for back salaries; that the
opening of new institutions and the strengthening
of old ones should not be indefinitely postponed;
that railroad trains should not be left to limp along
on flat wheels and burnt-out boilers, and all kinds
of needed improvements which would help to
give employment to the idle should not be held up
until even a rich country like Mexico can recuper-
ate its full strength after eight years of civil war.
There are hopeful evidences that President Car-
ranza will shift back to a sensible nationalism on
this matter as he is beginning to do on others, and
the evidences are just as hopeful that American
financiers will meet him half way.
It is possible that a good deal of the President's
nationalistic policy, which has included an ugly
slap at foreign governments once in a while, has
been due to the fact that he knew it was good
politics with his own people. But one who visits
Mexico today is impressed by the fact that she
has begun to realize that she has been entirely
too nationalistic, too self-satisfied, too afraid of
foreign influences, and that her future depends
largely on her reaching out to the world and
bringing to Mexico the lessons of the progressive
io8 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
nations. The criticism of the keenest minds con-
cerning President Carranza is that he has been too
intensely nationalistic, especially in refusing to
accept the help which at various times the United
States has been ready to offer. The following is
the summary of an article appearing recently in
a Mexican paper:
"President Carranza left Mexico City yesterday
for the United States on a special train. He will
proceed directly to New York, where he will
board a warship of the United States, on which
he is to accompany President Wilson and many
other prominent delegates to the Peace Conference
in Paris. President Carranza will represent
Mexico at the conference and will suggest to the
delegates how the immense natural resources of
Mexico can be put at the disposal of the nations
in the great work of world reconstruction." Then
in small type the article continues: "This and
many other similar things could now be written
concerning the great opportunity that President
Carranza has had of making Mexico count in the
great work of bringing peace and prosperity to a
torn world, if he had only seen his opportunity, left
off his intense nationalism, and entered into an
alliance with the other great democratic nations
of the world."
The author of that article, who is a strong Con-
stitutionalist, says that President Carranza now
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 109
recognizes the need of modifying his program of
isolation and welcoming closer cooperation with
the United States.
This judgment is in line with that of the Presi-
dent's closest friends and with the outspoken
desire for friendship with the United States which
he expressed personally to the writer in an inter-
view had with him very recently.
One of the most evident expressions of Carran-
za's nationalism, and the one of his constitutional
reforms that is most widely discussed, is the oil
legislation which has thrown foreign capital into
such consternation. This is of a piece with Car-
ranza's fiscal policy in general, and is an attempt
to preserve Mexican tradition to found the new
order upon a basic principle of Mexico's economic
life, which was laid down at the very beginning
of the Spanish occupation. The Spanish law made
a distinction between surface rights and mineral
rights. It reserved to the Crown the exclusive
ownership of the subsoil; and, therefore, the
Crown held the titles to all mining properties.
When Mexico became a republic, the crown rights
passed to the Federal Government. All subse-
quent mining laws of Mexico are based on this
ancient tradition of government ownership. The
man who buys a mine receives not a deed, but a
permit. He owns the product of the mine, but not
the subterranean area itself. The distinction is a
no INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
fine one, but it has acquired significance for the
sensitive Mexican reformer since President Diaz,
departing from the traditional principle, secured
from his Congress a formal act exempting petro-
leum from classification with minerals. Carranza's
legislation aims to rescue his country from the
compromise into which she fell by the pressure
upon Diaz of foreign capital. It is not that he
wishes to place an embargo on foreign investments
as such; for the new legislation is as strenuously
opposed by Mexican oil investors as it is by
foreigners.
While foreign investors may justly complain at
the high tax imposed upon petroleum by the new
law, and while mistakes have been made in its
application, yet it should not be forgotten that
previous to 1917 foreigners paid almost no taxes
upon the product of their wells. The Mexican
Government is sincere in the conviction that it is
well within its rights in enacting the new law,
which is merely the reassertion of a constitutional
principle.
There is a growing disposition to come to a
clear and amicable understanding on the subject
with the United States. This attitude was warmly
expressed by Senor Palavicini, one of the present can-
didates for the presidency, who said to me recently :
"The revolutionary movement has intensified
the nationalistic spirit. The cry, 'Mexico for the
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? in
Mexicans' has, I admit, gone too far. But, as to
oil, the new law here is practically no different
from that in most of the other civilized countries.
We recognize that we must live as neighbors to
the United States. We know that she is much
stronger than we are. And, even having the pure
technical right on our side, it may not be con-
venient to follow these rights to their logical con-
clusion. I wish that the Government would take
the opportunity offered them to send a well-
versed lawyer to the United States to explain to
the public in general the Mexican position. I
think we have been too nationalistic in our pro-
gram. We need to let the people in the United
States know what we think, and that we are
willing to make certain sacrifices, in order to live
in peace and harmony."
The same thing has been expressed a little dif-
ferently by Manuel Carpio, another newspaper
man who knows the mind of his country. He
says:
"Mexico is utterly deprived of financial resources
with which to meet the elementary necessities of
public administration. School teachers have been
working almost without pay in many Mexican
cities, where public schools have increased in
number. Municipal administration in the new
free city governments has been in a precarious
state since the beginning of the new constitutional
national administration. Manufacture and agri-
112 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
culture, the efficiency of which has been greatly
impaired by the national upheaval, have not been
able to provide sustenance for a large number of
workers and have not been a satisfactory source of
revenue for the national treasury.
On the other hand, the flow of oil out of Mexican
territory has taken place in such tremendous quan-
tities that it represents untold wealth, leaving the
Mexican nation practically nothing as the product
of that gigantic industry. The plan of nationaliz-
ing the Mexican oil fields was resorted to in the
new Constitution with a view to raising a reason-
able revenue for the benefit of the country, but
there has been no intent or action on the part of
the republic to 'grab American millions', as Senator
Porter puts it. Mexico believes itself a free
country, albeit not a powerful one. If it relin-
quishes all its rights to modify laws affecting its
greatest national resource because of the claims of
'private property* and of 'concessions' to foreign
enterprises, then it cannot call itself a nation, but
will virtually become the property of these enter-
prises.
It is of paramount importance to note that there
is really no purpose in the Mexican mind, however
backward it may be rated by other minds, to take
away from the owners the things that belong to
them. There is only the purpose of obtaining from
them, through necessary taxation, a proportional,
and by no means high, revenue for the benefit of
the country."
It has always seemed to me that the President's
greatest fault was his ultra-nationalism. How far
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 113
he has thought this necessary to keep his own
people with him, and how far it represents his
own attitude, I am not sure. He has failed to
accept many opportunities that the American
Government and people have offered for the
assistance of Mexico.
No one who knows him intimately, however,
could doubt his profound respect and admiration
for American civilization. He has shown himself
especially fond of the American educational sys-
tem. During his public life he has been the means
of sending many scores of students and teachers
to the United States to study her educational
system. All through his life he has been a firm
friend to American Protestant schools in Mexico.
He has been at times severely criticized by his
own people for showing marked friendship to
certain American citizens. His most trusted
counselors have been notably pro-American. An
example of this was found recently when the rela-
tions with the American oil men in the Tampico
District became acute and the President, as
already stated, selected Dr. Andres Osuna, a man
who has lived in this country for many years and
is a thorough admirer of American life, to become
Military Governor of the State, in order to work
out the problem with the American financiers.
President Carranza is an extremely hard worker.
Most of all his waking hours are spent in the Na-
ii4 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
tional Palace. He does not live in the Chapultepec
Palace, which he has every right to do, but in a
modest home on the Paseo de la Reforma. His
family makes no great effort at display. He main-
tains all around him a dignified, democratic
atmosphere, and retains the simple habits of a
plainsman. He often walks of mornings, accom-
panied by a friend, from his residence to the gov-
ernment palace, a distance of some mile and a
half. He is a total abstainer from liquor and
tobacco, and a disciplinarian in big as well as in
these little things. He rises at five o'clock. His
tall, wiry figure he is more than six feet high-
is set up like a soldier's, and a long gray beard
below his smooth-shaven sunburned cheeks accen-
tuates the dominating, patriarchal type of man
that he is. That he keeps his word is illustrated
by his refusal, in spite of all pressure, to run for the
presidency a second time.
Carranza is a man of sturdy intellect, though he
is not strictly of the "intellectual class," as it is
understood in Latin-America. He is rather of the
country gentleman type. However, he is a well-
educated man. He reads the classics and delights
in them. He is especially well versed in history.
He knows not only every detail of the history of
his own country, but he is well read in the history
of ancient peoples and the development of modern
states. From the standpoint of his gentlemanly
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS CARRANZA? 115
appearance and accomplishments, he would be as
much at home in the White House at Washington
as President Wilson would be in visiting the
National Palace in Mexico.
What is President Carranza religiously? It is
difficult to say. I suppose that he would say to
the census-taker that he is a Catholic. Some
have thought that he is a Protestant, because of
his friendship toward the Protestant schools and
his fondness for appointing Protestants to office.
But he probably is neither a Protestant nor a
Catholic, as these bodies would define a faithful
member. He certainly is utterly out of sympathy
with the Roman Catholic hierarchical system and
its endeavor to control politics. He has never
made any kind of confession of the Protestant
faith. He believes in God, in Christ, in the Bible,
and in the power of the Christian Church as a
restraining and ennobling influence in society.
He was not in favor of the radical restrictions on
religion in the Constitution of 1917, and has
recently proposed to Congress the amendment
of these articles, as the Executive is permitted to do
under the Mexican Constitution. Like most
public men, he has been represented as very
immoral in his personal life; but, having known
him intimately for many years, knowing both his
friends and his enemies, having taken some pains
n6 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
to find out what manner of man he is, I am a firm
believer in Venustiano Carranza as a man of
clean life, of high moral purpose, intensely devoted,
though sometimes mistaken in policy, to the in-
terests of his country.
CHAPTER IV
WHAT MEXICANS THINK OF
AMERICANS
In order to understand properly what Mexicans
think of North Americans, we should inquire first
what all Latin-Americans think of us. For, in all
the discussion concerning the relations of the two
countries, the fact that Mexicans are Latin-
Americans not Saxon-Americans must be kept
in mind p( [The Latin- Americans conserve two
famoqsupiotures of North Americans which are
representative, of the popular conceptions on the
subjecfo? jCtoSipicture is found in a cartoon and the
other iifri&qpe^m. The cartoon, published in a
Chilean*; papejr was based on the incident related
to the ipqflect:ip;n/ of the Alsop claims by our State
Depajrti?lei)lb>lv/^hen the time came for Chile to
settle/this ^qcQunt, Chile claimed she owed several
million ;4oHara less than the Alsop family wished to
collect. V^QMr State Department was asked to
demand full payment of this sum. This Chile
refused, but said she was willing to submit the
matter to arbitration. The State Department said
it was not a matter to be arbitrated, and threatened
to withdraw our Minister immediately if the full
n8 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
claim was not settled. The cartoon growing out
of this incident pictured an American as a great,
tall, portly gentleman, with silk hat, frock coat,
big diamond in the front of his shirt, and a gold-
headed cane. He was saying to a little boy, "My
son, get to thyself riches with honesty, if it may
be but by all means get to thyself riches." This
cartoon was applauded all over Latin-America as an
expression of the way they look on North Americans.
For a long time after coming into close contact
with Latin-Americans, I resented hotly this
accusation that we Americans cared more for the
dollars than for anything else. But since I have
studied the records of our State Department,
which show how most of our dealings with those
countries have been in connection with insuring a
clear road for our investors, I have not found it at
all difficult to understand the viewpoint of our
neighbors. Some one said recently: "Don't get
excited about our going to war with Mexico. It
took the sinking of the Lusitania, with the loss of
the lives of hundreds of our citizens, and a score
of insults before we would go to war with even
the arch-enemy of humanity, Germany." True,
but our property interests were not at stake.
Property has always been a most sacred thing to
Anglo-Saxons. The loss of American lives in
Mexico, which might be expected during so much
fighting, will not be the reason for our intervening
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 1 19
there. It may well serve as the pretext and other
lives yet might be lost, in order so to complicate
the situation as to compel every loyal American
to defend with his life the honor of his country.
But the real reason for our making war on Mexico,
if we do, will be in order to protect American in-
vestors. Of course the great majority of our
people would not knowingly consent to make war
for that reason. But it would not take a great
deal more misrepresentation by the American press
about the chaos that exists in Mexico than we now
have, if there were only another sensational border
raid or two, quite easily arranged, to make the
majority honestly vote such a war "for the good
of Mexico." Only years afterward, just as it has
proved with our first war with Mexico, would we
come to realize the injustice involved.
The American people are as a whole, as Henri
Bergson has recently said, the most idealistic
people in the world. The hundred incidents,
where the power of this great nation has been put
behind our investors in forcing certain actions on
Latin-American governments, have never been
heard of by one-tenth of one per cent of our peo-
ple and they do not represent the majority. But
these acts have had the same drastic effect and
have given rise to the same hatred and suspicion
of our whole people, as if they had been voted
for by every American citizen. Of course such
120 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
incidents do not appear in our literature, save in
dusty archives. But let one talk with Latin-
Americans and read their "best sellers" and he will
be astounded at references to scores of these mat-
ters, concerning which he has never heard.
President Wilson has intimated something of
the effects of this diplomacy in the following words :
"There is one peculiarity about the history of the
Latin- American States of which I am sure they are
keenly aware. You hear of 'concessions' to foreign
capitalists in Latin- America. You do not hear of
concessions granted to foreign capitalists in the
United States. They are not granted concessions.
They are invited to make investments. The
work is ours, though they are welcome to invest in
it. We do not ask them to supply the capital and
do the work. It is an invitation, not a privilege;
and states that are obliged, because their territory
does not lie within the main field of modern enter-
prise and action, to grant concessions are in this
condition, that foreign interests are apt to dominate
their domestic affairs^ a condition of affairs always
dangerous and apt to become intolerable"
It was this intolerable dominance of foreign
capitalists in the affairs of Latin-Americans that
caused Rubn Dario, the greatest of Latin-
American poets, to write the poem to which I
have referred. A few lines of this poem follow:
" Tis only with the Bible and Walt Whitman's
verse,
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 121
That you the mighty hunter are reached by other
men.
You're primitive and modern, you're simple and
complex,
A veritable Nimrod, with aught of Washington.
You are the United States.
You are the future foe
Of free America that keeps its Indian blood,
That prays to Jesus Christ, and speaks in
Spanish still.
You are a fine example of a strong and haughty
race. . .
The United States are rich ; they're powerful and
great;
They join the cult of Mammon or that of Her-
cules,
And when they stir or roar the very Andes
shake. . .
And though you count on all, one thing is lack-
ing-God !" l
Manuel Ugarte, in his book, "El Porvenir de
la America Latino", says:
"It is evident that nothing attracts us toward
our neighbors of the north. By her origin, her
education, and her spirit, South America is essen-
tially European. We feel ourselves akin to Spain,
to whom we owe our civilization, and whose fire
we carry in our blood ; to France, source and origin
of the thought that animates us; to England, who
sends us her gold freely ; to Germany, who supplies
us with her manufactures ; and to Italy, who gives
1 Version of E. C. Hills.
122 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
us the arms of her sons to wrest from the soil the
wealth which is to distribute itself over the world.
But to the United States we are united by no ties
but those of distrust and fear."
Calder6n, the ambassador of Peru to France,
in his book "Latin America, Its Rise and Progress,"
referring to Pan-American Congresses, says:
"The Iberian nations confess publicly their
enthusiasm for Pan- Americanism, as does the
Yankee Republic its spiritual enthusiasm. Pla-
tonic declarations are succeeded by useless prom-
ises. The desired fusion of Saxons and Latins does
not advance. In Buenos Aires, Americo Lugo, a
delegate from the Plains, denounces the expansion
of the North. In dailies and magazines, eloquent
thinkers condemn these rhetorical organizations
which preach union while Saxon ambition dis-
members Panama, agitates Nicaragua, and over-
turns Mexico. . . Will they not be able to
make a declaration in the future limiting the
amount of European capital which can be invested
in each republic, or determine the numerical
importance of the current of immigration? Thus
successful, they would impose on free peoples a
hard tutelage. For moral suasion they will sub-
stitute an imperative catechism."
Those words, of course, were written before the
World War. I must say that in my last trip
through South America, in 1917, I found a change
in her attitude toward us, largely due, of course, to
our entrance into the War. Latin-Americans
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 123
now say: "For the first time in your history, we
see that you are idealistic. We see that you have
been willing to renounce certain profits on muni-
tions and other things, in order that you might go
into a war to make the world safe for democracy."
When in Chile, in 1914, I heard on every
hand unpleasant references to the United States.
The students of the universities were particularly
hostile. This time, when I called upon a professor
in the National University, I was asked to address
one of his English classes and later on, another,
till I found myself giving a whole morning of talks.
These led to a conference at one of the big theaters,
secured for the occasion by the university students.
The theme they wanted me to discuss was, "How
to Develop Closer Relations between the United
States and Chile." At the close of the lecture a full
hour was spent answering their eager and pointed
questions. I spoke very frankly, analyzing the
good and bad in the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin,
pointing out why each had failed to understand the
other in the past. That session with these bril-
liant young people was a most delightful experi-
ence. Their hunger for knowledge of North
American life, particularly concerning our uni-
versities, was amazing and refreshing.
In Pernambuco I met accidentally the director
of the law school that has trained the leaders of
northern Brazil for half a century. He invited
124 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
me to give an address to the students on "Closer
Intellectual Relationships between the Two Ameri-
cas." This occasion became quite a demonstration
of international friendliness, the official life of the
city being represented.
In Paraguay our party of four North Americans
was taken in hand by the National Director of
Public Instruction, our entertainment being di-
rected by the Government. These people showed
in many ways their real desire for friendship with
the United States.
The following editorial, published July 4, 1917,
in a leading daily of Buenos Aires, shows what the
entrance of the United States into the War did
toward changing this attitude :
"The circumstances in which we find ourselves
today on this anniversary of the North American
nation serve to define a double principle of
Americanism and democracy. This celebration in
other years has been an occasion for rejoicing only
for the United States. She could with patriotic
joy stop in her march and contemplate with
satisfaction the road traveled since the days of
that memorable declaration. . . Other people
joined the celebration with a cordiality more official
and diplomatic than real.
Today all is different. The United States, by
the power of that great republican virtue which is
the supporter of the right, is for the whole world
not only a nation engaged in a knightly war, but an
apostle in action. Some four years ago the Latin
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 125
author, Ruben Dario, was able to say, led astray
by superficial observations, that the United States,
which had everything, lacked but one thing God.
Today this can not be said, for the crusade of the
United States and the serene and eloquent words
of Wilson have a religious character, now that they
intimate the abandonment and disregard of mate-
rial interests in the face of the defense of the ideal.
Quietly, without the sound of trumpets or noise,
the United States has entered the contest, and
thus it returns to noble France the generous contri-
bution of that great Frenchman, Lafayette, the
American national hero. If America stands for
anything in the world and in history, it is liberty.
Other peoples have been formed by reason of con-
quest, or of religion, but the Americans were born
out of the idea of liberty.- i In; this sentiment is
found the unity of San Martin, Bolivar, and
Washington. It matters little that history regis-
ters this or that disturbance, and this or that
variation. That is the sentiment, and that is
the thing that, after conquering all cruel tyrannies
and retrogressive seditions, has overcome all.
So in the awful conflict which today is shaking
the world, the United States is bearing the burden
of all America, because she is on the side of liberty.
She is the big sister in years and in power among
the American nations. This place belongs to her,
and worthily has she taken it."
For the first time in the history of a South
American nation, Brazil openly declared that the
prime reason for her taking a serious political step
was to follow the leadership of the United States.
126 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
In her note to the other South American powers,
announcing the breaking of relationships with
Germany, she said :
"Brazil has never had, nor has it now, warlike
ambitions. If it has heretofore abstained from
taking sides in the European conflict, it has not
been able to continue indifferent since the United
States has been drawn into the War without any
further motives than simply those of action in the
name of international justice and order. . . If
up to the present the relative lack of reciprocity
on the part of the American republics has deprived
the Monroe Doctrine of its real character, permit-
ting an interpretation scarcely founded on the
prerogative of sovereignty, the present conditions
place Brazil at the side of the United States of
America at this critical moment in the history
of the world, and continue to give our political
relationships a practical form of continental
solidarity."
In the same way Panama, in its recent declara-
tion of war, said that, "Neutrality is impossible in
a conflict where the vital interests of the United
States are involved," and Cuba, Bolivia, Paraguay,
and other countries have given voice to similar
sentiments.
The recent visit of the North American fleet
under the command of Admiral Caperton to
South American waters has promoted these
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 127
friendly relations in a remarkable way. In order
that the fleet might visit Montevideo when Uru-
guay had not yet broken relations with the Cen-
tral Powers, the Government promulgated the
following special decree, which will no doubt be of
great weight in future international relationships
in America: "It is hereby declared that no Ameri-
can nation will be considered as a belligerent which
is in a state of war in defense of its rights against
any nation outside of America."
So Latin-Americans have been turned to us in a
new and remarkable way in the last two years.
They are now keenly interested to see whether we
will continue to show our idealism or whether we
will be encouraged by our remarkable military
victory to drop into a still more threatening atti-
tude toward our small neighbors. Those living in
the United States are already becoming impressed
by the talk like the following, which is all too
common: "Oh, it was all right during the War,
when we needed to arouse patriotism, to talk of
fighting to make the world safe for Democracy.
But that was only a war cry. We all know we
were in the War to protect ourselves." If we are
to slip down into materialism, take advantage of
our power to exploit others, plan intervention in
the affairs of our next-door neighbor, and throw
our oppressive hand over Latin- America, then we
can not expect anything but that Latin-America
128 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
will swing again in opposition to us, and, of course,
the last state will be worse than the first.
Turning directly to the Latin-American country
we are now discussing, Mexico, let us take first a
brief glance at the historic relations with our next-
door neighbor, considering first those of a diplo-
matic character. At the beginning these promised
to be cordial from our standpoint, for we sympa-
thized with the youthful republic to the south that
had recently thrown off the Spanish yoke. But
from the other side there were certain disadvan-
tages. Spanish colonies had not been allowed to
trade with any countries except Spain. Both the
Government and the Church wanted to keep out
outside influence; they did not want the status quo
of the people to be disturbed ; so no new thoughts
or heretical ideas of government, especially from
the United States, were allowed to enter. Our
first diplomatic representative to Mexico, Joel R.
Poinsett, appointed in 1825, accordingly had a
difficult position. Fortunately he was a cultured
gentleman, spoke Spanish as well as the Mexicans
themselves, and was a polished diplomat. But in
the maze of Mexican politics he made wrong
impressions, came to be regarded with suspicion,
and in a little while withdrew, leaving a great deal
of prejudice against the United States and a
feeling that some day Mexico would have to
fight us.
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 129
Our second minister, Anthony Butler, was a
bluffer and a rascal. He was found to be inter-
ested in some lands over in Texas at the same time
that he was proposing to Mexico that the United
States should buy that state. He insisted on this
transaction a good while after Mexico gave him to
understand that it was not acceptable. His
troubles thickened and finally, after insulting a
Mexican cabinet officer, he retired in disgrace, it
having been proved in both Mexico and the
United States that he was absolutely dishonest.
About 1835 and 1836, there developed certain
claims by Americans on account of the destruction
of American property by Mexicans during inces-
sant political turmoil. President Jackson asked
for a commission to be appointed to adjust mat-
ters. This commission was appointed and worked
five or six years without getting much satisfaction,
Mexico blocking the matter with many diplomatic
maneuvers.
The separation of Texas from Mexico came in
1836. Though the United States was not responsi-
ble for this, Mexico naturally thought she was,
inasmuch as Texas was largely settled by United
States citizens. After refuting the charges specifi-
cally, Daniel Webster said: "The conduct of the
Government of the United States, in regard to the
war between Mexico and Texas, having always
hitherto been governed by a strict and impartial
130 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
regard to its neutral obligations, will not be
changed or altered in any respect or in any degree."
If the United States had the best of that diplo-
matic bout, it was far different in the next, which
resulted in Tyler's annexation treaty with Texas.
Shannon, our next minister, went down with the
difficult duty of informing Mexico concerning this
fact. He was a first-class politician at home, but
no diplomat for a foreign land. He so bungled his
mission that one of the papers of the United States
called for his return home that it might measure
his ears to see how long they were. The Mexican
Minister of Foreign Affairs, an artist in framing
phrases, after putting poor Shannon in the most
ridiculous light, caused Mexico to break off rela-
tions fair and square with the United States. So
ended the first chapter, with little satisfaction on
either side. Then came the Mexican War. This
was the most unfortunate event in all our national
life. Most of our historians agree that the Mexi-
can War was an unjust, unfair, political contest.
We took about one-half of Mexico's territory, for
which we paid $15,000,000. A little later we
bought more territory for $10,000,000 to add to
what had been taken. That war, of course, was
the greatest of all the causes of the distrust of the
United States on the part of Mexico.
Relations did not improve greatly between the
two countries following the war, until Lincoln
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 131
came into the presidency. He instructed our
minister to go to Mexico and show an attitude of
cordiality, frankness, friendship, and even mag-
nanimity. At that time Juarez was making his
tremendous struggles against the reactionary
forces, and disorder reigned in Mexico. Later
Maximilian, supported by the French Emperor
and the Papacy, endeavored to establish his
empire. Juarez vigorously opposed this effort.
After the close of the Civil War, the Monroe
Doctrine was invoked by Secretary of State Seward
who informed Napoleon that his French troops
must be retired, and they were. For that reason,
Juarez was able to conquer Maximilian, regain
the Mexican capital, and restore the national gov-
ernment. Thus the United States enabled Mexico
to save herself from foreign domination at the
only time when she was seriously threatened. This
was a big, fine service, the bright and shining
star in the clouded sky of our relationships. Mexi-
cans are profoundly appreciative of it.
Following Juarez came Diaz with his endeavor
to bring into Mexico foreign capital, especially
American. Some English capital had been in-
vested in Mexico already. Beginning in 1824,
John Taylor had appealed in an interesting pamph-
let to the British public for such investment. The
first railroad in Mexico was built by British capital
from Vera Cruz to Mexico City,
132 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
When the question arose of allowing American
capital to build railroads connecting Mexico with
the United States, there was serious consideration
of the matter, which shows that dread of the over-
whelming strength of the United States which has
always possessed the Mexican mind. Don Pablo
Macedo, in his book on "Mexico and the United
States" tells of the conferences which preceded the
adoption of the railroad policy in Mexico. He says :
"In deciding on the gauge the truth is that the
question was discussed, whether or not they should
accept the gauge adopted by their neighbors of the
Northern Republic. It was a consideration of the
gravest moment, and transcended all others. No
one, and still less statesmen of the status of Sefior
Lerdo de Tejada, has ever been blind to the danger
that we run from the nearness of our colossal
neighbor on the north. In comparison with the
United States more's the pity we must confess
that we then figured, and we still do, as a mere pig-
my. Besides this the sad memory of the iniquitous
war of 1847, which cost us the half of our territory,
is more than enough cause to excite uneasiness and
even dread. Such apprehension is certainly not
unreasonable or groundless. As a consequence,
the distinct object of our international policy has
necessarily always been, in the first place, to grow
by natural expansion, to fortify our national organ-
isms, and then to seek from the other side of the
Atlantic a support which alone can be efficacious
by creating, acclimatizing, and strengthening
European interests and elements. Unfortunately,
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 133
the unjustifiable French intervention, obliging us
to sustain a war a V entrance in order to preserve
our very existence as a nation, interrupted our
organic development, and not only weakened our
position, physically, through the material sacrifices
which we had to make, but morally, by creating
divisions greater than had previously existed. The
blood of Maximilian created an abyss between
Europe and Mexico. His death, though it may
have been the only means, sad as it was, of securing
internal peace, estranged the sympathies of those
nations which then exercised preponderating in-
fluence in Europe."
Although we did not recognize the Diaz Gov-
ernment for two years, he did not hold that
against us, and his invitation to American capital
and American missionaries soon put the two
countries on the most cordial terms they had ever
enjoyed. We built railroads and opened mines,
and for twenty-five years we had very cordial re-
lations with Mexico, at least as far as diplomacy
was concerned. Then came the turbulent time of
recent years, beginning with the Madero Revolu-
tion in 1910, since which our diplomacy has been
turned topsy turvy.
Without taking into account the last few years,
we can see by the review of the hundred years
preceding that relations have been a series of mis-
understandings. I have already referred to the
struggle of the financial interests of the United
134 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
States and England over oil wells in Mexico,
Madero favoring American interests and Diaz
favoring English interests, and the fact that this
feeling was so acute that some people thought that
it was the whole explanation of the fight between
Madero and Diaz. Our diplomatic relations suf-
fered no break during that revolution and con-
tinued cordial on into Madero's presidency,
although the latter claimed that our ambassador,
Henry Lane Wilson, was in sympathy with the
reactionaries.
In February, 1913, Felix Diaz and Bernardo
Reyes broke jail in Mexico City, where they had
been imprisoned as leaders of a rebellion against
Madero, and placed themselves at the head of the
rebel forces representing the old Diaz group.
Huerta was entrusted with the command of the
Madero troops. In order to stop the fighting,
which continued for ten days, a conference was
held in the American Embassy with the American
Ambassador present, and Huerta agreed to turn
traitor to Madero, who was made prisoner and
afterward shot. For his part in this diabolical .
affair, Henry Lane Wilson was recalled, and the
United States did not appoint until 1918 our next
ambassador, the efficient Mr. Fletcher, who is
still at his post.
If our diplomatic relations with the Diaz regime
were very smooth, the Mexican people were led in
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 135
many cases to dislike the American more than
ever because the latter seemed to be receiving all
the favors. Take the case of the railroads. When
the United States built the Mexican railroads, the
Americans went over to run them. For a long
time all the engineers, conductors, brakemen, and
firemen were Americans, while the Mexicans were
used only in inferior positions. But the time
came when the Mexicans wanted better places.
They had learned in the shops how to run engines
and wanted the jobs. The Americans naturally
wanted to retain their positions and claimed that
Mexicans did not have sufficient intelligence and
training to carry the responsibilities. The Ameri-
cans refused to have train orders given them ex-
cept in the English language. When the Mexican
Government finally bought fifty-one per cent of
the stock they took the stand that, when a Mexi-
can and an American" were equally qualified for a
position, the Mexican should have it. The Ameri-
cans resigned in a body, two or three thousand of
them leaving on the same day for the United
States. Much hard feeling was engendered over
this struggle. The Mexicans, on the one hand,
thought they had more reason than ever for charg-
ing the Americans with selfishness, and the Ameri-
cans, on the other, came to have less confidence
than ever in the country and its people.
136 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Unfortunately, one source of prejudice against
us is the number of Americans who are living in
Mexico because they could not live in the United
States. We have had a great many Americans who
could not explain why they were in Mexico. Natu-
rally, they do not contribute anything to close
friendship between the two peoples. I was on the
train recently with an American who was telling
about Americans being persecuted and ill-treated
everywhere in Mexico. The tourists were taking it
all in until he came to American politics. But
there he showed he had entirely missed all that
the modern world is teaching. His listeners saw
immediately that he was hopelessly reactionary.
But as long as he was discussing the Mexican ques-
tion the people were taking it for granted he was
an absolute authority on the subject, for he had
lived there. Even our magazines publish articles
written by such men who know nothing of national
development in their own country or any other,
have no historic background whatever, and look
at the whole matter from the standpoint of
whether their countrymen in Mexico have as good
jobs as formerly.
This and kindred matters are well interpreted
from the standpoint of the Mexicans by May
Austin, who says:
"The items of the Constitutionalists* program at
which vested interests take alarm are, of course,
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 137
the reform of mining and land laws and the land
tax system. Mexico in the past has been not only
the land of poco tiempo, but the paradise of special
privilege. And the man who has looked upon
Mexico as a place to make twenty-five per cent
on his investment is the one who thinks that the
only thing we can do is to go in there and run
things ourselves.
Such people are always in a hurry. They don't
know that a reconstructed Mexico will be any the
worse for their business, but they don't want to
take time to readjust themselves, to learn to
operate under a new system. In their hurry these
absentee investors are supported by the Americans
who live in Mexico and work their properties them-
selves, who, without having any particular quarrel
with the revolutionists, are impatient at the delays
and vexations which keep them from their means
of making a living. These people differ in their
ideas of how the pacification of Mexico can be best
accomplished, but they all agree in one thing they
want it done quickly, and if that is the quickest
way they are willing it should be done with a sand-
bag. Their chief objection to the Carranza way is
that it will take time. And to the prevailing
American cult of 'right now' this appears a reason-
able objection.
We hear a great deal of the disqualification of the
Mexican temperament for dealing with national
values, its incontinence, its quick shifts of enthu-
siasm. But there is a much greater menace to the
situation in the American temperament, with its
impatience of delay, its refusal to deal with condi-
tions a little less than obvious.
138 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
It is true that the terms on which mines and
plantations can be worked in Mexico are not going
to be quite the same under the Carrancistas. The
whole tenor of the new laws, too complex to go
into in detail, is to make it unprofitable to hold
unworked mining claims and uncultivated lands.
This is true not only for foreign investors, but for
their own capitalists also. Wages and taxes are
both going to be higher. Wages and taxes will go
up with the process of nationalization. And
whether or not the present regime maintains it-
self, it is highly desirable that the process of
nationalization should go on in Mexico.
It must always be borne in mind that what has
been going on there is an economic revolution.
The Constitutionalists are men who have learned
by heart the lesson that national wealth doesn't
necessarily imply national welfare. That was the
mistake Diaz made. That he made it with a
degree of sincerity did not keep him from the
unpleasant consequences of his people's finding
out that it was a mistake. There are not wanting
signs that even America is not as satisfied with her
apportionment of wealth and welfare as she used
to be. It will come as a shock in some quarters,
but it has to be admitted that First Chief Car-
ranza and his compadres don't want our system
foisted upon Mexico, because they jolly well
don't approve."
The uncouth tourist is another sort of American
who has certainly done his part to prejudice Mexi-
cans against us. Stories like the following could
be duplicated by the scores by the average Mexi-
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 139
can. Two tourists, walking by a magnificent
Mexican home which, as usual, is built right up
to the sidewalk, see the front door open and a
piano inside. They walk in and look around and
then sit down and play the piano, talking all the
time of how surprised they are to see that Mexicans
have pianos and never supposing that their English
is understood by the cultured but enraged lady of
the house, whom they had not deigned to notice.
An American woman of a rather confirmed bru-
nette type was standing in her window opening
on the sidewalk and several tourists stopped and
looked her over, making all kind of remarks about
her clothes, house, and other things, supposing,
that, of course, no one in that far-off country spoke
English. Just as I am writing these lines a friend
tells me of returning from Mexico with some
American tourists, who as a part of a commercial
excursion, had been entertained in a most elabo-
rate manner by Government and people in all
parts of the Republic. The train arrived at the
border station on the return to the United States
about 2 a. m., but passengers were allowed to stay
in the Pullman till daylight. They were awakened,
however, by a loud-voiced tourist calling for a
corkscrew. He was very much put out by the
Mexican porter's slowness in producing it, and in
tones that all the passengers, many of them cul-
tured Mexicans who speak English, could hear, he
140 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
said to his companion: "There are two things I
could never understand why the Lord made-
mosquitos and Mexicans."
The ill treatment received by Mexicans in this
country is another thing which has thrown doubt
in the Mexican mind on our protestations of
democracy. The difficulty with which these peo-
ple, who live in large numbers in the southwest,
get justice in our courts, schooling for their chil-
dren, and any kind of social life, is more fully
known to their compatriots in Mexico than it is
to American people who do not live in the midst
of these conditions.
Reference has already been made to the preju-
dice and even hatred engendered in the Mexicans
by the misrepresentations of the American press
and by addresses of our public men. Everyone
who speaks publicly on Mexico in this country
should realize that his utterances will be reported
in Mexico and, if offensive, will be played up by
interested parties in the most prominent way. A
slightly different angle of this question is seen in
the discussions recently in Congress and our
papers concerning our buying of Lower California
and the Mexicans' selling land to the Japanese.
The first is, as Ambassador Bonillas said, not long
ago, like the story of the bells. The citizens of a
certain town got very much excited over the dis-
cussion as to whether the bells should be rung as
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 141
a part of a celebration planned. "But," said some-
one, finally, "there are no bells in the town." Why
should Congressmen continue to talk about buy-
ing Lower California, when Mexico will not sell
it? We estimate the Mexican very wrongly when
we think he cares more for money than for national
honor. The latter is the dearest possession he has.
Granted that his interpretation of it doesn't
always agree with ours, it is there, however, and
our failure to recognize it explains why we have
so often failed in our diplomacy. Among all the
crimes of Santa Anna, none looms so large to the
average Mexican as his selling us a part of what is
now Texas. Recent political storms would be
like a summer zephyr compared with the one that
would be started by the proposal of the authorities
to sell any of their national territory, and neither
Carranza nor any other leader would dare propose
such a thing even if he should desire it.
The same statement applies to the matter of
selling land that would give the Japanese Govern-
ment power in Mexico. There is a clause in the
Constitution which prevents selling land, within
one hundred kilometers of the border, to foreign-
ers. This whole matter of Mexico's reported ten-
dency to ally herself with Japan is one of those
things which make fine publicity material for cer-
tain American interests, but have no basis in fact.
There are less than 3,000 Japanese in Mexico and
142 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
no proof whatever has been produced that the
Mexican Government has ever had secret dealings
with the Japanese Government in order to give
it special privileges in America. Such stories are
tremendously annoying to Mexicans, who believe
it is an evidence of the American's lack of honor
that he will attack the good name of a neighbor in
order to carry his own point in politics.
Many times when we have tried to help the
Mexican he has thought we were trying to insult
him. The psychology of the two peoples is so dif-
ferent the American, worships truth and action,
the Mexican politeness and form. The "naked
truth" of the Saxon must be dressed to become
attractive to the Latin, and the "brutal frankness"
of the former is more of a crime to the latter than
is a friendly deception. In the mouth of a Mexi-
can the famous expression of Clay might become :
"I had rather be polite than President." He likes
you if you are "simpdtico" appreciative of his
feelings and accomplishments, kind to his family,
polite to his friends, and if you enthuse over his
country and respect his "dignidad," personal and
national. "Dignidad" is his own greatest posses-
sion. Failure to respect it is the explanation of
the failure of many a well-intentioned effort of
Americans to help him. Witness the failure of our
Red Cross expedition, blocked everywhere be-
cause the Mexican would rather starve than have
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 143
his starving condition advertised to the world in
an appeal for funds to help him. The American
Commissioners at Atlantic City got nowhere, in
spite of their earnest desire to help Mexico, be-
cause the Mexicans could do nothing to remedy
practical conditions until national "dignidad" was
saved by the removal of foreign troops from their
soil. Politeness and sympathy, with respect for
his dignity, will open any door of the Mexican.
But he had rather starve himself and his family
and let his whole country go to rack and ruin
than "receive charity." The big-hearted, loud-
voiced, insistent, efficient foreign philanthropist
has no place in Mexico.
Calder6n puts the matter thus :
"There is nothing more difficult to manage than
the amour propre of the nations of the south, who
look upon any kind of interference as a menace to
their independence. They would choose anarchy,
destruction even, rather than suffer the unlawful
intrusion of any foreign power which ventured to
interfere in the internal affairs of a free country.
North Americans have often forgotten this atti-
tude of their * brothers' of the south. Likewise,
with no consideration for their tempestuous pride,
they have carried their influence in southern
matters to the point of provoking violent outbursts
of nationalism. They make parade of their
superiority, and the South Americans, proud of
their traditions and their ancient cities, revolt
144 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
angrily against the wise counsels of the protecting
nation.
Like all Latins, the South Americans have a
feeling for form and respect for the proprieties.
They are naturally subtle and Byzantine. Nothing
ruffles them more than the rudeness of Washington
politicians, who scarcely take pains to disguise a
certain contempt for these inferior and turbulent
peoples. Mr. Roosevelt cynically says, 'I took
Panama*. He believes in the efficacy of the 'big
stick' in the relations between the two Americas.
He is scarcely a psychologist in these matters. It
is far easier to get what one wants from these Latin
democracies through flattering proposals, through
courteous replies, through a delicate, nicely-
shaded diplomacy."
Probably the one thing that irritates the edu-
cated Mexican more than all other things about
our attitude is the general failure to recognize that
Mexico has its cultured classes, who are as well
educated and have as beautiful homes and as fine
a social life as will be found in any part of the
world. They think the American is very unfair in
judging all Mexicans by the peon workman that
ordinarily emigrates to this country.
In fact, when one counts up all the grievances
that Mexicans have against Americans, the ex-
ploiting of the people by certain American capi-
talists, the insults from Americans living in and
outside the country, the continuous misrepresen-
tation by our press, and many other things, he is
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 145
surprised that there is as much friendship for
Americans as there is. But this is because he has
forgotten the other side of the shield of relations.
The thousands of good Americans who have lived
in Mexico, learned the language of the people,
come to appreciate their good points, made the
most intimate friendships with Mexicans, and
publicly declare they had rather live in Mexico
than any other country in the world, have done
more than it is possible to estimate to offset the
bad impressions already referred to. Many Ameri-
can firms and individual business men have been
real missionaries to the people, with their intro-
duction of better wages, improved machinery, wel-
fare work, schools, and better housing for their
employes. It has become pretty general that
Mexicans prefer to work for American firms and
under American foremen, because they are more
sure of right treatment than under their own
people.
The American school teachers who have been
unselfishly working in many parts of the country
for many years have done much to show the Mexi-
cans that Americans generally are a likable, sympa-
thetic people and entirely desirous of maintaining
friendly relations with their neighbors. Then the
fact that our Government has not intervened in
Mexico, when many of the Mexicans themselves
recognize there was sufficient excuse from the
146 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
standpoint of European governments, has counter-
acted much of the harm of intervention talk.
These things explain the reason for such a state-
ment as the following by Senor Pasqueira, one of
the Constitutionalist leaders:
"Some of the press would have the public believe
that there exists a sentiment of underlying hos-
tility towards Americans. That is untrue.
Throughout the country Americans are held in
higher esteem than any other class of foreigners,
and the laborer will invariably seek employment
from them rather than from Europeans, not be-
cause they pay higher wages, but because of their
reputation for fair treatment; and I venture to
assert, on the highest authority, that since this war
began, not one American citizen has lost his life
because of his nationality. Some have been killed
in personal quarrels and barroom brawls, such as
take place daily in New York, for instance; some
have been killed because of their presence in the
line of fire during engagements, and some have
been murdered by thieves. But I repeat that no
persons have been killed because they were
Americans. The Constitutionalists, I may add,
entertain a deep appreciation of the kindly senti-
ments that their cause has awakened among the
thoughtful people of the United States, to whom
treason was ever odious and to whom constitu-
tional rights are so dear. We appreciate, too, the
spirit of fairness that led the President to raise the
embargo on the exportation of arms and munitions
of war, and if we have not demonstrated our
gratitude, it is because there has been no fitting
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 147
opportunity to do so. Nor have we Mexicans for-
gotten Seward and the degree of moral support he
gave President Juarez in his noble struggle for
democratic government against the reactionaries
who sought to impose on Mexico a monarchy."
The best judgment of reliable Americans and
my own experience during the Revolution agree
entirely with the above statement, that neither
Carranza nor his responsible officers have ever
attacked or persecuted Americans because they
were Americans.
There were two instances during the Revolution
of Americans being turned upon. First, Villa
singled out the Americans for attack, after we had
carried him around on our shoulders as a great
hero for months and then had turned against him
in favor of Carranza.. Nothing else could have
been expected from one of his low instincts. The
other instance of hostility to Americans was the
general order which Huerta gave at the time of
our taking Vera Cruz, to have all Americans in
Mexico arrested. Many outstanding Americans,
including our consular officers, were thrown into
jail and kept there until released by Carranza
authorities, who afterward captured the towns
where they were imprisoned.
General Hanna, Consul General for northern
Mexico, told me how he was seized by the Huerta
authorities in Monterrey and at first was made to
148 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
walk through the streets toward the penitentiary.
The poor people, whom he had befriended so
many times, giving them food and clothing and
much other help, risked their lives by demanding
that the military forces at least get a carriage for
the general. When he was taken to the state pri-
son the old keeper blazed out in anger, saying
to the general's captors, "This is no place for Gen-
eral Hanna. He is one of my dearest friends, as he
is the friend of every Mexican. I will not receive
him in this penitentiary. You must find another
place if you want to put him in prison." The gen-
eral was therefore taken to the new state house,
where he occupied a magnificent reception hall as
his prison. While the room was very beautiful, it
was not entirely comfortable, since there were
mounted above him a number of cannon, and the
enemy was trying to dislodge them with artillery
from the nearby hills. This lasted only a few
hours, however, when the Huerta forces withdrew
and the revolutionists came in and occupied the
city. He was left practically the sole occupant
of the state house for several hours. Thus origi-
nated the story that General Hanna was threat-
ened with death, and a few hours later was made
governor of the state.
The few Americans who were in the City of
San Luis Potosi gathered in the English consulate.
For two or three days they were hissed at when
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 149
they went along the streets, and the cry of "Mueran
los gringos" was frequently heard. Reports were
circulated that several Americans had been shot,
and terror reigned in the whole colony for three
days. However, it turned out that none had been
hurt. This was the only time when the Americans
in San Luis felt in danger.
No American who has been through the Revolu-
tion and seen many homes of his fellow-citizens
broken up and many families lose their all and
have to make their way to the United States on
charity funds, or who sees them today still in
Mexico, old and broken with hope gone, can help
sympathizing most profoundly with such suffering.
But as one reads history, he cannot fail to realize
also that they are not unique among those whom
war has overtaken, either in a foreign land or in
their own.
Much has been made of a list of 285 Americans
killed in Mexico from 1910 to 1916. We mourn
the loss of this large number of fellow-countrymen.
But that list does not prove at all that there has
been any hostility to Americans as Americans by
the government, which after so many years of
fighting, and often of chaos and anarchy, has
finally come into power. When we are considering
the killing of these 285 Americans during six years
of terrible civil war, it would be well to remember
that in the year 1918 in this great country of ours
150 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
more than loo people were lynched, many of
whom have later been shown to be innocent of
any crime. In the same connection, too, we may
well consider the following facts brought out by
George Marvin in an article in World's Work. In
discussing the ill treatment of Mexicans in Texas
and the matter of bandits on both sides of the
international border, he says:
"Before the Army took over the job, the border-
land was patrolled by rangers. Some of these
rangers have degenerated into common man-
killers. There is no penalty for killing, for no jury
along the border would ever convict a white man
for shooting a Mexican. Their ranks are swelled
by so-called deputy sheriffs. Some of these men
are responsible citizens, but others are unstrung
gunmen, who are just as much a menace to the
peace and good order of the borderland as are the
bandits for whose extinction they exist.
The killing of Mexicans that has been going on
through the borderland in these last four years is
almost incredible. General Carranza still wants
to know if we have done anything about bringing
to trial the executioners of 1 14 Mexicans believed
to have been innocently killed on our side of the
line. But there are a great many more than 114
Mexicans good and bad lying dead, and some of
them unburied, north of the line. Reading over
the Secret Service records makes you feel almost as
though there were an open game season on Mexi-
cans along the border. Underneath all, a racial
prejudice exists fully as strong as the Negro situa-
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 151
. , - - s-
_* *
tion in our southeastern states, and on top of that
you must put the irresponsibility of sheriffs,
deputies, and rangers.
The disgraceful truth persists that a great many
so-called bandits are and have been for a long time
very useful agents in smuggling operations. Some
border Texans will tell you that a Mexican is like
an Indian, there is no good one but a dead one. But
Mexico and the border states contain hundreds
and thousands of good Mexicans, a great many of
whom have been terrorized off their thrifty farms.
It is a great surprise to find along the border that
very just Mexican grievances exist against us. We
have been so occupied in cherishing our own
grievances, and equally just injuries, that we
haven't been able to see their Mexican corollaries."
Passing over many other interesting phases of
recent events which have had their effect on the
regard of Mexicans for Americans, we come to the
test of the World War. President Carranza took
the attitude that the struggle was one in which
the Mexicans should remain neutral, first because
it did not seem to him, just as it did not seem to
America in the beginning, to involve any question
in which the nation had a direct interest; and
further, because Mexico had just been through a
long struggle, her national resources were ex-
hausted, and she needed all her strength to restore
her national life. There has never been any real
evidence produced that Carranza himself deviated
from this neutral path. He may have believed at
152 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
I
one time, as some of his friends say, that Germany
would win, and for this reason allowed his Secre-
tary of the Interior, the editor of the official daily
paper, and other prominent officials to display
the friendly attitude toward Germany which has
disgraced them. But those who know Carranza
best do not believe that he was either pro-German
himself or ever had any dealings with the German
Government with a view to opposing the Allies in
the war.
Probably in no other country in the world, with
the exception of Spain, was German propaganda
so insistent. Competent authorities reckon that
in the single matter of subsidizing twenty-three
newspapers and supplying free news print and
free telegraph service, $50,000 a month was spent.
Our readers will realize in what fallow ground
much of this propaganda fell. Full page adver-
tisements were run, showing on the one hand what
Mexico would lose in territory and prestige if the
United States won and on the other hand what
would be the advantages to Mexico in increased
territory and commercial advantages if Germany
won. Editorials from our papers and speeches by
our Congressmen who favored intervention were
translated and used to support these arguments.
But there was a very large counter-propaganda
by Mexicans who were friends of France and the
United States. Practically every governor of the
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 153
twenty-seven Mexican states was pro-Ally. Many
movements in favor of the United States which
have never been reported in this country were
organized. One of the most efficient and wide-
spread was the Allied Club, with headquarters in
Saltillo. It counted more than 12,000 members,
from the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo
Leon, and Tamaulipas. Governor Mireles, of
Coahuila, was the honorary president. A young
Englishwoman was engaged as the secretary. The
membership represented the leading young element
of all of these states. They accomplished great
good, by opening reading rooms, by supplying the
members with correct information about Allied
victories, and by pointing out in the clearest kind
of way the misrepresentations of the Germans.
When the German submarines attacked boats
near the American coast, the club sent a letter of
protest to our Government, signed by 2,000 peo-
ple, offering any help that they could possibly
give. Recognizing that Mexico was a very poor
country and they could offer practically nothing,
yet this club informed our Government that the
Allied sympathizers in Mexico would undertake to
keep order on the border of Mexico, so that the
soldiers who were assigned to this duty might be
released to fight for democracy in France.
The Committee on Public Information of the
United States did a magnificent piece of work in
154 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Mexico. It made any American's heart swell with
pride to go into the reading rooms they conducted
in several of the leading cities and see the large
number of readers, and to know of the crowds in
the English classes taught free by many of the
leading American women of the community. When
the armistice was signed, the German Embassy
endeavored to cause the impression that "Ger-
many had presented peace to the world." But the
Committee on Public Information never stopped
till it had put the fact of Germany's absolute
defeat and utter humiliation before every town
and hamlet in the whole Republic.
Thanks to the thorough work of the Committee
no American ever need worry, because, as some
have intimated in the past, the Mexicans believe
they could whip the United States. If that de-
ception ever existed in the minds of the Mexicans,
it has been eradicated entirely by their thorough
understanding of the tremendous accomplishments
of this country in the World War.
The work of the Committee on Public Informa-
tion is so interesting that it is worth while to quote
the following from its final report:
"It is a significant fact, and one which redounds
to the credit of the reputable, honorable journal-
ists of Mexico, that during the war there was not a
single newspaper or periodical in the Republic
which pleaded the German cause that was self-
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 155
sustaining. All were subsidized with German gold.
On the other hand, there was not one pro- Ameri-
can-Ally newspaper or periodical which was not
self-sustaining. The Mexico Section, directly or
indirectly, did not subsidize any publication. . .
From the outset it was assumed that the Mexican
press and public, or at least that portion of it
which was not debauched by German money and
German lies, was fair and receptive. This was
almost instantaneously proved. We worked al-
ways in the open. Official notice was served upon
the Mexican Government of the establishment of
the offices of the Committee in the City of Mexico
and of the purpose of the Committee in extending
its operations into Mexico. We hid nothing from
public view. . .It is a source of deep satisfaction
to be able to report that regardless of the obviously
difficult field in which we were forced to operate,
and the manifold opportunities which presented
themselves for complications which, had they
developed, would inevitably have bred embar-
rassment both for the Committee and for our
Government, the Mexico Section was fortunate
enough to conclude its labors without friction with
any of the federal, state, or local authorities of the
Republic. . .
Approximately 4,433,000 words of our daily
cable service were distributed to the Mexican
newspapers during the eleven months of the
existence of the Mexico Section. Mimeographed
copies of the daily despatches were prepared and a
total of 35,000 of them were distributed in the City
of Mexico to business firms, which displayed them
in show windows, to the foreign legations, to
156 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Mexican government officials, and to individuals.
Spanish translations of special articles prepared by
the Foreign Press Bureau of the Committee in
New York, and made suitable by careful editing
and revision for the Mexican field and the limited
space of the newspapers, were sent daily to the
sixty-five newspapers and periodicals on our list.
The record shows that nearly sixty per cent of this
material was used. . . To the newspapers also
supplementary daily news letters (virtually a
complete telegraphic service) were mailed, the
total being 178,000. For the benefit of persons
outside of Mexico who were interested in Mexican
affairs it was deemed expedient, and within the
functions of the Committee, to issue a weekly news
bulletin in English. . . Franking privileges
were granted by the Mexican Government for
both the news letter and the English bulletin. . .
No one who watched the operation of the school
and appreciated by observation the zest of the
students to learn English and the sympathetic
mental trend toward the United States inspired
among them in the process could fail to regret that
the classes might not have been continued per-
manently, and that some arrangement might not
be made for extending on a larger scale throughout
Mexico what the Committee accomplished in an
experimental way in the Capital."
' * \ * fc
All the information concerning America dis-
tributed by the Committee, the good impressions
made on Mexicans living in the United States
during the Revolution but now returning to their
homes, the idealism shown by us in the War, and
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 157
our actual demonstration of undreamed-of power,
along with a new open-mindedness and a realiza-
tion of the impossibility of isolated existence, which
the World War has forced on Mexico as well as on
the rest of the world all these things have
brought Mexico to a desire for friendship with the
United States which is the most outstanding thing
that a visitor to that country now notices.
I began to appreciate it immediately upon
entering the Republic in February, 1919. At
Monterrey I found the newspapers publishing
editorials running something like this: "We must
realize that Mexico needs to understand the
United States. We must live as next-door neigh-
bors to that country, whether we like it or not, so
we must find out how we can live in a friendly
way. We should not live back in 1847. Those
days are past and we must face up to the problem
of 1919."
A similar sentiment is expressed in the following
significant editorial from the Mexico City daily,
El Excelsior:
"As we view the matter, no more important
statements have been made for several years than
those of the Hon. Roberto V. Pesqueira in the
toast which he pronounced at the banquet given
by himself and Governor Mireles to the visiting
American newspaper men on March 3rd. The
influential position of Mr. Pesqueira as financial
agent of the Mexican Government at El Paso and
158 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
the presence at the same time of men who have
access to the influential papers in the United
States, make the words which he uttered seem all
the more weighty. Here is what he said : 'Mexico
has no intention of closing her frontiers, as China
once did, to keep out all foreigners. On the
contrary, she is disposed to receive with open
arms all who wish to come, provided they come in
good faith. Nor does this country propose to
make Article 27 of the revised Constitution retro-
active in its effects; the rights acquired prior to
the adoption of that document in 1917 are going
to be rigidly respected*.
We have purposely waited several days before
commenting to see if any correction or modifica-
tion of these striking statements would follow. It
struck us that there was a radical contrast between
the sentiments of extreme Jacobites and pseudo-
socialists whose one aim is the despoiling of the
rich, the bourgeois, and the foreigners in the name
of the revolutionary reprisals and these sane
suggestions as to the official purposes of our
Government.
Landed proprietors, mine owners, corporations,
oil men, manufacturers, the mass of our citizens
and country people, natives as well as foreigners,
can now breathe more easily. Henceforward they
can devote themselves without uneasiness to the
development of their interests which are, at the
same time, the interests of the country resting
secure in the rights which they have acquired.
Immigration from abroad, both of work hands and
of capital, lately so suspicious and shy of us, can
now be set going again.
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 159
According to Messrs. Pesqueira and Cabrera,
the Government cherishes no hatred of foreigners.
Whatever of such hatred exists must find its home
in this or that wayward heart or ill-balanced mind.
No longer is suspended over capital and invest-
ments the Damocles sword of the retroactive
quality of Article 27 or of any other, we venture
to add. As a matter of fact, the 'ultra-radicalism*
of Article 27, not to call it by a harsher, if more
accurate term, originated in the suspicion which
its very form implied that the intention of it was
to make a clean sweep of all the past, in virtue of
its retroactive application. On the other hand, if
it is true, as the same Constitution lays down in
Article 14, that neither this nor any other law can
be made of retroactive effect, this terrible article
ceases to be a matter of spoliation, violence, and
injustice, and, as applied to future developments,
may prove good, bad, or indifferent as the case
may be. Certainly it will no longer be odious and
ruinous, dissolvent of society itself, and disastrous
even for the workingman.
Only by proper respect for rights duly acquired
can changes be made in the control of properties,
even when such changes are demanded in the
interest of real progress. Progress must be made
compatible with the stability of peoples.
We congratulate most sincerely these spokesmen
and leaders of the revolutionary government for
their excellent political judgment. Once these
sentiments are carried into effect, and that without
partiality or trickery but in good faith and real
sincerity, they will have rendered an eminent
service to their country."
160 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Similar expressions from the press, government
officials, and the mass of the people, came to me as
I traveled all through the Republic.
One of the primary purposes of my latest visit
to Mexico was to investigate the question of
establishing in Mexico City a great educational
institution, backed by the people of the United
States and combining the best educational prin-
ciples, both of Mexico and of the United States,
in practical effort to solve Mexico's problem. Vari-
ous organizations and individuals have often
talked of the need of such an institution. But one
reason for its not being developed has been the fear
that the plan might not be welcomed by the Mexi-
can Government. Putting it squarely before the
Government and people was one of the surest
tests of their attitude toward the United States;
and yet everywhere I presented the subject there
was a hearty, unequivocal assurance of welcome
for such an institution. I put the question
directly to President Carranza and he assured me
of his approval and his belief that the institution
would do great good.
Here we are, then, after a hundred years of
misunderstanding, for which both Mexicans and
Americans have their full share of responsibility-
and if I had been addressing this chapter to Mexi-
cans I would have made their faults stand out
much more prominently ready to start upon a
MEXICANS AND AMERICANS 161
new era of friendly relations. If both peoples will
trust each other more fully, strive harder to under-
stand each other's point of view when difficulties
arise, and endeavor to be more helpful to each
other, we can solve the question of the mutual re-
lationships of these neighboring countries the
question which is undoubtedly one of the most
difficult before both the United States and Mexico.
CHAPTER V
THE PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO
What are the actual conditions in Mexico today?
In order to give the reader a general idea of this
subject, I am describing in this chapter some of my
experiences in a trip to the Republic in February
and March of 1919. The style of travel notes is
retained and the present tense refers to the two
months just mentioned.
One finds things in Mexico very different from
what he imagines them when feeding on New York
papers. No very definite information seems
available concerning trains in Mexico before one
gets to the border. Rumor has it that there are
no Pullmans, that trains run only every few days,
that they are "shot up" every once in a while,
and the like. But we found on arriving at Laredo
at eight a. m. that we could have our passports
visaed on the American side, take an automobile
across the river, have baggage examined at least
five different times by as many officials including
a fumigation, which meant only that a bulb of
chemicals was squeezed at one's valises and catch
the train going south at eleven a. m. We made
better time to Monterrey than I remember in all
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 163
the numerous times that I have covered this trip
before, arriving at 4 p. m. There were a number
of Americans on board, including the wives of two
mining men living away down in Concepci6n del
Oro, which is far removed from any center. Of
course, the State Department would not give them
passports, for it still insists on withholding these
necessary documents from those who wish to go
anywhere except a few of the large cities. This is
rather a ludicrous procedure, however, as after
one crosses the border, he has no more use for his
passport and can go wherever he pleases.
Monterrey is not as much the "Chicago of
Mexico" as it used to be before the Revolution. It
has suffered a good deal, and there is marked limi-
tation of business. Still, there is some building
going on, and one notices few "for rent" signs. The
large plant of the American Smelter and Refining
Company is at work, and it employs a good many
Americans. The steel plant and the smaller smel-
ter are also in operation, as are the brewery and
other manufacturing plants. Ten years ago there
were some four thousand Americans in Monterrey.
Now the average estimate is five hundred. The
Foreign Club, which includes English and French,
as well as American men, is a delightful little
place, where one gets the gossip and meets the best
element of the foreign colonies. The general
opinion expressed concerning politics is that
164 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Carranza will be able to serve out his term. There
are certainly no leaders of strength opposing him
at the present time. Several express the idea that
he believed that Germany was going to win the
War for some time, but now that he has seen his
mistake, he is more ready to deal on friendly terms
with Americans and with our Government than
ever before. , . The two great needs mentioned
everywhere are money and the bettering of the
railroad situation. The rolling stock on the rail-
roads is running down all the time, and very little is
being done to repair the engines and cars. Freight
cars were burned by the thousands during the Rev-
olution, and it is almost impossible to get cars to
move shipments. This has compelled many of the
leading companies to own their own engines and
cars. The Guggenheim smelter in Monterrey runs
trains on practically all the railroads in Mexico. I
am told they keep thirty or forty engines going
continually. They have built up their shops to
such an extent that they can practically rebuild
an engine, and they are continually taking the old,
worn-out engines and making them new.
I am told that the Government is having a very
hard time paying its bills. Duties have been put
up again recently, and every possible means of
revenue is used to its limit. , Nevertheless, the
teachers in Mexico City have Jpeen threatening a
strike because they have not been paid their
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 165
salaries for many weeks. In Monterrey the state
and municipal governments seem to have been
able to pay the salaries of the teachers and the
public schools are in good condition. A current
despatch from Mexico City says that 512 schools,
the same number as last year, have just been
opened. This means that more than fifty per cent,
of the children of school age in the Federal Dis-
trict will not be able to find places in the schools.
These 512 schools are classified as follows: ele-
mentary and grammar schools, 332; government
night schools, 42; government kindergartens, 13;
private primary schools, 72; private foreign
schools, 45; private kindergartens, 8. Of the 332
elementary schools, 166 are in the capital and
the same number are distributed among the
municipalities. It is interesting to note, however,
that this is a larger provision for primary education
in the Federal District than was made in any year
of the Diaz administration.
American firms in Monterrey are rejoicing over
the fact that the embargo on merchandise has been
removed by the United States, and great quantities
of goods that have been held on the border for
months are now rolling into the country, making
business very prosperous. An American paper and
printing house was found to be enlarging its ware-
rooms, making space for practically $100,000 worth
of additional stock that is expected soon. "You
166 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
expect to do some business in spite of the Revo-
lution," I said to the general agent. "We have
never been closed all the time since the Revolution
began," he replied. "We have always been open
for business, and expect to be. The volume of our
business today is larger than it was in the 'good
old days' of eight or ten years ago."
The striking changes that several mentioned to
me in Monterrey were that there is a great deal
less drinking and that the demand for books is
very much larger. These two things were not put
together by those who mentioned them, but it is
interesting to look at them at the same time. Most
of the reading matter has been brought from
Spain. One local bookdealer imports very often a
bill of $10,000 or $15,000 worth of books from
Spain. Germany formerly shipped a good many
books into Mexico also, as the Germans were great
translators. Most of the American books, such as
James* "Talks to Teachers" and Emerson's "Es-
says," have been translated into Spanish by Ger-
man firms. Now that the German exporters are
not so active, there is a great opportunity for
others to take their places. There is an increasing
demand for American books. If the American
publishers would enter this field they could find
large business.
Apropos of the matter of reading, one of the
most interesting things in Monterrey today is the
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 167
reading room on the main plaza, supported by the
American and other foreign colonists. This was
opened in order to give the public an opportunity
to get the real facts concerning the War. The walls
are lined with the most beautiful of the American
and French posters. The tables are filled not
simply with books of propaganda for the Allies,
but with all kinds of good reading matter. Every
time I passed the room it was crowded with
readers. This is only one of the good things that
the American colony has been carrying on during
the War in order to keep pro-Ally sentiment
dominant, and they have accomplished this pur-
pose in a remarkable way. Monterrey has been
overwhelmingly pro-Ally, in spite of the fact that
the German colony numbers among it some of the
most prominent business men in the city.
Though there are only a few American business
men in Monterrey, they are active and wide-awake
and an American chamber of commerce is in
process of organization there. A little American
school is well supported and makes living condi-
tions a good deal more satisfactory. The Young
Men's Christian Association, the Laurens Insti-
tute, and the Christian Institute, all sustained
by American organizations, are doing splendid
work. The first named has been greatly handi-
capped by its lack of a building, and hopes to be
able soon to begin the erection of an adequate
168 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
plant. "The Young Men's Christian Association
is the best American propaganda that we can
possibly have in this country," said a business
man. "We ought to have two here, however, one
for the city branch, and the other out by the rail-
road as an industrial branch."
Business is developing along many lines. The
representatives of Henry Ford, who is expecting
to establish two or three plants for the manufac-
ture of tractors in Mexican cities, have recently
visited Monterrey, and it is hoped that one plant
will be located there. An excursion of Texas
business men is due to arrive in a very short while.
This excursion will take in the main cities of
Mexico. There is a considerable movement on
now among the different commercial bodies to
develop an export business, shipping more of Mexi-
co's products to other parts of the world. The
brewing interests here figure that they should
capture a good deal of the trade of Central and
South America with the closing of the breweries
in the United States. There are also indications
that the breweries in the United States are ex-
pecting to ship large amounts of their machinery
to Mexico and continue business here.
One meets with many bright young Mexicans
who have just come from the United States. One
of a group of them with whom I talked had visited
nearly all of our cities, including San Antonio,
\
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 169
St. Louis, Chicago, New York, and many of the
manufacturing centers of New England. He said
he had gone very much prejudiced against the
United States, but what he had seen, not only of
the power in the industrial life of the country, but
also of the remarkable patriotism shown during
the War, had made him return to Mexico as one
who would give his time to propagating ideas of
friendship between the two countries. The others
spoke along the same lines. They spoke of the
great good that could be done by scholarships for
Mexicans to study in American institutions. This
would be one of the best ways to build up an under-
standing between the two countries. All of the
young men said that they were greatly prejudiced
against the United States before they visited there.
They talked very frankly about the weaknesses of
the Latin races their unwillingness to save, their
lack of respect for women, their desire to "show
off" and to appear better than they are. They gave
historical reasons for these things, and felt that if
they could know the United States better, they
could the more easily overcome these defects.
The editorials in the papers are more friendly
than I have ever seen them in Mexico before.
One appeared in a Monterrey paper, reciting the
reasons why Mexicans were prejudiced against
the United States, but saying that there is no use
in denying that the United States is the greatest
i;o INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
country in the world, and that the sooner Mexico
begins to study her institutions, to find out the
cause of her greatness, and to imitate her in certain
respects, the better it will be for the nation.
Saltillo is a beautiful little city seventy miles
south of Monterrey, up in the mountains. It is
often called by its friends the Athens of Mexico.
One feels the atmosphere of culture probably
more here than in any other Mexican city. While
it has a population of only 35,000 people, it has
furnished many of the citizens who have become
prominent in the life of the Republic. Saltillo
naturally reminds one of President Carranza. I
often talked with him in the State House concern-
ing educational problems while he was serving as
governor. In those days he referred several times
to the fact that President Madero was insisting
upon his taking a place in his cabinet, but he said
that he had consistently refused because of his
desire to work out the problems of taxation and
education in his own state. I have never been
able to understand how some people have main-
tained that Carranza was plotting a rebellion
against Madero, for there was certainly no evi-
dence of it in those days. He retained his loyalty
to his chief up until the death of the latter. When
Madero was succeeded by Huerta, Carranza was
the first governor of a Mexican state to denounce
the usurpation of power and he gathered together
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 171
at Saltillo the first part of his army in opposition to
Huerta's anti-constitutional act, thus originating
the name of Carranza's party as the "Constitu-
tionalists."
Walking along the streets of Saltillo, I met three
young men who used to be classmates at the
People's Institute in Piedras Negras. They were
standing in front of a moving picture theater, and
two of them explained that they were proprietors
of the show. They invited me in to see the Ameri-
can film that was being shown, explaining that
they had recently taken charge of the theater and
were showing all American films. They had en-
tirely renovated the theater and taken the galleries
down, making only one big floor. One reason
why they did this was to emphasize the democracy
which should prevail among the people. These
young fellows were working in the railroad shops
when they were in the People's Institute. They
had gotten their ideas of progress from the night
classes and debating club there and were now
carrying them out in practical life. Introducing
American films and having the audience sit in
democratic fashion all on the same floor was their
Latin idealistic way of introducing Americanism,
in which they were firm believers. The other
young man, who had been a student in the Insti-
tute, asked me to go to the hotel and see the line
of samples that he was carrying for a wholesale
172 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
house in the United States. He showed me his
order book, containing several thousand dollars'
worth of orders which he had sold during the two
days that he had been in the city. I noticed so
many dozen pairs of shoes at seven, eight, ten
dollars a pair; so many hats, ranging from three-
fifty to ten dollars each. He said that he was
having a very large business in every town where
he showed his samples, for people were anxious
for American goods. The duties were included in
the prices quoted, so that the merchants would
know exactly how much their goods would cost
them laid down.
Saltillo has always been a liberal city and
Americans have felt at home there. Fortunately
some of them, like the lamented Consul Silliman,
have been known far and wide for their honorable
character and their friendly interest in the Mexi-
can people.
San Luis Potosi is the next city of impor-
tance south of Saltillo. It is about as near the
geographical center of Mexico as one can get.
This may indicate why it is what one might call
a "middle of the road" town that is to say, it
neither shows very much American influence, as
does the city of Monterrey, nor is it preponderantly
Indian as are Zacatecas and Guanajuato. The
streets are beautifully paved and plazas are every-
where. The city possesses a most attractive
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 173
market, one of the finest theaters in the republic,
which would do credit to any American city,
innumerable Catholic churches a few of them
rare gems of architecture and modern sewer and
water systems.
The first impression of the traveler here, as in
other cities visited, after having read so much
about chaotic conditions, is one of surprise that
the world is moving along with so little distur-
bance. The old American resident naturally
misses the large American colony. Still, there
are some Americans who have stayed through the
entire Revolution. How have they been treated?
Except in rare cases, the only bad treatment re-
ported by those who have been here continually
was received, as already stated, from the Huerta
forces at the time the United States took Vera
Cruz. The various revolutionary leaders, from
Carranza down, have generally treated the Ameri-
cans well, except when they have forced loans
from them and in other ways replenished their
depleted treasuries. Many of the "generals" who
have commanded the revolutionary armies are far
from being what they should be. There is an
American grocer in San Luis Potosi, who has been
in business here for some twenty years. He came
as a mere boy, with a very small capital, and for
many years increased his capital at a very rapid
rate. He said, however, that he was figuring up
174 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
the other day and found out that he was just
where he was seven years ago. In 1917, when con-
ditions were more disturbed here than at any
other time, the revolutionary leaders took from
him altogether 56,000 pesos. He had either to
pay these exorbitant demands or have the store
taken away from him. He has also lost about
2,200 head of cattle from his ranch, which he
owns as a result of the growth of his business in
Mexico.
Another interesting American, who has been in
San Luis for more than thirty years, is a lady
whose husband was born and reared in Persia,
being the nephew of one of the Shahs of Persia.
While his father was governor of one of the prov-
inces, he was assassinated. The children were
compelled to leave Persia, so came to the United
States. When one of them was lost, the brother
now living here came to the border of Mexico
seeking him. He did not find his brother, but met
Juarez, who at that time was defending the coun-
try against Maximilian, and the young Persian
joined Juarez's army. Later he went back to the
United States, married a Tennessee girl and re-
turned to Mexico. One would hardly find a more
beautifully appointed home in New York than
these people have here in San Luis. It is marve-
lous to be shown around their home and see their
wonderful collection of china and Mexican paint-
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 175
ings, and to realize that none of these have been
ever threatened during the years of revolution. I
say it is marvelous it doesn't seem so after one
is there, but I am sure the story will sound strange
in New York.
The Americans who have remained in Mexico
throughout the Revolution are the ones who now
seem to have the most hope for the country.
Small property owners and salaried men generally
recognize that the present authorities are making
a little headway against tremendous odds, and
believe that conditions will continue gradually to
improve. They recognize as the worst element in
the situation the graft in the lesser government
officials, and especially among the numerous
"generals" of the Army, who are often arbitrary
and cruel in their dealings with the people. They
are willing to admit that it has probably been
impossible for President Carranza to weed out
this unsatisfactory element because of the possi-
bility of their turning against him, in which case
he would lose more ground than he would gain.
One merchant, who has suffered a good deal from
the demands for special contributions to maintain
the Army, said : "These demands seem very hard
and unjust, yet one can not think, when it is a
question of life and death with the Government,
that he can expect to escape paying his share
toward the maintenance of the Army."
176 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Some of the oil men, however, do not seem to
share in this philosophical view of things. One of
them said : "I think it was a mistake for a representa-
tive of the oil interests to go to the Peace Confer-
ence to decide questions concerning Mexico. It
would be unfortunate for the Peace Conference to
take up the Mexican question." When I asked him
why, he replied: "Because of President Wilson's
influence there. What we want is to wait until
1920 and then the oil men, under a new President,
will demand and secure justice from Mexico." He
said that Americans were less liked in Mexico now
than they had ever been before. When I told him
that this was quite different from what other
Americans and Mexicans had said to me, he seemed
greatly surprised. He admitted, however, that he
had not been outside of the Tampico district.
The oil question here is followed with the keenest
interest by both Mexicans and Americans. The
sending of a representative of the oil interests to
the Peace Conference is sharply resented by the
Mexicans. Some reference to it appears in almost
every paper. El Universal of Mexico City every
week devotes a solid page to a discussion by a
lawyer of the legal questions involved in the oil
problem. His conclusion is that legally the nation
has a right to declare the subsoil products national
property, but he recognizes that the advisability of
doing so at present as regards oil is another
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 177
question. Every Mexican I have talked with,
including Ambassador Bonillas, insists that Mexico
has no intention whatever of confiscating any
property. The oil men are naturally not content
with any such general assurances.
The American consul in San Luis, who has
served in many parts of the world, including
South America, and who left Germany only a
little while before war was declared, speaks in the
highest terms of the lower class Mexican. Last year
he viseed the passports of over 2,000 Mexican
workmen who were going to the United States to
live. They were a fine class of people. All of
them had sufficient money to pay their fare to
their destination in the United States, and would
make good citizens of that country. He says he
never dealt with a more kindly and sincere people.
Most of these emigrants have kinsfolk in the
United States. They come from various states to
the south, San Luis being the first American con-
sulate they find. This is only one indication of the
fact that this is the gathering place for people from
the most densely populated parts of Mexico.
Whereas the city had a population of about 80,000
at the beginning of the Revolution, it is estimated
that there are at least 125,000 here at the present
time, the increase consisting chiefly of people from
the country round about who sought safety in the
city.
178 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
The smelter operated by the American Metals
Company has been reopened now for several
months, though it is not running at full force yet.
The San Pedro and several other mines near here
are being worked. The prospect is that others
that have been closed for some time will be
opened.
The Governor of the state is one of the bright
young men with a modern viewpoint, inexperi-
enced, but with the best purposes, who are today so
often found at the head of state governments in
Mexico. He was educated in the Anglo-American
College in Aguascalientes as a boy and learned
there to speak English. He has made one exten-
sive trip through the United States.
Asked as to whether the majority of people in
San Luis were pro- Ally or pro-German, he said,
"Me and my friends are all Allies." He intimated
that the German sentiment had been quite strong
in San Luis. He told of the large English company
which owns the sulphur mines near here proba-
bly the largest sulphur mines in Mexico and
had been selling its product to the German Gov-
ernment for many years, not knowing to what use
it was to be put. A German company had recently
slipped into one of these mines which an English
company had abandoned several years ago, and is
now working next door to the large English
company and causing them a deal of trouble. It
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 179
was a bad oversight on the part of the American
manager to allow this, and the firm was put on
the United States blacklist for a while because of it.
The Governor was of the opinion that the Mexi-
can Government in the past has been quite the op-
posite of what it ought to be. The people have
expected the Government to do everything, when
really it should be considered a servant of the
people and encourage them to do things for them-
selves. For this reason he favored the develop-
ment of private schools, which would put the bur-
den on the parents of the children themselves,
making them pay for the things they get and
thereby bringing about an appreciation of the
schools. Now the Government opens the schools,
pays for the books and all material, and then has
to compel the people to send their children. This
is not the fact, he thinks, with those who have
learned the value of education, but with the very
poor who little appreciate the need of schooling.
Some hundred and fifty miles due west from San
Luis is the city of Aguascalientes. It is known as
a health resort, and people come here from all
parts of the country, especially for the fine baths.
True to its name, great streams of hot water are
found running through the city streets. Aguas-
calientes is also a great industrial center. The
largest railroad shops in the country are here, as is
also one of the largest smelters of the Guggenheim
i8o INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
interests. Neither of these institutions is working
at full capacity at the time of this visit, however.
On account of the lowering of the price of copper,
the smelter is running with a very much reduced
force. The railroad shops are crammed full of old
engines that have been more or less wrecked during
the Revolution. These are not being repaired
with anything like the rapidity that they should be.
The ordinary population of Aguascalientes is
about 55,000, but because of the difficult financial
situation through which the city has passed for the
last several years, it is probable that there are not
so many people there now. The stores, however,
have a splendid assortment of goods, and there are
fewer beggars than in San Luis. The American
consul here, like the one in San Luis, reports
Mexican migration to the United States to work
on the railroads and in the mines. The consul
received word a little while before the armistice
was declared that the railroads in the southern
part of the United States could easily use 50,000
Mexicans as track workers. Now that the War is
over, however, the demand for Mexican workmen
is not likely to be nearly so great. As long as they
can make $3.50 a day as track workers, and $6.00
or $8.00 a day in semi-skilled lines, they will prob-
ably continue to enter the United States. A large
number of them go for only a short time and then
return to their homes.
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 181
This is one of the most thickly populated dis-
tricts in Mexico. Around the railroad station and
shops the Americans, who formerly had charge of
the railroad, have built a beautiful colony, all of
the buildings being of brick architecture. Out
beyond the colony are the famous hot water baths,
which are approached by a beautiful drive lined
with some very handsome homes. While this part
of the city gives evidence of neglect at the present
time, no doubt in the next few years, as the world
comes as it must come to seek the riches of
Mexico, this will be one of the finest suburbs in any
Mexican city. As we walked along this beautiful
avenue we saw a strange sight for Mexico young
Mexican lads on very fine ponies, playing polo.
Certainly there is hope for the country when these
young fellows, without any foreigner leading them,
are taking up such games. How many revolutions
the country would have been saved, if in the past
young Mexicans had learned to be good losers by
being reared on the competitive games, such as
baseball and football, which play such a large part
in the education of the Anglo-Saxon youth !
One who has known this region for many years
and was sent in the fall of 1918 to make a report of
conditions to his organization says :
"In the whole northern district I have noted a
decided if not remarkable improvement over con-
ditions obtaining last year. The railroad service
1 82 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
is not improved and one is subject to great delay
and inconvenience in getting from place to place.
The danger from bandits and the losses caused by
incursions of armed bands have decreased. I have
noted a much larger extent of land under cultiva-
tion. There are fewer beggars and starved-looking
people at the stations. In Fresnillo, in Concepcion,
and in San Luis Potosi, mining operations and the
treatment of ores by the cyanide and smelting
processes were carried out on a more extensive
scale, thus furnishing employment to a larger
number of people."
Zacatecas is the state immediately north of
Aguascalientes, and its capital city, like most state
capitals in Mexico, bears the name of the state.
Zacatecas is one of the states that have suffered
most from the Revolution. Mining being the prin-
cipal industry and it having been almost impossible
to get ore to the market, workmen have had little
to do, and the economic conditions are the worst
seen in the Republic. The city of Zacatecas,
which used to have a population of 35,000 or more,
now probably has not many more than half that
number. It was here that one of the hardest-fought
battles of the Revolution took place, when Villa
took the city from the Federalists. A high hill
called "La Bufa" dominates the city, towering
something like 1,500 feet immediately above it.
The revolutionists placed their cannon on that
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 183
high spot and poured fire into the city for several
days. Many effects of the battle can be seen at the
present time.
Zacatecas is one of the most picturesque cities
in the whole world. The approach to it is made by
many winding passes through the mountains. The
city seems to be now on one side and now on the
other side of the train. A little mule car is at the sta-
tion awaiting the passengers. Here there are no
coaches or automobiles for hire. All of the passen-
gers, with their baggage, pile into the little mule
car and ride to the city, a mile and a half away.
The hotels are delighted to see a foreigner or two,
and the whole city especially the numerous beg-
gars seems to be thrown into commotion, for
there are very few travelers who have business in
Zacatecas these days.
The one live, progressive thing we found about
the city was the Governor. He is a young fellow,
scarcely past thirty, a native of Zacatecas, who
volunteered as a common soldier in the revolution-
ary army, and has worked himself up through the
various grades of service, having fought all the
way from Sonora to Yucatan. Some of the citizens
reported that he is quite a Socialist and a good
friend to the laboring men. When I called upon
him and intimated that I was interested in closer
relations between Mexico and the United States,
he received me most enthusiastically. An account
1 84 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
of his having placed two thousand families on their
own land during the last year was given in Chap-
ter II.
The outstanding experience in my visit to
Mexico City, during the trip in the spring of 1919
which this chapter describes, was an interview with
President Carranza in the National Palace. We
discussed principally the relations between the
United States and Mexico and the improving situa-
tion in Mexico itself. The President I found much
preoccupied with what seems to him to be a
concerted action on the part of the press in the
United States to give the impression that Amer-
icans are not liked or wanted in Mexico. I
sat down immediately after the interview and
wrote out the following, which I believe is very
close to a literal translation of what the President
said, and which his friends to whom I showed it,
agreed as representing him :
"You have now been in the Republic, traveling
in all parts of the country. You have lived in
Mexico for many years, and know our people.
Have you seen in your visit indication that
Americans are treated any differently from any
other people, that they are persecuted in any
way, that they are not received with cordiality by
government officials as well as by the people
generally? We deeply appreciate what many
Americans business men, missionaries, tourists-
are doing to inform the people of the United
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 185
States concerning the actual conditions in Mexico.
But notwithstanding the efforts of these few, on
the other hand there seems to be an organized
propaganda in the United States to depreciate the
Mexican Government and the Mexican people,
by making Americans think that their fellow-
citizens are ill-treated in Mexico and that they are
not wanted here at all.
As you have traveled around, no doubt you find
a great difference between conditions here now and
two years ago, when you last visited us. You see
the improved economic conditions. You see less
evidence of military rule. You see new life devel-
oping everywhere. Go to our theaters they are
full. Go to our moving picture shows you can
hardly find a seat. Look at the automobile taxi
service, one of the finest to be found anywhere,
with hundreds of new machines serving the public.
Prices are not exorbitant. Our schools are opening
and functioning. Some of the best minds Mexico
has produced, both young men and those who have
been connected with education for many years,
are giving themselves to solving our difficult edu-
cational problems. Trains are running on all lines.
Crops are more universally planted this year than
for a long time. Now these are the things we
would like the people in the United States to know.
We do not want any fulsome praise, we do not
want any one to shut his eyes to the fact that all
our problems are not yet solved. We do not ask
favors. We simply ask that the truth in fairness
be known.
Of course, there are bands which plunder in
different parts of the country; there are assassins
1 86 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
and robbers whom we have not yet been able to
catch. We are not able to set a policeman to
follow every individual in the Republic. But what
country, after long years of war, has not found it-
self in these conditions! When the United States
had a large Indian population, did they not
murder your people on the frontiers? After the
Civil War, were your trains not blown up and
robbed? Did you not have bandits who lived in
rough country for years, breaking out here and
there, robbing and killing, without the authorities
being able to catch them?
Have you been to Tampico yet? That is the
center, it seems to me, of most of the misunder-
standing between the United States and Mexico.
We are trying to do everything in our power to
give protection to the Americans in that district,
but we find some of them entirely unwilling to
cooperate with us. There are certain organizations
which have given contributions to the bandit
Pelaez, which enable him to carry on his nefarious
business. The complaints have been that the
bandits attack paymasters and, of course, we
know that that is actually true. So the Govern-
ment gave orders that no paymasters should be
sent out without having an official army escort.
There have been many cases, however, when
these escorts have been refused and the bandits
notified when the paymasters would pass certain
places, in order that they might be assaulted and
their money taken, thus giving aid to the bandits
without appearing to do so.
We need all possible help from every one inter-
ested in fair play and international friendship to
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 187
solve this delicate problem. There is no real reason
of which I know for our two peoples not getting
along together. Of course, the problems are great,
but they are not insurmountable if we will work
honestly together for their solution."
The President was kind enough to go into further
detail and to allow me all the time I wished to
explain the state of public opinion in the United
States toward Mexico. I assured him that simply
because there were a number of articles against
Mexico appearing in the North American press,
practically all of which are quoted in the daily
papers in Mexico City, it is not a foregone conclu-
sion that these articles represent the general feel-
ing in our country ; that the people of the United
States have learned to read the newspapers, and
they do not by any means believe all that the
newspapers report. He seemed gratified to be
assured that the great majority of the American
people have nothing but the kindliest feelings
toward Mexico and an earnest desire to help their
neighbor in an unselfish way in its great problem
of reconstruction.
I find the President the same quiet, unosten-
tatious, earnest democrat whom I had known years
ago in Coahuila. In fact, it seems to me that he
has left off some of his sternness and has become
more mellowed and sympathetic, with the heavy
responsibilities he is carrying. He is looking more
188 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
rested, and is carrying more flesh than at any other
time I have seen him since he took up the fight
against Huerta.
Before my own interview I presented, by pre-
vious arrangement, the secretaries of some ten
missionary boards in the United States, who are
now in Mexico City attending a conference of
Christian workers, where a large, comprehensive
program is being developed for the establishment
of colleges, normal schools, agricultural and me-
chanical schools, social settlements, hospitals, and
churches in practically every part of the Republic.
The president of the conference explained to Presi-
dent Carranza that the conference is being held to
study how the program of the American missionary
societies might be enlarged and made more
efficient, emphasizing the fact that none of them
has any interest in Mexico except the desire to be
helpful to a neighboring people.
The President said that he greatly appreciated
the privilege of speaking to this delegation, repre-
senting some 15,000,000 members of Christian
churches in North America and assured them that
now, as always, he believed in the efficacy of the
American missionary work in Mexico. He was
delighted with the educational program which had
been outlined to him, and he felt sure that there
was no reason why it should not be carried out
with the sympathy of the Government and the
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 189
help of the people. As for the agricultural schools,
they could do great good in helping to solve the
land problem, but he recommended that they have
rather short courses, not too technical or far re-
moved from the people, and return the students to
the land as soon as possible.
He said he appreciated the fact that the mis-
sionaries had done all in their power to befriend
Mexico, and to spread the right impressions of this
country in the United States, and he hoped that
when this company returned to the United States
it would do what it could to let the people know
that there is no prejudice or ill feeling toward the
American people, that the Government and Mexi-
can people are as friendly to them as to any other
foreigners, and that the country is developing
slowly but surely. "We do not want you to say
anything that you do not feel, or represent condi-
tions differently from what you have found them,
but those of you who visited the country two years
ago can see the great improvements, and we would
like this fact to be known in your country."
Before any such suggestion had come from the
President, the conference had adopted the follow-
ing resolution, which represents the feeling not
only of the Americans visiting the country, but
also the missionaries resident there.
"The Conference of Christian Workers meeting
in the City of Mexico, February 17-22, 1919,
i 9 o INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
wishes to express its deep gratitude for the cordial
way in which it has been received by all the people
and for the fact that improved conditions and the
open-mindedness of the people permit Christian
work to be carried on in all parts of the Republic,
with protection and welcome for the workers.
The twenty delegates from the United States,
before arriving at the Capital, have visited' their
work in all sections of the country, the routes of
some being through Nogales, Sonora, Sinaloa, and
Guadalajara, others through El Paso, Chihuahua,
Zacatecas, and Aguascalientes, others through
Laredo, Monterrey, and Saltillo, others through
Matamoros, Victoria, Tampico, and San Luis
Potosi, and others through Vera Cruz, Jalapa, and
Puebla. Such travel has been attended with no
untoward incident whatever, and with a far
greater degree of comfort than was anticipated.
Many encouraging evidences were found of the
fact that the country is slowly but surely returning
to normal conditions, socially, economically, and
politically. While some outlying districts are still
greatly disturbed, practically all the centers ex-
hibit stable conditions.
We recognize keenly the many difficulties
against which the Government is working in re-
storing the country to a normal life, and register
our hearty sympathy with the Mexican people in
their earnest struggle toward real democracy.
We pledge ourselves to do all within our power
to promote a closer friendship and clearer under-
standing between the two neighboring republics,
both by making known in the United States the
real developments and deep aspirations we have
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 191
found among the Mexican people, and by encour-
aging in every possible way the increase of those
institutions and movements which are set to aid
Mexico in her struggle toward a new life."
While waiting in the ante-room to see the Presi-
dent, I was greatly impressed by the difference
between the great throng around the National
Palace which I saw today and that which I
watched as I spent hours in the Palace two years
ago. Then it was a very "Bolshevik" company.
Most of them were "generals," wearing sadly faded
uniforms and many queer costumes, and there
were many common soldiers, some of whom I
think even wore the white trousers and sandals
which are the costume of the pure Indian. But
today the crowd was very different, showing a
pleasing degree of culture. It was encouraging,
on shaking hands with two of my old friends,
who I had heard were "generals," to have them
say to me that they had retired from the army
and were now cultivating land in Sonora.
One day in Mexico City was spent with the edu-
cators. I was invited to address the assembly of
the National Preparatory School at eight o'clock
in the morning. This school has an enrolment at
present of about 700, a small number of whom are
young women. The courses are similar to those
in our high schools and would include probably the
first two years of our college course. Graduates of
192 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
this school are ready to enter the professional
schools of law, medicine, and engineering. Pro-
fessor Moises Saenz is the Director. He was edu-
cated in Washington and Jefferson University, and
was superintendent of the public schools for sev-
eral years in Guanajuato. He had invited several
other American educators to be present at the
assembly the morning of my visit. As there had
been some feeling against foreigners manifested in
the school, we thought it very unwise for all of us
to appear on the platform, but he insisted, and said
that the spirit of the school had changed to such
an extent that any number of Americans would be
welcome.
I spoke of the new day in the educational, po-
litical, and social world. When I used as an illus-
tration of how small the world was growing, the
fact that President Wilson went across the seas to
attend the Peace Conference, returned to the
United States for a few days and then went back
to Paris, breaking all national precedents, the 700
students broke forth in enthusiastic cheers, which
lasted for a remarkably long time. This was
spoken of by all who had known the spirit of the
school in the past as a remarkable demonstration
of the new life that has recently been developed in
the school under the direction of its American-
trained principal.
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 193
When this young man with North American
educational ideals took charge of the school two
years ago, there was practically a spirit of anarchy.
The pupils would rise up in class and tell the pro-
fessor to leave the room, saying that he knew
nothing about the subject he was teaching. It was
impossible to have any kind of an assembly. The
students would not attend, even if it was made
obligatory. On the morning to which I refer,
however, every student enrolled in the entire
institution was present, although the attendance
of only the first year pupils was required. I have
never seen a finer sight than those 700 bright
young people, arranged in the magnificent amphi-
theater of one of the finest school buildings in the
Republic. There were several recitations and
musical numbers, one of which was given by the
grandson of the celebrated Mexican poet, Juan de
Dios Peza. When the Director proposed that the
students sent their greetings by us to the students
in other parts of America they arose en masse and
cheered the suggestion to the echo, lending empha-
sis to it by singing the beautiful Mexican anthem,
in which the young women rendered the verse and
all the 700 voices united in a mighty chorus.
After the exercises they assembled in the patio,
where I took their photograph. This seemed to
please them and they surrounded me, so that it
was with great difficulty that I was able to make
194 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
my way back to the Director's office. They had
evidently caught the holiday spirit and, regarding
me as their friend, began shouting the request that
I should ask the Director for "un dm" a day of
vacation.
Following this visit, I attended the thirty-second
anniversary of the founding of the normal school
of Mexico City. This took the form of a great
banquet in the corridors of their magnificent
building, which was attended by about 600 edu-
cators and public school teachers. I had the
privilege of sitting within the inner circle at the
speakers' table, where were present Professor
Eliseo Garcia, Director-General of Public Educa-
tion, Lie. Jose Natividad Macias, Rector of the
National University, Professor Alfonso Herrera,
Secretary of Instruction of Mexico City, Sr.
Miguel Torner and Dr. Luis Coyula, Commis-
sioners of Public Instruction of the municipal
government, Professor Moises Saenz, Director of
the National Preparatory School, Arturo Pichardo,
Emilio Bustamente, Francisco Santoyo, Diputado
Alberto Romero, Daniel Alaves, Sostenes Chapa,
and other leading educators.
After a bountiful meal, which was interspersed
with beautiful music from a military band and
many interruptions by multitudinous photogra-
phers, different speakers, without seeming to follow
any formal program, arose spontaneously to give
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 195
their ideas on education. One orator pessimistic-
ally deprecated the fact that education in Mexico
had so far accomplished so little, and called for a
new program. He was followed by another, whose
principal theme was that the Mexican teachers
must take Christ for their ideal, both as a teacher
and as one who suffered for great principles. A
third regretted the fact that a previous speaker
had spoken disparagingly of the past, and advo-
cated the union of all teachers for the great work
they had before them. A fourth speaker cited the
remarkable development of a league between the
teachers and the labor unions in Mexico City dur-
ing the last few months. He was followed by a
fiery young orator from a labor union, who said
that this was the first banquet he had ever at-
tended, the first time that his hard hands had ever
been able to strike in friendly salute 1;he soft,
pliable hand of the teacher. He went on to say
that the laboring classes were awakening, that
they were anxious to learn, that they were realiz-
ing how much of the great world beyond has
escaped their notice, and were anxious to form an
alliance with the teachers and make their influence
felt along with those who possess intellectual
power, in order that the new life of the nation
might be kept steady in its contribution to the
development of the whole people.
196 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
The Director-General of public instruction
closed the program with a beautiful appeal to all
present to work together enthusiastically, in spite
of the tremendous financial difficulties with which
they are confronted. When the Government had
little money to buy for them their needed equip-
ment, when all kinds of difficulties were facing
them, he said, they must continue faithful to their
task of education, which would prove to be the
salvation of the nation.
In private conversation, various teachers indi-
cated to me the great difficulties they are having
in their schools because of the fact that the Govern-
ment does not have the money to support them.
The National Preparatory School has been en-
deavoring to put in a physical department, and has
tried in many ways to get an athletic field, but it
has been impossible so far because there was no
money to finance it. And so it is with practically
every department in all of the schools. It is
sad to see such a splendid, consecrated corps of
young men and young women, who impress one as
having the real missionary spirit, deprived of the
financial support so necessary for the accomplish-
ment of their work. Nothing could possibly be
more encouraging than a day spent with these
earnest men and women who, in spite of small
salaries received often weeks and months behind
time, in spite of political vicissitudes and uncer-
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 197
tainties of position, are giving themselves so un-
reservedly to the problem of education.
Athletics are coming to be a recognized part of
the educational program. All acquainted with
Latin-American schools know that in the past the
physical departments have been conspicuous by
their absence. The Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation has recently been requested to organize
athletics in some of the Mexico City institutions,
and such activities have become contagious in
many of the schools of the Republic. Last fall
there was a great athletic meet in Mexico City, in
which more than 200 athletes took part, with all
of the college cheers, rooting, singing, and enthusi-
asm that one would find at such a meet in the
United States. The schools of Saltillo are prepar-
ing a similar meet, and arrangements are being
made for a carload of representatives from the
National Preparatory School to attend, as will also
representatives from schools in Monterrey, Tor-
reon, Tampico, Durango, and other cities.
The teachers are concerned about the question
of textbooks. One bookstore in Mexico City has
practically dominated the whole textbook ques-
tion. Formerly a special committee appointed by
the National Advisory Committee on Education
passed on textbooks and the Government itself
would give an order for as many thousands or
hundreds of thousands of textbooks as were
198 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
needed. Recently, however, various districts
have been left to select their own textbooks. As
much of the educational system is under the influ-
ence of teachers who have been educated in the
United States, they are now using a great many
of the textbooks to which they became accustomed
in their student life. The firm which has had the
monopoly of business for a long time has become
very much exercised over the fact that American
textbooks are being brought in. It even presented
a petition to the last Congress, in an endeavor to
have the professors discharged because they had
departed from the customary patronage of that
house. No attention, however, was paid to the
petition. When the firm was forced to carry cer-
tain American textbooks, it charged about three
times the legitimate price, so that an American
book which was sold by the Mexican firm for $6.50
(pesos) was afterward ordered in quantity and
sold by the director of one of the schools to the
pupils for $2.25 (pesos) . There is a splendid oppor-
tunity for the publishers of American textbooks,
not only in Spanish but in English, to enter the
market in Mexico at the present time. The
Government does not have the funds to buy the
books, generally, so it is a question of convincing
the individual directors of schools of the servicea-
bility of the textbooks. There is a great need for
the opening of an American bookstore in Mexico,
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 199
where our best English literature can be secured
along with the books American firms are in-
creasingly publishing in Spanish. Of course such a
store should carry also a well-assorted stock of the
best Spanish literature, published in Spain and in
other parts of the Spanish-speaking world.
Life in Mexico City, as in practically all the
state capitals, was going along about as usual in
the spring of 1919. In some cities it is more lively,
as the population has been swelled by additions
from the country districts, made unsafe by the
Revolution. Business is generally good. A large
American printing supply house sold during a
recent six weeks in Mexico City fifteen linotypes
and eight large self-feeding presses. That is
simply one illustration of the way that business is
going along.
Pavlowa, the dancer, was at about the same time
having a run in the city. When the largest theater
in the city proved too small for the crowd, she
resorted to the bull ring! This great modern
coliseum holds 20,000 people and in the old days
was filled every Sunday afternoon with devotees of
the ancient Spanish sport. But Carranza does not
allow bull fights in the Federal District, though
some states still have them, as the question is left
to each state to decide. And so grand opera and
other high-priced attractions take advantage of the
great out-door auditorium and Mexico's magnifi-
200 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
cent climate, and play to the biggest audiences.
That people pay from one to five pesos apiece
many times during the theater season to see high-
class attractions is only one illustration of how
business is proceeding in the capital.
A f ellow- visitor l reports the following typical
replies to questions concerning the business out-
look:
"An American shopkeeper: 'I have done more
business within the last two months than at any
corresponding period of the last six years'.
A Mexican official : 'Conditions are steadily im-
proving, but I believe that you will find very little
ostentatious display of wealth. The working peo-
ple and the middle classes are better off, and there
is more money in circulation than we have had in
a long time. These mean that we are beginning
to get results. Wealth is being more evenly dis-
tributed and the contrasts between extreme luxury
and dire poverty are less striking than in many
years'.
A Spanish hotel proprietor: 'We would be glad
to give you a room and bath, especially if you ex-
pect to be here for some time, but at present we are
full up. A group of American visitors has engaged
in advance every available room, and we can do
nothing for you until they depart. It seems like
L. J. du Bekker in the New York Tribune.
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 201
old times to have so many tourists from the north'.
A Canadian banker: 'Conditions are easier
than they have been for some time. The return
of prosperity involves the return of confidence, and
I can not say that this is complete, but I think we
all feel a sense of relief when we compare banking
conditions today with those we have gone through'.
An American importer: 'A complete under-
standing with the United States is the one thing
essential to the commercial and industrial develop-
ment of Mexico. When that has been arrived at,
you may expect a boom in all lines. Until then, we
will do the best we can, but the uncertainty of the
past has been a most serious drawback'."
Living expenses are less in Mexico than in the
United States. Meals at the best restaurants
and they are refined places, with music, excellent
cooking, and variety are from to two to five
pesos. Accommodations in the best hotels are
becoming difficult to secure on account of the in-
creasing number of visitors to the city. A large
number of automobiles have been recently im-
ported, the Government having removed the duty
for a limited time to encourage this, and the taxi
service is so cheap that one is tempted to spend
his time riding. There are generally twenty to
thirty big seven-passenger cars at the stand in
front of the new National Theater, and they can
be had for three pesos an hour. This magnificent
202 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
theater, one of the last extravagances planned by
the Diaz administration, is beginning to receive
attention by the Government and will be finished
in a couple of years. It is of white marble in a
beautiful setting at one end of the Alamenda Park,
and will be beyond all question the most magni-
ficent theater in the world.
This unfinished theater and the various other
uncompleted government buildings begun by
Diaz remind one of the story of the special envoy
from China, who, along with envoys from all the
rest of the countries of the globe, came to pay
tribute to Diaz at the centennial celebration. This
celebration was the most magnificent and costly
ever arranged on the American continent. It was
only one month later, however, that the Revolution
which overthrew Diaz broke out. The foreign
visitors were practically all dazzled and profoundly
impressed by the Diaz Government. The wise old
Chinese, however, after being shown the many new
buildings under construction, always with the
explanation, "But you see it's not finished yet,"
was finally taken to see the President. "And
what do you think of General Diaz?" he was asked.
"He is the only thing I have seen in Mexico that is
finished," he replied. If Diaz himself could only
have realized that, and quit several years before,
he might have gone down in history with the other
greatest Americans Bolivar, San Martin, Juarez,
PRESENT SITUATION IN MEXICO 203
Washington, and Lincoln. No one can today
walk the streets of Mexico City than which there
is scarcely a more attractive city in the world, be-
cause of its wonderful mixture of things romanti-
cally historic and alluringly modern without
honoring, in spite of all his mistakes, that great
man of iron who for practically thirty-six years
gave Mexico peace and wonderful material pros-
perity.
Visitors to Mexico today will agree with the
Chinese statesman that little he sees is finished.
But he who studies closely will find that it is what
the builder calls "the confusion of construction,"
the period when the materials are being unloaded,
the foundations dug, and every man seems to be
working independently of others. But presently
the unified plan of the architect will take shape.
The very confusion in Mexico today makes it a
most interesting place to visit, and a still more in-
teresting place in which to work, in the difficult
task of erecting a building that will aid humanity,
according to the plan which no doubt the great
Architect of the nations has worked out for Mexico.
CHAPTER VI
FUTURE RELATIONS BETWEEN MEXICO
AND THE UNITED STATES
Let us now sum up certain considerations which
seem to be clear:
First : The Mexicans have not had a fair chance.
They have been a dislocated, an exploited, a con-
fused people, with scarcely any opportunity for
education during the four centuries of their modern
history.
Second: There has recently been a real social
revolution in Mexico, and there can be no turning
back. It is idle to suppose that a "strong" man
even if he were able to grasp the power, could
repeat the experience of Diaz. Those days have
gone never to return.
Third: The young men of Mexico, many of
them educated under American influences, are
giving themselves to working out a new political
and educational life for their country, and with
neighborly help may be expected gradually to
accomplish their task.
Fourth : The great problem before the Mexican
people is the development of character, and to the
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 205
working out of this problem all of Mexico's friends
are called to help.
These considerations make it evident that the
United States should not wish to become responsi-
ble for the settlement of Mexico's difficulties.
This is true not only because of the difficulty of
our understanding the Mexican, but because it
would be a larger job than we ought to undertake.
The time for armed intervention has passed, if it
has ever been. The excuse of the universal reign
of chaos can not now be given. The expense in
money and men would be tremendous. The World
War has brought upon us responsibilities for many
parts of the world. It has also raised new problems
in our own country, which are going to demand the
most careful attention. If we ourselves are to
escape a bloody social revolution, such as is
sweeping over Europe at the present time, we
must use all of our resources and wisdom in the
solution of our problems. Our problems of race,
of immigration, and of color, were never more
acute than today. We insisted on an amendment
to the Covenant of the League of Nations which
would not require us to accept a mandatory
without our consent. A mandatory for Armenia
or some of the other small nations, which are en-
tirely desirous of our help, would be as child's play
compared to our forcing a mandatory on the
206 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
15,000,000 Mexicans, who would unite as a man
to oppose our intervention.
Among other responsibilities, intervention would
mean assuming the job of educating some 5,000,000
Indians who have never even learned to speak the
Spanish language, who live in the same savage
state today as they did when Cortez first came to
Mexico. Have we been so successful in dealing
with our own small Indian population that we
should desire to undertake this new problem,
involving fifteen times as large a population?
Have we been so successful in dealing with our own
freed slaves, that we are ready to take on the
responsibility for an almost equal number of Mexi-
can peons, whose backwardness in many ways is
much more marked than that of our own Negroes?
Von Moltke used to say that he had worked out
three different plans for the invasion of England by
the German Army, but that he had never been able
to contrive a plan for getting his army back home
again. It would be very easy for us to resolve on
armed intervention in Mexico, but no one yet has
ever been able to estimate either the initial cost in
men and money of subduing the country, or the
years of effort, the billions of dollars, the continual
misunderstandings, and all the other items in the
price that would have to be paid for the final com-
pletion of the job. For its completion would
mean the honorable getting out of it, as well as the
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 207
getting into it. And let no one who does not wish
to display his ignorance cite the example of Cuba,
for the cases are absolutely different.
No, the American people do not want armed in-
tervention. They have business of more impor-
tance before them.
Intervention in the affairs of another nation is,
after all, a most delicate matter. The following
words, which describe a very unsatisfactory at-
tempt, might well come back to us in the future
with overwhelming force. Leave out the names,
and some years hence these words might fit the
Mexican situation:
"The alienation of the Revolution from the
western democracies and the deplorable subse-
quent blunder of military intervention were born
of ignorance, presumption, and infirmity of pur-
pose rather than of malevolence. The Revolution
unloosed a conflict of social forces which foreign
statesmanship, during its period of influence in the
capital, proved itself incompetent to understand
and control. Its policy was based on a misinter-
pretation of the psychology of the people, the econ-
omics and dynamics of the Revolution. The gov-
ernments were represented in the country by men
whose impoverished diplomatic training and nar-
row class associations disqualified them as com-
pletely as a French marquis of the eighteenth
century was disqualified from discovering the
motives and the realities of a massive popular
movement. When they observed disquieting
208 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
symptoms of war- weariness, moral exhaustion, and
political wilfulness on the part of the active revo-
lutionists, they traced it either to German intrigue
or to a temporary lethargy or perversity of the
popular will. They never even admitted that the
Revolution possessed an impulse, a logic, and a
right of its own. They could suggest only one
remedy for every dangerous symptom of revolu-
tionary independence the remedy of coercion.
They welcomed the reactionary adventure (in
Mexico, Huerta), because a military dictatorship
which would not scruple to purge the country of
its radical agitators was to them the beginning and
the end of political wisdom, and while they were
counseling the use of coercion they did not know
that the power of exercising coercion had passed
from the princes, the generals, and the barons to
councils of the common people. As convinced of
Macht-Politik, they occupied the absurd position
of seeking to force a whole people, without antici-
pating the energy of their resistance."
If the Mexican question can not be settled by
armed intervention, neither can it be settled by
diplomacy. The sooner we come to that realiza-
tion the better. We might as well stop fooling
ourselves with the fond hope that some morning
we shall awaken to find the papers announcing
that, by a shuffling of the political cards, the
Mexican problem has been solved. It will never
be solved by the signing of treaties, by the agree-
ment of commissions on boundary questions, by
the negotiations of loans and concessions, or by the
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 209
triumph of this or that political leader, either in
Mexico or the United States. This is a question
not of stopping a fight, but of solving a problem.
It is not a revolution to be crushed, but an evolu-
tion to be guided.
And the evolution involves far more than a
purely economic and educational problem, if by
these are meant only a proper distribution of the
land and a teaching of the people to read and
write. Above all else, it is a question of character.
It will do little good to distribute lands to the
people who have no ambition to work those lands,
or who are not sufficiently trained to protect their
rights and exercise their duties as citizens. It is
very easy to say, Let us give every man a piece of
land, but the next question is, What he is going to
do with that land? Men who have never had any
wants except that of enough food to keep body and
soul together, and of enough clothes to hide their
nakedness, who have no aspirations in life, who
know nothing of developing a home, who have
never used any furniture, who care nothing for a
book, can not be expected to do a great deal with
the things that are given to them. Of course, the
real Indian has a native instinct for the land, and
would probably use his little plot at any time that
he had the opportunity, but it is very much to be
doubted whether the millions of peons who have
come into contact with modern life and partaken
210 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
of modern vices, would be benefited by receiving a
little plot of land, unless they were taught how to
appreciate it.
In saying that diplomacy can never solve
Mexico's problems, I am not ignoring the fact that
relations between the United States and Mexico
must be cordial if much progress is ever to be
made in those things which will really bring that
solution, for Mexico must depend upon the
United States to a large extent to furnish the
munitions of war in her campaign against ignor-
ance, superstition, and selfishness. The path of our
diplomatic intercourse and of doing away with
misunderstandings between the two countries
seems to be clear. Now, as never before, Mexico
is willing to accept* our friendship. In the past, a
spirit of ultra-nationalism and suspicion and mis-
understanding has kept her from a willingness to
do this. As has already been pointed out, how-
ever, these things are passing rapidly. It seems to
me, then, that our Government should back up the
Carranza Government in a strong, consistent, con-
tinuous way, aiding it in securing necessary funds
for rehabilitation, for larger educational develop-
ment, for the pursuit of bandits, and for strength-
ening the general program which the Carranza
Government has outlined for the great problem of
reconstruction. It is not my purpose to go into an
explanation of how this might be done. Our diplo-
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 211
mats understand this, however, very well. For-
tunately, the American Ambassador in Mexico at
the present time is a man who thoroughly compre-
hends the sensitive Latin-American character,
and who is recognized by the Mexican people as
sympathic toward their legitimate aspirations.
Our Government has recognized that Carranza
offers the best hope for the bringing about of order
and peace in Mexico. Our Government should,
therefore, throw its full strength and influence
toward supporting him. We, as a strong nation,
can well afford to forget some of his weaknesses and
ultra-nationalistic tendencies in the past, and
frankly develop a program that will strengthen his
hands.
If neither armed intervention nor diplomacy can
permanently settle Mexico's problems, neither
will education, the other remedy, most generally
proposed, if by education is meant simply the
elimination of illiteracy. The mere teaching of the
people to read and write often has no more effect,
as Senor Pani has recently pointed out in his in-
vestigation of primary education in Mexico, than
to cause the lower classes to become dissatisfied
with their lot. 1 There are others who think that
vocational education is the thing needed. Foreign
1 Alberto J. Pani, " Un Encuesta sobre Education Popular."
This is a most suggestive treatise on popular education, contain-
ing the opinions of many leading Mexicans on the education of
the masses.
212 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
business men, who believe in the development of
the natural resources of the country as the secret
of solving her problems, are often, in connection
with such development, willing to advance voca-
tional training. Mr. Henry Ford has described in
a recent number of El Norte Americano a most
worthy effort to help the Mexicans by training
their young men in his Detroit factory, in order to
send them back to be foremen in the tractor fac-
tories which he proposes to establish. He puts the
matter in the following way:
"The principal object in inviting the Mexican
Government to send us a hundred young men of
the different social classes who desired to educate
themselves in our methods of work and ideals of
life, was to give a practical effect to the promise of
President Wilson, who offered the friendship of the
American people to Mexico. Another object was
to place the Mexicans in position to consider the
Americans from a different viewpoint than that
from which they have considered them heretofore,
due to the fact that they have principally known
them as exploiters. . .
The Secretary of Agriculture for Mexico made
the selection and demonstrated an admirable
knowledge of the necessities of each class as also
of each section of the country. The young men
who have come to our factories represent all classes
of Mexican society. They are employed at the
regular rate of salary, the minimum of which is six
dollars a day after three months' work.
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 213
In the matter of intelligence they equal the
average American workman and show a great de-
sire to work, which is the principal thing. During
the teaching they are passed through the various
departments of the factory to familiarize them
with all the operations that enter into the manu-
facture of the machine. This gives them an ad-
mirable preparation for the work which they will
do on their return to Mexico. For the benefit of
those who do not know English we have established
educational classes in the shops, which impart not
only a knowledge of the English language but also
certain American ideals."
Mr. Edward L. Doheny has recently contributed
$100,000 to establish a foundation to investigate
the educational needs of Mexico, which evidently
looks to the development of vocational education
among the Mexican people.
This is all excellent, as far as it goes, but work-
ing for foreign business concerns will help only a
few and in a material way. Nothing could be more
unfortunate than to turn the Latin from the one
extreme of idealism to the other of a crass mate-
rialism.
Education in Mexico must, first of all, look to
character. This means, of course, that it will be
closely bound up with a man's power to make a
living, but not this only. It must also be bound
up with the matter of citizenship and with an
emphasis on the relationship of all the great past
214 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
to the present, and of the whole world to each
nation and to each individual. The provincialism
of a people, their narrow outlook, their suspicion
of the world, their egotism concerning their own
accomplishments, their impatience at slow results,
can be overcome only by teaching them the great
evolutionary processes through which the world
has struggled up from the past, and its present
interrelated and progressive development. The
moral emphasis must, more and more, predominate
in education. The words of Theodore Roosevelt
to the Brazilians are most applicable to the
Mexicans :
"Character must ever outrank genius and intel-
lect. The State can not prosper unless the average
man can take care of himself; and neither can it
prosper unless the average man realizes that, in
addition to taking care of himself, he must work
with his fellows with good sense and honesty, and a
practical acknowledgment of obligation to the
community as a whole for the things that are vital
to the interests of the community as a whole."
One of the great difficulties that the Carranza
Government is experiencing at the present time in
bringing about order is the fact that they do not
have enough honest men to fill the responsible
positions. Many times, when a general is entrusted
with an expedition against a group of bandits,
instead of pursuing the campaign, he wastes his
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 215
time and resources in riotous living. It is very
difficult to get a sufficient number of honest men to
handle responsibilities. This is one thing that
accounts for such a large number of young Pro-
testants having been appointed to office in the
Carranza Government. Having been educated by
American teachers, they have had the matter of
honesty drilled into them. One of these, a young
officer, was appointed paymaster for one of the
leading generals, who was going to Morelos to
campaign against Zapata. After the young
fellow had been there for some time he wanted to
be sent to the front, but the general informed
him that this would be impossible, for, since he was
the only man he had ever found who carried his
accounts absolutely straight, he must remain in
the position.
The new education in Mexico must not only
seek that ideal combination of the cultural and the
vocational which is one of the most pressing
educational problems of our day, but must unite
with genuine patriotism a passion for universal
brotherhood. Individualism is recognized by all
Latin psychologists as being the most outstanding
characteristic of their people. It has been the rock
on which the bark of democratic government has
most often wrecked itself. As Jose Marmol in his
celebrated "Amalia," which tells the story of the
2i6 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Argentine Dictator, Rosas, has one of his charac-
ters say :
"A party is not powerful through numbers but
through union. Let us study carefully the poli-
tical system of Rosas and we shall find the secret
of his power to be in the disassociation of the
citizens a spirit of constitutional indolence,
natural to the race, serves to complete the work
of our moral disorganization and we meet, we
talk, we agree today and tomorrow we separate,
we betray each other, or at least we neglect to
meet again. Without cooperation, without the
spirit of cooperation, without the hope of being
able to improvise that lever of European power
and European progress called cooperation, on
what can we count for the work we propose to
accomplish?"
To which the hero, with the young enthusiasm
of hope, replies: "Yes, cooperation today to defend
ourselves against Rosas; cooperation tomorrow to
organize the society of our country ; cooperation in
politics to give her liberty and law; cooperation in
commerce, in industry, in literature, and in science
to give her learning and progress; cooperation in
religion to cultivate the morality and the virtues,
which we lack.
Would you have a country, would you have
liberty, would you have free institutions? Unite
against the enemy of our social reformation-
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 217
ignorance; against the instigator of our savage
passions political fanaticism; against the propa-
gator of our disunion, of our vices, of our raucorous
passions, of our vain and stubborn spirit religious
skepticism !"
As a part and parcel of this spirit of unity, which
Mexican educators pointed out to me in recent in-
vestigations as so necessary to inculcate, they
emphasize also the spirit of service. Only those
who have a real desire to serve the common good
will be willing to sink individualistic desires for the
accomplishment of a common purpose. Or in other
words, only as one is willing to hang for a cause,
will he be willing to hang together with others.
Service, then, must be another strong emphasis in
the educational program which will lead Mexico
into the new life.
The success of an experiment with which I am
familiar, carried out along these lines, though on a
small scale, demonstrates the readiness of the
Mexican to respond to such educational oppor-
tunities. Finding that, in the border town of
Piedras Negras where I was living, there was no
place for young men to assemble in the evenings,
no school above the sixth grade, no literary socie-
ties, lecture courses, public library, or anything
in fact to develop the cultural side of the people,
we decided to open a little reading room in the
corner room of our residence. We did not know
218 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
whether anyone would care at all to take advan-
tage of the few papers that we were able to secure,
but the first week the room was opened it was
crowded by young men from the offices, stores, and
banks. Only a very few days had passed before
they began to ask for English classes, which were
soon opened in another little room in the rear.
Later, a debating club was organized at about
the time that the semi-annual gambling fair was
being held. At such times a gambling concern
brought all kinds of paraphernalia to the city and
placed these on the main plaza, and the whole city
gave itself up to gambling, bull fights, and worse
things, for some six weeks. We proposed a dis-
cussion of the question as to whether or not these
gambling fairs were good things for the city. After
the objection that such discussion would mean a
dangerous criticism of the Government was over-
come, the debates were held and proved very
lively. There had never been any question raised
concerning the fair before. The argument was
that it was bound to be a good thing because, even
after all the graft that the government officials
had secured, there was still left from the amount
paid by the firms for the concessions about $10,000
(pesos) , which last year had been given toward the
building of a new school. The debates aroused
unusual interest. The little reading room was
entirely too small. The young men said, "We have
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 219
never heard of such arguments as are being brought
out here, against what we have considered estab-
lished institutions. All of the people ought to hear
these discussions. We must have a large hall, so
that these important matters shall get to the ears
of the public in general."
The Superintendent of Public Instruction and
the Director were asked to wait on the minicipal
president, to secure from him the municipal thea-
ter. After a good deal of persuasion he gave his
consent. 'Well, Sefior Presidente, if we are to have
a large meeting in the theater, then you yourself
should preside at these discussions of questions of
community interest." Very well, he would pre-
side. "Then, Sefior Presidente, if you are to pre-
side, the occasion will be very important and we
ought to have the municipal band." All right, we
should have the band. As we were leaving the
office, the Superintendent of Public Instruction
suggested to me that we should have asked to have
the prisoners go round and clean out the theater.
So we returned and made that request. By this
time he was so accustomed to grant what we asked
that there was no difficulty whatever. On Sunday
morning the municipal band paraded the streets in
the same manner that they would have done to
advertise a bull fight. Our little company of de-
baters, along with the Presidente and about ten
other of the most prominent citizens, met at the
220 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
reading room and marched in a body to the thea-
ter. The house was packed and for two hours and
a half the young men presented to the public the
arguments against gambling and vice. The pro-
gram was so interesting that it was repeated the
following Sunday and for several weeks afterward
these confer encias morales were continued. One
result was the appointment of a committee to wait
on the Governor, and to request the prohibition of
gambling concessions, a petition which was granted
during the Governor's term of office.
The movement grew to such an extent that it
was necessary to erect a building for its activities.
A prominent corner was secured through the kind-
ness of a leading citizen, the Commercial Club and
many individuals on both sides of the border con-
tributed to the building fund, and the next year
the building was dedicated as part of the official
celebration of the Centennial in 1910. A procession
was formed at the municipal palace, which con-
sisted of a military band, an escort of soldiers,
members of the City Council, the special delegate
sent by the Governor of the state, and deputa-
tions from the various mutual societies and labor
organizations. On arriving at the Institute, the
Director presented the key to the Mayor, who
opened the building and dedicated it "to the ser-
vice of humanity."
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 221
A program was developed, consisting of lectures
on all kinds of interesting topics, night classes,
reading room, circulating library, outdoor gym-
nasium, social meetings, and every activity that
would seem to be helpful at this particular time
in the life of the community. A little wiiile after-
ward, when the Madero Government came into
power and Mexico was suddenly called to take
part in the election of her own officials, the young
men who had been trained in the debating clubs
of the People's Institute were the ones who imme-
diately came forward as leaders of the new political
life.
The following extract from an article in the
Bulletin of the Pan-American Union describes
further the work of the Institute:
"The People's Institute is unique among Mexi-
can institutions. It combines the work of the
social settlement, the public library, the Charities
Organization Society, the Society for the Preven-
tion of Cruelty to Animals, and all the other benev-
olent, educational, and reform organizations of the
ordinary American city. The Institute has stood
steadily for the community idea, by developing the
individual into an efficient worker and wage-
earner, and by translating the ideals of morality
and good government into terms of practical good
citizenship. Cruelty and barbarism are distressing
and undesirable in the abstract; why not in the
bull fight in one's own city? This turning of ab-
stractions into practical morality of the now
222 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
and here has been the great aim of the People's
Institute.
Thus far the active emphasis has been placed on
the educational and civic points of view. The
public schools of the average town stop with the
sixth grade. Only state capitals have normal
schools, which correspond to the American high
schools. On the first four week nights the Insti-
tute has classes in fifteen subjects, including
Spanish and English shorthand, typewriting,
arithmetic, geometry, English language, Spanish
language, Spanish grammar, ethics, hygiene, and
gymnasium. One hundred young men and women
were enrolled in these classes in the last term. Dur-
ing the public school vacations the school children
have club meetings on Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday afternoons, when lessons in sewing and
music and games and readings are given. Each
night, between classes, there is a public conference,
at which current events, morals, philosophy, or
history are briefly discussed. Friday evenings are
given over to games or to a program, which may be
musical or literary, or deal with some subject of
popular interest. Many of the highest government
officials, both state and national, educators,
scientists, and travelers, have appeared on the
Institute platform. Heated discussions are held
by the Debating Club, which, like the Temperance
Society and the Humane Society, is composed of
and led by the young men and women of the city.
The national holidays of both the United States
and Mexico are always celebrated. One important
work of the Institute has been to interpret the two
nations on the Rio Grande to each other, and this
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 223
is easiest when patriotism directs the thoughts
and sentiments to the common love of heroes and
of liberty.
One most encouraging fact the library records
of the Institute have shown namely, that the
Mexican likes good literature. Books on history,
science, and philosophy are much more popular
than fiction. Among the translations from English,
Emerson and Spencer are seldom on the shelves,
while popular fiction grows dusty from disuse.
Translations of Emerson and Tolstoy are more in
demand than Cervantes or the modern Spanish
novelists.
To encourage the men to stay at home evenings,
the library has opened a circulating department,
which loans games to families. . .
The art of home-making, which is just beginning
to be introduced into the public schools of the
United States, must needs be taught the Mexican
girl, as well as her Anglo-Saxon sister. Like her
mother and great-grandmother, she is used to
doing things for herself. The department store
does not exist in Mexico to sell her what her
ingenious and skilful fingers can make so sur-
prisingly well. In fact, all she needs to be de-
veloped into an ideal home-maker is the chance to
see the better class Mexican and American home.
Natural family affection she has to a marked
degree; the power to make and imitate she owes
to her Latin blood she merely needs the inspira-
tion of example, and the merest pittance of money
to realize ambitions that will eventually make
Mexico more a land of homes than her neighbor
to the north has been since colonial days.
224 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
Public baths, moving pictures, classes in domes-
tic art and science, and a printing press, are soon
to be installed. The press is the first actual ven-
ture in industrial education, although geometry is
taught to apprentices in boiler-making, with
special regard to its application in that industry,
the teacher being the head of the boiler-making
department in the railroad shops. A very great
need of Mexico is the development of skilled labor,
and as each demand and need of the community
presents itself, the People's Institute strives to
meet it, for it is an institution of the community,
for the community, and by the community."
Perhaps the best test of the success of such an
experiment is the appeal which it has made to
individuals. For example, a prominent lawyer of
Mexico City who was appointed Federal Judge,
with headquarters at Piedras Negras, found him-
self quite lonely in our modest, little city, after
having moved in the best circles of the capital
of the Republic. When invited to cooperate in
the work of the People's Institute, he readily
accepted and soon became so interested that he
gave practically all his time outside of office hours
to it, teaching a class in commercial law, giving
lectures, and using the influence of his position to
interest others in the work.
Another gentleman, who is known widely in
our country as well as in Mexico as one of the
greatest living authorities on dry farming, Senor
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 225
Zeferino Dominguez, has given unstinted time to
the People's Institute, delivering lectures, and hav-
ing apparatus installed to demonstrate the proper
selection of seed corn and other subjects which
have interested greatly the agriculturists of the
community. Senor Dominguez believes that the
Mexican problem is not a political but an economic
and social one. He believes that the Mexican peo-
ple will be quiet and industrious when they are
given land to cultivate and shown how to do it
in the right way, and he recognized in the People's
Institute an organization that would go far in
preparing the people for economic independence.
More or less similar stories could be told of such
men as Senor J. Kim Yuen, Chinese representative
to settle the claims of his Government for the Tor-
reon massacre ; Professor Andres Osuna, one of the
leading educators of the country; and governors
and ex-governors of the Federal District, Yucatan,
Sonora, and Sinaloa. Such men as these have been
interested in helping the Institute because they saw
that it was aiding their own people in a practical
way. This was evident not only in the changed
lives of certain young men, but in the part which
the Institute came to play in the life of the com-
munity as a whole.
On a certain February twenty-second, Washing-
ton's Birthday, the political situation was dark
indeed. It looked as if the whole country had
226 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
turned against the Madero Government. A
meeting was called at the Institute, to which
were invited all the government officials and prom-
inent citizens, and a part of Washington's farewell
address was read, which we had translated for the
occasion, and which seemed to have been written
especially to advise the Mexicans in their national
crisis. The necessity of standing by the consti-
tuted Government, the cost of ignoring authority,
the necessity of allowing time for reforms to be
carried out, were emphasized. A committee was
organized to conduct conferences in the theater on
the same subject. In two weeks such meetings
were being held all over the Republic, and the
Government was saved, at least temporarily. Of
course, that meeting did not do it all, but there is
no doubt that it had its influence.
On September 16, 1911, when a mob raged up
the principal street, stoning the houses of for-
eigners, it passed the Institute without any demon-
stration whatever and, returning to the monument
in front of the property, listened to incendiary
speeches, without even a reference to the foreigners
who conducted the People's Institute. The Gov-
ernor of the state, who came to the city the next
day, said it was one of the most splendid tributes
he ever saw paid to a work of like character. At a
celebration of the anniversary of the enactment of
the reform laws, a national holiday, all of the
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 227
orators of the occasion were People's Institute
men, and the night meeting, contrary to all cus-
tom, was held at the Institute building, with the
Mayor presiding.
At the close of the Madero revolution, as already
stated, the people were a good deal at a loss when
they suddenly discovered that they were to elect
their own officials, for the way to organize a
political party and to carry on an election cam-
paign was entirely foreign to their experience.
We considered it a privilege, when they sought our
help, to give it to them. In fact, we loaned them
our auditorium for their meetings, and it was there
that the reform mayor, who did so much for the
city, was nominated. The statement was made by
a high Mexican official that there was not a man
who had taken part in the new political life in that
part of Mexico who had not gotten his training in
the debating society and night classes of the
Institute.
This experiment in a small way shows how the
Mexicans would welcome a program of practical
education linked up with nationalistic aspirations.
Considerable interest in a school of higher learn-
ing for Mexico, which would be financed by the
friends of that country in the United States, was
aroused a few years ago, by a committee headed
by President Charles W. Dabney of the University
of Cincinnati. The committee's activities were
228 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
allowed to stop on account of the War, but the idea
has been taken up again recently and has met with
the warmest approval of prominent Mexicans, both
educators and government officials. It is proposed
that the managing board shall be an independent
body composed of both Mexicans and Americans,
with sections in the City of Mexico and in New
York. The sum of $5,000,000 has been named as
the amount that should be available for an ade-
quate launching of the enterprise. It is not to
duplicate any of the work done by the existing
Government University or its allied schools, but
to follow lines of practical instruction.
During recent extended conference with Mexican
educators as to the lines this school should pursue,
the following words of Professor Ezequiel Chavez,
one of the outstanding leaders, seemed to express
the general idea :
"Our whole national life has been one immense
factory to manufacture the governing classes.
The foreigners have controlled our commercial life,
operated our mines, our railroads, our stores, our
factories. The Mexican has not been willing to
risk either capital or his own convenience in com-
mercial enterprises. Since the foreigner has
carried on all of our economic life, what is there
left to the Mexican to do? Why, simply to
govern. And so our schools have prepared men for
governing. We need more and different kinds of
training. Our people need to enter many other
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 229
lines instead of being simply shut up, as in the past,
to becoming physicians, lawyers, and engineers.
Our educational system must change so that it can
direct the young people into fifteen professions
instead of into three, and into twenty or thirty
different modes of gaining their living and con-
tributing to society. . . The new school should
turn itself to developing leaders in our economic
and social life. I do not mean to make our educa-
tion entirely practical, leaving out all of the
humanities, as Germany has done. We must see
that the school introduces young people into
useful livelihood and trains them at the same time
to be good citizens."
Carrying out this idea, it is proposed to have the
institution begin in the City of Mexico, with a
Normal Institute, and a Foundation School
using the term as it is understood in Berea College
-which will prepare students either for entrance
into the Normal Institute or to become skilled
operatives in various trades. The details of this
plan are given in full in Appendix I.
It is impossible to estimate the good that such
an institution would accomplish in the establish-
ment of a better understanding between the two
neighboring peoples. From such a school would
grow all kinds of movements that would contribute
to the development of friendship. Commerce,
labor, the fine arts, literature, social and moral
movements, and other helpful forces in either
230 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
country could find through it easy contact with
kindred circles in the other.
One matter that is evidently so far reaching that
it should, by all means, be linked up with such an
institution, is the exchange of students between
the two countries. There is nothing that is more
largely demanded or that offers a greater range of
influence.
It is as clear as a bell that we must spend some
time and money in the development of such
institutions as this, which will get down below the
motives of commerce and politics on which we
have depended for a hundred years, if the two
peoples are to live not only peaceably, but agree-
ably together as neighbors.
In discussing the problem of relations between
Mexico and the United States, and the place of
education in the same, there remains yet an
important force to consider. There is a large body
of American teachers in Mexico, who are con-
nected with schools, some of which have been
conducted for half a century. Generally speaking,
these teachers are the Americans who have been
longest in the country, have most completely
mastered the language and identified themselves
with the people, and most thoroughly enjoy the
confidence of the Mexicans. These teachers have
largely been supported by American missionary
societies, and so far from being thought of as
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 231
exploiting the people, they have generally
earned the reputation of rendering an unselfish
service, without the aid of which the Mexican
people would have fared a good deal worse than
they have in educational matters. A large number
of these schools have been for the training of
teachers, and because of the large number of teach-
ers which they have furnished the Government,
the public school system has been able to grow
at a much more rapid rate than that at which the
system itself could produce teachers. The Govern-
ment has practically always been ready to take
every possible graduate these schools could turn
over to it, and not infrequently it has subsidized
the schools in order to speed up their production
of teachers for the public service.
This might appear strange to some who think
that these schools are conducted for purposes of
sectarian propaganda. That this is distinctively
not their purpose, but that they are carried on
with a sincere desire to contribute to the real
education of the Mexican people a development of
character, a power of choice, and freedom of con-
science, is shown by their universal popularity,
even among those of a different faith.
The work of these American mission schools,
which in the past the general public did not seem to
regard as of much significance, has suddenly been
shown to be one of the strong forces in the making
232 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
of a new Mexico. Tried in the crucible of one of
the most hotly contested civil disturbances ever
known, the Mexicans educated in these schools
and partaking of the principles there imparted
have suddenly been thrust to the top of this
seething national life and compelled to take
positions of responsibility. They are found from
one end of the Republic to the other, as governors
of states, assistants to cabinet ministers, repre-
sentatives of the Government in foreign coun-
tries, legislators, directors of departments in
national, state, and municipal education, mayors
of cities, officers of the Army, not to mention the
large number in more obscure but no less impor-
tant places as individual teachers, both in the
big centers and the small out-of-the-way hamlets.
A most daring educational program, that in-
cludes comprehensive plans, not only for a system
of schools, but also for social, literary, and medical
activities, has recently been worked out by this
group of Americans. In 1914, when the Revolu-
tion had driven a large number of them to this
country, a conference was held in Cincinnati to
consider how the work could be enlarged and made
more efficient, in order to render more immediate
and widespread help to Mexico. Plans proposed
at that conference were studied, tested, enlarged,
and changed according to the best advice from the
Mexicans themselves, until at a conference in
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 233
Mexico City in February, 1919, when both
Americans and nationals spent several days to-
gether, the results of these years of study were
drawn up in a comprehensive program.
When the survey of the whole situation was
made, it was found that before any very much
enlarged service could be given to the whole Mexi-
can people, a more scientific arrangement of the
work already in hand would have to take place.
The survey showed, for example, that in one city
of 35,000 there were three large normal schools,
supported by as many separate American socie-
ties, with some eight American resident workers,
whereas in another whole state with a population of
1,000,000, there was not a single American worker.
A radical readjustment was therefore agreed
upon, so that each one of the eight societies in-
volved would become responsible for a certain
distinct territory. This involved the uprooting
of long-established ties, turning over work to
others, and in two cases the abandonment of all
the territory formerly occupied and the taking up
of work in an entirely new field. But, for the sake
of the general good, in order that no part of the
country might be neglected, the readjustments,
though with many a heartache, have now been
made. Each society knows for just how much
territory, how many people, and what towns it is
responsible.
234 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
With this fundamental basis which will eliminate
all duplication, the following program for schools
has been outlined:
Eight agricultural schools are to be opened in
as many different parts of the Republic, so that
the problems of the various conditions highland,
lowland, arid, and tropical can be worked upon.
For the industrial worker in communities, a series
of trade schools is to be established in every state
capital and in certain other large industrial cen-
ters. These trade schools are designed, not to
teach the students foreign trades, but to help
them to develop more highly and efficiently the
arts of the local community. No one who has
gone through Mexico with open eyes, even as a
tourist, can have helped noting how extensively
different communities have developed their spe-
cialties, Saltillo serapes, Aguascalientes drawn
work, Cuernavaca pottery, Pueblo vases, and the
like. Each Indian tribe also has its specialty in
which it excels and generally makes with remarka-
ble skill. Both the agricultural schools and the
trade schools are to be netamente nacional-
entirely national. The agricultural schools located
among the Indians will give themselves not only
to working on the land problem, but to manual
training and preparation of rural teachers.
These American teachers, who have lived in
Mexico long enough to become thoroughly adapted
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 235
to the life of the people, are desirous of contributing
their part toward working out in practice the
theories of cultural development which Sr. Manuel
Gamio, Director of Ethnology in the Department
of the Interior of the Mexican Government, has
recently outlined in his book, "Forjando P atria"
If space permitted it would be desirable to quote
extensively from this admirable treatise, but I will
only cite two passages:
"We propose concretely:
1. That an attempt be made to crush out or
diminish the ridiculous exotic tendencies which
make us unconditionally prefer industry of foreign
character and disdain our own.
2. To encourage first of all the production of our
typical industry, to the end that not only its con-
sumption in the country may be increased, but the
demand which has always existed for it outside
may be supplied and augmented.
3. To apply the technical methods of the for-
eign industries to the similar typical industries and
sensibly to bring about the fusion of the two, as
was done spontaneously and so brilliantly during
the colonial period.
4. To send our workers to foreign industrial
centers, that they may incorporate foreign experi-
ence with their traditional industrial aptitudes.
5. To establish in foreign countries expositions
of Mexican typical products and in Mexico exposi-
tions of new foreign industries unknown to us." 2
2 Page 262.
236 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
And again: "It is an error to expect that the
same law shall apply to the Lacandon of Chiapas,
who goes naked and lives by hunting and fishing
in a wild tropical district, where no other idea of
the nation is held than that constituted by his
mountains, his women, and his children; to the
frontiersman of the north, into whom have filtered
and percolated the language, the idiom, the
industry, the aptitudes of the American; to the
inhabitant of the high tablelands, conservator of
the traditions, the customs, and the religion of the
past; to the dweller in the seaport, liberal and
innovator; to the frontiersman of the south,
whose culture is more Central American than
Mexican; to the Indian in general, helpless and
illiterate, who speaks a diversity of idioms, lives in
unlike climates and differs in customs ; to the man
of culture, active, progressive in tendencies; to
the individual of aristocratic lineage who has been
educated (?) abroad and who, when he returns
to his native hearth, displays a really repulsive
hybridism in customs and ideas.
From this contest, there is born what may be
called 'cultural cleavage'; a great part of this
middle class, which feels more the environment in
which it has developed and the historical antece-
dents which brought it near the native class,
adopted an intermediate culture, which is neither
the native nor the western. We cite some mani-
festations of this culture : the popular music, which
Ponce in most noble effort exerted himself to make
known, is not native music, nor is it European;
it is something intermediate, the technique, the
mechanical part, of which is occidental, but which
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 237
in character and sentiment strongly arouse the
native soul. Our sculptors, who in Guadalajara,
in Mexico, and in other places make little figures
of clay and wax or typically decorated vases, are
the true national sculptors, however much the
public may, foolishly, consider this work as mere
curious rubbish. The decorative designs which
are used in the lacquer industry, pottery, textile
fabrics, and a thousand other things, are the
legitimate Mexican decorations; they were in-
spired by our sky, by our soil, by our plants, by
our animals, even by the ancient polytheistic
religious conceptions of the pre-Hispanic Indians.
As much might be said of the literature, the archi-
tecture, and even of the very special character
which religious ideas show in this class. The
'intermediate culture' originated immediately after
the conquest, it being necessary, in order to under-
stand perfectly what is here said, to examine among
other manifestations the transitional artistic work
of the sixteenth century. This 'intermediate cul-
ture', like that of the native class, has developed
without principles, method, or facilities; it is
natural that it presents frequent deficiencies and
even deformities, like everything that has to
flourish, conquering obstacles. It is, nevertheless,
the national culture, that of the future, that which
will end by imposing itself when the population,
being ethnically homogeneous, feels and under-
stands it. It should not be forgotten that it is the
resultant of the European and the modified native,
or pre-Hispanic." 3
Page 175.
238 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
It will be one of the main purposes of these
agricultural and trade schools to work out this
problem of the blending of different cultures, in
order to bring the Mexican into a place of high
usefulness as a citizen of his own country and the
world at large.
The second division of the educational program
has to do with strengthening the already extensive
work of the normal schools. Several new normal
schools are to be built in districts which now have
none, and the training of men teachers is to be
provided for, since heretofore almost all these
schools were for women only.
All of this school work is to be coordinated under
one organization, with headquarters in Mexico
City, and an outstanding Mexican educator, now
occupying a prominent place in government edu-
cation, has been called as the secretary of the
organization. This is still another of the provi-
sions, which are being made at every step in these
enlarged plans, to make sure that all shall be
absolutely national and in no sense an exotic plant.
The third division of the program is social. It
has not escaped the observation of these Ameri-
cans that the Mexican people in their efforts to
develop a democracy have no way of getting to-
gether under pleasant auspices to discuss their
problems. How much the United States owes to
the town meetings, the chatauquas, the public
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 239
library extension work, the public debates, the
forums, and the many civic associations, with
and without buildings, whose business it is to
foster discussion of public questions and to en-
courage organization for community improve-
ment! So it is intended to organize in each town
of importance a community center. This will
not only be a rallying point for all who are inter-
ested in the country's development, but through
night classes, circulating library, gymnasium, and
other agencies it will especially contribute to the
education of adults.
The fourth part of the program has to do with
the popularizing of medical knowledge and sani-
tation among the poorer classes. This will be
done by Mexican physicians, who have already
worked on this program as much as their limited
means would permit, through labor organizations,
schools, and industrial plants. It is hoped also to
erect a certain number of hospitals where these are
most needed.
The fifth division refers to the production of
good literature. The union of the various printing
establishments already conducted by these organi-
zations in different parts of the Republic has been
consummated, and a publishing house and book-
store, with a weekly periodical, have been started
in the City of Mexico. It is hoped to produce good
literature, school textbooks, popular stories, and
240 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
other books that will help to relieve the situation
spoken of by Sr. Gamio, who says :
"When on account of lack of books, more ad-
vanced reading than the primer and first reader is
not possible, the knowledge of reading appears idle
and unproductive. Nevertheless, for the majority
of those who learn how to read there remains no
other resource, because there are few r who can
secure a more extensive education or even have
the opportunity of obtaining printed matter of any
sort. To what is this fact due, which directly and
indirectly contributes to maintain illiteracy? It is
that in Mexico the pamphlet, the book, and publi-
cations generally, have always been costly and for
that reason not adequate to the diversity of stan-
dards of the population. Provision has been made,
though insufficiently, for the intellectual 'elite',
who can pay for what they read, and for the city
youth by supplying them with schoolbooks. But
is not the rest of the population, the great mass
which longs to gather knowledge through reading,
worth attention?"
Such a program as this may not appear to some
to be at all commensurate with the largeness of the
problem involved, yet history teaches us that even
from small beginnings, the right kind of move-
ments develop rapidly until their influence is soon
felt in every part of national life. If this program
were faithfully carried out with enthusiasm,
efficiency, and a free pouring out of life and wealth,
the results would be very quickly seen probably
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 241
a good deal more quickly than the results of armed
intervention. If some thrifty individual who has
been taught by our War Savings Stamp Campaign
to count the pennies, thinks that this program in-
volves too much of a financial expenditure, let him
meditate on the following: The United States
Government spent enough on guarding the border
and the Pershing expedition into Mexico, during
the year of the Columbus raid, to build in every
town in Mexico of more than 4,000 people, a col-
lege, a community center, a hospital, and a church,
and to equip them magnificently, and there would
be left over a sufficient amount to endow the public
school system of each of these towns with some
$700,000. There would still be left a tidy little
sum of $15,000,000 for other parts of the program
of education and the production of good litera-
ture.
Our Mexican neighbors, if we will fully recognize
their own national life and their peculiar culture,
will be only too glad to accept the help of a friendly
neighbor, and America is big enough to undertake
this help in a really big way. As President Butler
says:
"One of the earliest questions recorded in history
is the petulant query of Cain, 'Am I my brother's
keeper?' On the answer to this question all
civilization depends. If a man is not his brother's
\
242 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
keeper, if he may slay and rob and ravage at will
for his own advantage, whether that be personal
or national, then civilization becomes quite impos-
sible. We are our brothers' keepers and they are
ours. . . There remains the matter of what
may be called petulant and teasing criticism, on
the platform and in the press, of acts and policies of
nations other than our own. A good many nations
and peoples, have, in the history of the world,
assumed for themselves an attitude of superiority
toward their fellows, and have shaped their beliefs
and practices accordingly. It will not be generally
thought, I fancy, that the historic results of this
course of conduct has been either fortunate or
happy. . . The United States has done so
much to educate world opinion in the past century
and a half that we may well be anxious for it to do
still more. . . The great movement in which
we are engaged is a part and parcel of a new way
of life. It means that we must enter with fulness
of appreciation into the activities and interests of
peoples other than ourselves; that we must emu-
late the best they have and shun the worst; that
we must answer in no uncertain tones that we are
our brothers' keepers ; and that the path of justice,
of integrity and fair dealings, as with men so with
nations, is the true path of honor. Let us see to it
that we Americans tread steadily in it."
We have just completed a great job across the
waters. Our soldiers are coming back home. We
are ready to turn our attention to something else
still larger. We are searching for that elusive, but
FUTURE RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 243
tremendously important, thing called "the moral
equivalent of war." Here is the finest opportunity
ever presented to the American people. It is right
at our door. What, then, are we going to do about
Mexico?
APPENDIX I
Proposed Plan for a University to Be Established in Mexico
(See page 227)
Training in the Foundation School
This school is designed to give students the fundamental
courses as at present offered in the regular Mexican schools,
but presented in a more practical fashion. It may be advisable
to restrict the privileges of this school to students above fifteen
and give them only such work in the fundamentals as they
actually need. Perhaps the general standard for admission to
this school should be the completion of the four years of the
ordinary elementary primary course. In some cases students
will not have this equipment and it should be given them in
night courses while they pursue some definite manual work
during the day. Perhaps the work of the two years of superior
primary instruction might be carried on partly in the daytime,
but the bulk of book instruction in the Foundation School, as
in Berea College and Hampton Institute, should be at night,
with the days given to manual work for which credit or com-
pensation is given. All must do some work through all grades
of the school more in the lower grades.
Class Work
Fundamentals in language Credit should be given to
work, number work, his- students for such work as
tory, geography, civics, na- they have done in the pub-
ture study, physiology, ele- lie schools. Special pains
mentary agriculture, with should be taken to make
moral instruction, music, this work of a practical
drawing, and other forms of character and to show its
simple artistic expression. application to life.
APPENDIX 245
Manual Work
1. Regular daily work shops or on farms, commer-
for boys and girls in the cial establishments or homes,
shops, farms, and dormitor- under supervision of school
ies connected with the authorities. Dormitory fa-
school. Products to be used cilities provided in school
in institution or sold, and with payment by pupil
credit given for work done. from proceeds of work. Es-
2. Working for wages sential cooperation between
under direction in outside school and working plants.
Most students who take this work will pass directly into
industry, agriculture, or home work, but with definite training
in some trade or occupation and an enlarged mental and moral
outlook. Those who have the aptitude may pass immediately
to the Normal Institute. To this others who have the requis-
ite preparation may also be admitted. The Foundation School
will have no fixed time limit, but deficient students may be
separated from the others whenever it is deemed advisable.
In time this work in the Foundation School may be given in
regional schools and dropped at the central institution.
Training in the Normal Institute
The general purpose of the Institute is to train teachers for
vocational work and to prepare skilled foremen and superin-
tendents for shops and farms and social workers for the cities.
The course should presuppose the ordinary work of the six
years of primary instruction. If the student knows some
trade, either from his work in the Foundation School or else-
where, he might devote relatively more time to the cultural
and vocational courses, but he should not be excused from all
manual tasks. Because of the variation in time to be devoted
to manual tasks, there should be no definite time limit for this
course. It should be at least four years and might run to six
or seven.
I. Cultural Courses (Few required election according to pro-
posed occupation.)
i. Language: Literature Group Composition, Litera-
ture, English, French (?).
246 INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
2. Mathematics: Advanced Arithmetic, Algebra, Geome-
try with practical applications.
3. Science Group: General Science, Descriptive and
Physical Geography, and one year in one or two of the fol-
lowing: Botany, Zoology, Geology, Physics, and Chemis-
try (the sciences to be differentiated according to trade
pursued.)
4. History: Social Group, National History, European
History, Civics, Economics, Survey of Human Progress
and Relationships.
There should be some required work in each group with a
choice of elections according to occupation preferred.
II. Vocational Courses (To be determined by proposed occu-
pation.)
1. Commercial: Bookkeeping, Stenography and Type-
writing, Commercial Geography, Business Methods,
Business Law, Commercial Arithmetic, Penmanship.
2. Mechanical: Mechanical Drawing, Elementary Me-
chanics, Industrial Chemistry, Applied Physics.
3. Agricultural: Applied Mathematics (?) Soils and
Crops, Horticulture, Animal Husbandry, Farm Mechan-
ics and Management.
4. Household Arts: Clothing and Textiles, Foods and
Nutrition, Home Arts, Nursing and Sanitation.
5. Community Service: Social Grouping, Public and
Private Charities, Social Legislation.
Psychology, methods, and practice teaching should accom-
pany the vocational courses.
III. Manual Work (In institution or outside on cooperative
plan; amount to be lessened if student has already
partly acquired standard training in given occupation.
Psychology and methods should be considered along
with this work.)
The following are some of the trades to be pursued in the
Foundation School and in the Normal Institute: Bricklaying,
Carpentry, Wheelwrighting, Masonry, Plumbing, Forging,
and Blacksmithing. The object in the Foundation School
should be the training of skilled workmen; in the Normal
Institute the training of industrial and agricultural teachers or
APPENDIX 247
shop foremen or superintendents. The Normal Institute
should be the central plant of the institution, with such pre-
liminary work in the Foundation School as is necessary to
prepare the students for the Institute and such subsequent
development of other facilities as circumstances may require.
Every one in the Normal Institute will be required, besides
studying, to do practical work with his hand and his brains.
Not only will there be practice schools where those studying to
be teachers will be tried out under faculty supervision, but
there will be social service carried on in the city under the
direction of the faculty, training for leadership in such com-
munity work as clubs for boys and girls, public playgrounds,
administration of charity, application of principles of sanita-
tion, development of the use of public libraries, and the other
problems which are recognized as a part of the modern city.
The people of Mexico City are already awakening to these
things, as is shown, for example, by such movements as the
formation of a home for newsboys by public-spirited citizens.
But trained leadership is lacking.
From such a department in the Normal Institute, there
would naturally develop later on a full school of philanthropy
and social sciences, which would train leaders for all kinds of
community service, and maintain a bureau of social survey to
furnish practical guidance to organization and even, if so
desired, scientific data to the Government for purposes of leg-
islative and executive action. In the same way, the study of
commercial courses, worked out in practical cooperation with
the business houses of the city, would grow into a school of
business and finance, where the men would be trained for
dealing with the complicated questions of modern finance, and
where a department of research would be maintained to study
questions that might be referred to it. And so on throughout
the courses of the Normal Institute: As each department
grew it would develop a special school gardening into agri-
culture, manual arts into engineering, and courses in sanita-
tion and nursing into a medical school, if such should seem
desirable. The idea in the development of all these schools
should be to do work that would not duplicate that already
being done, and that would never force but would follow
natural lines of growth as needs, circumstances, and national
growth indicate.
248
INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
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Inman, Samuel Guy
Intervention in Mexico
