# Hands off Mexico

Table of Contents
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
| Chapter 1 | HANDS OFF MEXICO | 3 |
| Chapter 2 | SOURCE OF THE CONSPIRACY | 5 |
| Chapter 3 | INTERVENTIONIST LIES | 8 |
| Chapter 4 | AMERICAN LIVES NOT THE ISSUE | 11 |
| Chapter 5 | "BENEVOLENT PACIFICATION" | 14 |
| Chapter 6 | THE JAPANESE AND GERMAN BUGABOOS | 20 |
| Chapter 7 | THE MONROE DOCTRINE ARGUMENT | 22 |
| Chapter 8 | OIL WELL PATRIOTISM | 24 |
| Chapter 9 | PLEDGES OF PRESIDENT AND PEOPLE | 28 |
| Chapter 10 | THE WILSON POLICY OF INTERVENTION | 34 |
| Chapter 11 | WILSON'S AID TO HUERTA | 39 |
| Chapter 12 | WILSON AND THE BANDIT VILLA | 45 |
| Chapter 13 | WHY WILSON FINALLY RECOGNIZED CARRANZA | 51 |
| Chapter 14 | WHY "HE KEPT US OUT OF WAR" WITH MEXICO | 55 |
| Chapter 15 | WILSON, DOHENY, AND PELAEZ | 60 |
| Chapter 16 | MANEUVERING FOR WAR | 65 |
| Chapter 17 | THE SOLUTION OF THE MEXICAN "PROBLEM" | 70 |
Chapter 1
Hands Off Mexico
I.
FOREWORD
Our next armed expedition in force into Mexico is almost certain to result in formal war on both sides, followed by an effort at complete subjugation. The General Staff of the United States Army has been quoted as estimating that it will take 450,000 men three and one-half years to pacify Mexico. General Staffs are usually optimistic in judging their own capacity for conquest.
We shall not only have a war abroad indefinitely, but an indefinite prolongation of war conditions at home. We shall again have conscription, bond issues, and every other form of sacrifice and repression to which the public has been subjected during the past three years. American militarism and espionage will become chronic. Reaction will be more firmly seated in the saddle than ever before.
There can be no more important issue than the issue of war with Mexico; for all other issues are tied up with it. The forces of progress will have to gather swift strength or they will feel the crunch of the Iron Heel. The disaster to America will hardly be less than that to Mexico. ​Intervention in Mexico has been determined upon by Wall Street and the Wilson Administration. The plan is to put it over before the forces working for real democracy, disorganized during the war and still on the defensive, have had a period of legal peace in which to reorganize and expose the crimes of the past.
Although the intervention conspiracy is an inevitable result of recent events, its success is not inevitable. There is a fighting chance to frustrate it. The longer it can be postponed the greater the probability of its ultimate failure.
The immediate success of the intervention conspiracy depends largely upon the present tremendous effort to manufacture and mobilize public opinion for the purpose, through the dissemination of false statements regarding conditions in Mexico, the character of the Mexican Government, the relations between the United States and Mexico, and the obligations of the American people in the circumstances.
The case for intervention is entirely without merit. The motives of the conspiracy are purely financial. There is a practicable and honorable solution for the so-called Mexican problem not involving intervention.
This pamphlet is an effort to sketch the more important details.
If the Wilson Administration can be shown to be a party to the intervention conspiracy, it would seem to be obvious that it would then be the most dangerous factor therein. For such ​a conspiracy could never attain its object without the active cooperation of the executive branch of the Government. The oil companies cannot themselves and an American army into Mexico. Nor can the American press. Nor can a handful of Republican and Democratic politicians.
If war comes between the United States and Mexico within any near period it will almost surely come, not by any deliberate choice of the American people, or even of their duly elected representatives, but only as a sequel to clashes with Mexican Government forces, after American forces have invaded Mexico in a "punitive expedition," to "protect American lives and property," or under some other pretext, by order of the Executive. The only part Congress is likely to play will be to legalize an accomplished fact.
In any event. Congress will not take any decisive action not thoroughly approved by the Executive. Even if the League of Nations takes cognizance of the matter, it will only be to sanctify a program first determined upon by the Government of the United States. The real choice of time, place, and action, will rest with the President.
Any adequate consideration of the intervention plot, therefore, must include an inquiry into the extent to which the Administration has revealed a willingness to serve the purposes of the persons and interests seeking intervention.
Chapter 2
2.
SOURCE OF THE CONSPIRACY
The parties to the conspiracy, insofar as they include financial and industrial interests, are identified by the published membership of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico. In this organization is represented America's richest banking, mining, and industrial corporations, ​headed by J. P. Morgan & Co., the National City Bank, Standard Oil, the Mexican Petroleum Company, the Intercontinental Rubber Company; and the Phelps-Dodge, Greene-Cannanea, and other components of the Morgan-Ryan-Guggenheim Copper Trust. These are also the richest corporations having a stake in Mexico.
Every member of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico presumably approves of its work and shares responsibility for it. Although this organization has stated, on occasion, that it does not seek intervention, an examination of its literature proves this to be an equivocation. It asks for "protection" of a sort that the existing Mexican Government has never been willing to grant. In asking for "protection" of the American Government and the American people, it implies that it does not expect to procure such "protection" from the Mexican Government, except through the application of external force, or the threat of force. Intervention, as defined in international law, is interference by one government in the affairs of another, either by the use of force or the threat of force; it is effective intervention exactly to the extent to which the affairs of the invaded or threatened nation are influenced or controlled by such invasion or threats. The Bulletin of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico itself prints open appeals for the use of force in Mexico, and editorially expresses approval of such appeals. This organization, and the Association of Oil Producers of Mexico, a sub-division of it, between them, admit refusal of their members to comply with Mexican laws, boast of defiance of the authority of the Mexican Government, admit the support of an insurgent army upon Mexican soil as a means to defying such authority.
The hostile situation between members of these organizations and the Mexican Government, as portrayed by the press matter of the former, is one that obviously cannot long be maintained. Either the oil operators will control the Mexican Government, or the Mexican Government will control the oil ​operators, at least insofar as the immediate issues between them are concerned.
The Mexican Government is going to succeed in asserting its sovereignty, or it is going to fail to do so. One side or the other will have to yield. The oil operators acknowledge that they will choose intervention in preference to yielding. No essential fact is lacking to prove that Wall Street seeks intervention except a straightforward confession that the word "intervention" fits the thing that it seeks.
Wall Street is apparently not yet ready to make such a confession. It is afraid of the word. Public opinion is not yet sufficiently mobilized to look with complacence upon the sinister circumstances which the word implies. Meanwhile, an important fraction of the American press industriously agitates for the act itself, while a number of Senators and Congressmen have joined the chorus from the floors of their respective Houses. Intervention by any other name will smell as sweet to the Mexican oil king. In view of the fact that publications and politicians who attack Mexico nowadays do not suggest any remedy except intervention, that, indeed, the remedies they suggest invariably involve some form of intervention, all present attacks upon Mexico or the Mexican Government may fairly be termed pro-intervention propaganda.
Pro-intervention propaganda we have always had with us, but never, before the organization of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico, in January, 1919, has it been so voluminous, so undisguised and aggressive; never before was it possible to establish its source beyond question. The assertions and arguments of both press and politicians are an echo of those of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico. Although a part of the press propaganda can be traced directly to this organization, it is not necessary so to trace it in order to establish the position of the press in the conspiracy. Anyone who has read the Pujo Committee report upon the Money Trust, showing the concentration ​of credit in the hands of three great banks, and the control of small banks by the big ones—and anyone who appreciates the dependence of the more powerful organs of the press upon the dominant business interests of the communities which they serve, and especially upon the banks—will understand how a large fraction of the press is easily induced to assist in any course of publicity medicine which Wall Street decides shall be administered to the country.
Has word gone out from Wall Street to raise a concerted outcry against Mexico, as a means to manufacturing a public opinion that will lend itself to intervention?
An indictment of the American press in general is a serious matter. Unfortunately, in the present instance the indictment is easily sustainable. I do not consider that the mere demand for intervention is of itself sufficient to establish the conspiracy charge. The indictment rests, rather, upon the dissemination of statements known to be false.
In other words, if the current attacks upon Mexico are well substantiated and the suggested remedy justifiable, then the conspiracy charge must fall. But if they are built upon falsehood we have a conspiracy, and of a most sinister character. Either intervention is a defensible policy or it is not. If it is defensible, the demand for it does not need to be supported by lies. If, on the other hand, the intervention propaganda is found to consist largely of misinformation, then the interventionists and their cause stand self-convicted at the very start.
Chapter 3
3.
INTERVENTIONIST LIES
Many of the reports that are employed to bolster up the interventionist cause are not immediately capable of proof or disproof, but enough of them are to establish the fact that the foundations of the interventionist structure is worm-eaten with falsehood. ​First, we have a group of assertions calculated to instil the idea that Mexicans, and particularly the Mexican Government, are hostile to Americans and the American Government—which would naturally produce a corresponding hostility on the part of Americans against Mexico. We are told that Mexicans have an especial hatred for Americans, that they believe we are afraid to fight them, that they imagine they could defeat us in war, that the attitude of the Mexican Government toward the American Government is one of insolence, that Mexico was unneutral and assisted Germany during the war, even that President Carranza has at various times planned a military invasion of the United States for the purpose of conquering American territory.
Second, we have a group of assertions calculated to create the impression that the present Mexican Government is incapable ever of establishing order in Mexico—which would naturally tend to allay opposition to a program looking toward the establishment of order by the strong arm of the United States. Every allegation touching the weakness, unpopularity, or general depravity of the Mexican Government falls into this class. In particular we are told that the greater part of Mexico is under control of the enemies of Carranza, even that a large proportion of the Mexican people would welcome intervention by the United States.
Consider briefly the first group of assertions. While it may be presumptuous to profess to see into the mind of the Mexican President, we have the facts that the President of the United States twice sent an army into Mexico for a period of months, and that Carranza avoided a conflict; that American forces have repeatedly invaded Mexico for shorter periods, each invasion constituting an act of war, but that the Mexican Government refrained from declaring war against the United States; that Carranza has received a number of notes from the Government of the United States of so threatening a nature that they could hardly fail to provoke war with any government not intent on avoiding war at almost any cost, but that Carranza has never replied in kind. Even laymen are well aware that a war of aggression has a much better chance of success if staged as a war of defense. The Mexican Government has had a number of opportunities to engage in a war of defense against the United States, but it has in every instance passed the opportunity by. ​These undeniable circumstances place the tale of a Carranza plot to invade the United States in the category of a deliberate fabrication. The insolence story is equally groundless. As to Mexico assisting Germany in the late war, it is obvious that Mexico was not in a position to give assistance. Although since early in 1917 we have been repeatedly told that Carranza practiced an unneutrality favorable to Germany, not a particle of serious evidence has been brought forward to support the charge. We have the sworn testimony of our Ambassador to Mexico that he knows of no such evidence. (House Rules Committee Investigation, July 22, 1919.)
As to any one in any position of authority in Mexico imagining that we are afraid of them, or that they can whip us, the evidence is overwhelmingly against this view. The charge, indeed, is in flat contradiction with another charge, coming from the same source, that the Mexicans hate us. For hate is the child of fear; if the Mexicans hate us, it is because they fear us, not, because they think they can whip us. It is in contradiction with another assertion, also from the same source, that the Mexicans would welcome intervention. If they would welcome intervention, would it not be, rather, because they loved us, instead of because they hated us?
Coming down to our second group of assertions, how can it be said that rebels or bandits control a greater part of Mexico, when it is admitted (as it has to be and is admitted) that they do not control any railroad, any sea or land port, any State capital, any large city or town, in any part of the Republic, and when the Carranza Administration is in possession of all of these, and is discharging the functions of government in every State and city?
While no plebiscite has been taken to determine whether Mexicans would or would not welcome intervention, an ordinary appreciation of human nature and human history is sufficient to furnish a pretty confident answer to that question. The impulse of human kind everywhere is toward self-government, not toward subjection to others. No nation in the past has ever chosen or desired to be governed by another one. Nor has any alien people ever shown itself satisfied to be ruled by the United States. Although, after conquering the Filipinos with the sword, we imposed, at vast expense, a system of education whose ​primary object was to convince the Filipino youth of the advantages of American rule, one generation has passed and gone, another has come, and the Filipino people are still pleading for self-determination. The Mexican people sacrificed thousands of lives to free themselves from Spain, and again thousands to save themselves from subjection to a dynasty sought to be imposed by France. Whether the Mexicans love us or whether they hate us, there is no reason to believe that any important fraction of the Mexican nation would approve of any form of American meddling in Mexican affairs.
The above, of course, does not cover the entire range of the interventionist propaganda. Nor does it cover the easily provable lies. These are merely sample lies that happen to be lies on their face. If the falsity of essential propositions like these is so easily discernible, the public may well suspect all reports emanating from the same quarter, whether immediately capable of disproof or not—tales of atrocities, disorders, dissensions, immoralities, or confiscations; statements as to the real causes of such disorders as exist, of the issues between the oil men and the Mexican Government, and of the obligations of the American people in the premises.
A further examination will show that the interventionist propaganda as a whole is composed largely of misstatements, and that it is the misstatements alone that seem to support the justice of the policy proposed.
Chapter 4
4.
AMERICAN LIVES NOT THE ISSUE
Every report of disorder, maladministration, destitution, confiscation, murder, or other outrage, and especially every one in which Americans figure as sufferers, is nowadays used to impress upon the conscience of the people the proposition that we are in some way obligated to send armed forces into Mexico to "straighten out" affairs there.
Although any form of misgovernment or suffering anywhere is to be deplored, it does not follow that the remedy proposed in this instance would be just, effective, or in any way defensible. ​We are told that we must send an army into Mexico to protect American lives. One answer to this is that such a course would not protect American lives, but would sacrifice them. Not only would the lives of Americans now in Mexico be in greater danger than ever before, but there is every reason to expect that far more Americans would fall in battle than the total number of Americans now resident in that country.
Another answer is that Americans are now reasonably safe in Mexico, and always have been. The existing Mexican Government does not kill Americans nor incite its people to do so. Considering our various invasions, the absence of anti-American riots is nothing short of amazing. Some Americans have been killed, nearly all of them by outlaws in isolated districts where they persisted in going, sometimes against the advice of the Mexican Government and even of the American Government. The list of Americans killed in Mexico in a period of nearly nine years, made public by our Ambassador in July (1919), totaled only 225. This number includes members of our military forces killed during our various invasions. It includes Americans who were members of Mexican rebel forces. It includes Americans who were killed by American citizens. It includes Americans who were killed presumably by members of a rebel force that was paid and supported by American oil corporations. It includes Americans murdered in a rage by a bandit leader who had been supported and then abandoned by the present Administration.
During these same years the murders of Americans, Mexicans, and other "nationals" in our own country run into the thousands. They include over four hundred lynchings, a number of bloody race riots, and numerous homicides committed for the sake of robbery. They include a far greater number of Mexicans killed by Americans than the number of Americans killed in the same period in Mexico.
Following the Villa raid, in 1916, uncounted numbers of peaceful, unoffending, and defenseless Mexicans, many of them small farmers on the American side of the border, were murdered by border rangers, local police officers, or others intent upon "making the Mexicans pay for Villa's raid," or "making this a white man's country." According to a report of an investigator appointed by Colonel H. J. Slocum, U. S. A., rendered ​February 12, 1918, "the number of victims thus sacrificed in south-west Texas by such peace officers assuming the powers of a court of justice will probably never be known, though I understand that Attorney F. C. Pierce holds a list with names of nearly three hundred." This report was printed in full in the April, 1918, Mexican Review, published at Washington, D. C.
So long as we do not fully protect Mexican lives in American territory, how can we insist that Mexico fully protect American lives in Mexican territory?
So long as we are incapable of fully protecting American lives in American territory, how can we expect to be able to protect American lives in Mexican territory?
The way to protect American lives is to protect them, and not to sacrifice them. What the interventionists are asking us to do is to sacrifice American lives, under the pretext of protecting them. It is obvious that the interventionists cannot be concerned for American lives as such, that the protection of American lives is not the real issue.
What, then, is the real issue? Is it PRINCIPLE? Is it the principle that America is bound to use its armed forces to protect the lives of American citizens IN OTHER COUNTRIES, regardless of the measure of our ability to protect them at home under all conditions?
Every effort is being made to impress the public with this view. Like every other pro-intervention argument, it will not bear examination. If we assume this obligation for ourselves we would have to concede the right of our neighbors to assume it on behalf of their citizens. Would we concede the right of Italy to send an army into Pennsylvania to protect striking Italians from being murdered by Steel Trust guards and gunmen?
To do so would be to abandon American sovereignty. It is a function of government in the United States to protect the lives of foreigners as well as citizens here to the best of its ability. It is a function of government in Mexico to protect the lives of foreigners as well as citizens there to the best of its ability. No government on earth perfectly discharges this function. If one government happens, for a period, to discharge it a little better than a neighbor, that does not give it a right to extend its authority to the territory of the neighbor. ​It is, however, a question whether Mexican lives are safer in Texas than American lives are in Mexico. Certainly there are other countries in which Americans are habitually safer than foreigners are in the United States. It is an immoral rule that does not work both ways. As we are bound to maintain our own sovereignty, so are we bound, by every consideration of international law and ethics, scrupulously to respect the sovereignty of our neighbors.
We have no right whatever to go in and kill a lot of Mexicans because some Americans have unfortunately been killed. We possess no super-authority which makes us the judge as to whether the Mexican Government is using its best efforts to protect Americans. If an American citizen is determined to remain in dangerous places, he must seek other means of protection than an army of his countrymen. He has rights, but no right to call an invading army to his assistance. No right of any American in Mexico can weigh against the right of the Mexican people to sovereignty.
Nor can it weigh against the right of the American people to be kept out of war. For the rights of Mexicans in this matter happen to accord both with the rights and INTERESTS of the American people. To attempt to live by the principle that our government is bound to protect the life of every American in every part of the world would be to assert a world sovereignty for ourselves, and involve our country in constant and disastrous war. The most aggressive government on earth does not attempt to live consistently up to this principle. Its actual application is urged only on occasions when a pretext is needed for aggression. The obligation, both of interest and of honor, is overwhelmingly against sending an army to "protect American lives" in Mexico.
Chapter 5
5.
"BENEVOLENT PACIFICATION"
American citizens have had a long time in which to save their lives by getting out of dangerous parts of Mexico. Why do they remain there? Only one answer has ever been heard to this question: They remain there for business reasons. In this answer is acknowledged the real issue. ​For business reasons, there are Americans who are not only willing to risk the lives of their employees, and sometimes of themselves, but also the lives of thousands of other Americans who would be sent to "protect" them. It is impossible to deny this fact. It is good and sufficient explanation of the phenomenon that the fountain-head of the interventionist propaganda is not some humanitarian or charitable institution, but an association of banking, mining, and other corporations whose sole reason for being is to make money for themselves.
Of course the gentlemen who speak for this association put forward a variety of arguments intended to convince the public that their own business interests in this matter is also the interest of the public, even the interest of the Mexican people and of humanity. Otherwise there would be scant hope of ever realizing their program.
We are assured, variously, that we could and would "restore order" in Mexico, "clean up" the bandits and grafters, give the Mexicans good government, and improve their economic conditions; that, anyhow, Mexico is "our job under the Monroe Doctrine," and if we do not compel Mexico to discharge her "international obligations" England or some other country will do so, involving us in trouble with the latter; that Mexico is in danger of falling under the control of Germany or Japan, which would constitute a menace to our own safety. Cuba is held up as a shining example of how we might set up a "stable government" of natives and then unselfishly withdraw. Finally, we are told that the general welfare is somehow bound up in the private interests of Americans abroad, and that we are under obligation to protect those interests at whatever cost either to Mexicans or to ourselves.
All of such arguments are based upon misapprehensions of one kind or another; all are fallacious.
Regarding the assertion that we could restore order in Mexico, one answer to this is that the disorder in Mexico has been greatly exaggerated. Another answer is that we have not yet satisfactorily worked out the task of maintaining order at home, and the difficulties of keeping order in a foreign country would be infinitely greater. Still another answer is that past efforts we have made to restore order in other countries have not been a brilliant success. ​Our ability to restore order in Mexico would depend largely upon the sort of welcome we would receive from the Mexicans. If our efforts were resented and opposed—as they certainly would be—it is obvious that there would at once be a great deal more disorder than ever before. We would have a war on our hands to begin with, and after that a condition of "banditry" infinitely more aggravated than the present one. For every Mexican patriot would turn "bandit."
The experience of the present and of the past is against any theory that we could "restore order" within any reasonable period. We sent an expedition in force to "catch Villa." It returned unsuccessful at the end of eleven months and only after the expenditure of $100,000,000 of the people's money. American forces have been fighting, unlawfully, to "restore order" in Haiti ever since July, 1915, and in Santo Domingo ever since May, 1916, but order is far from restored in either. If we are incapable of "ending banditry" with the iron heel in these countries, how can we expect to succeed in a similar effort in Mexico, whose power of resistance is incomparably greater?
Between the Cuba of 1898 and the Mexico of 1920 there is no fair basis of comparison. We went into Cuba with the consent of the Cubans, who were persuaded of our unselfish sympathy for Cuban independence. We would go into Mexico with the opposition of the Mexicans, who could only view our action as an effort to destroy their independence.
We have indulged in much self-praise of our "unselfish" Cuban record, but there is nothing unselfish about it. For we never relinquished control of Cuba, nor permitted the Cubans to enjoy the independence for which they fought. Although in the end we withdrew our army, we refused to withdraw it until the Cubans had revised their Constitution, ceding the United States a portion of their territory and acknowledging our "right" to intervene at will. Today we hold Cuba in political and economic subjection.
Nevertheless, our Cuban record is a fairer record than our Philippine record, our Haitien record, our Santo Domingan record, or our Nicaraguan record. The evidence is all against the theory that we could do as well in Mexico.
We are told that we could "set up a stable government" without a war of conquest. But if the Mexicans would resist, ​how could we set up any kind of a government until after a war of conquest?
Having set up our stable government, by what means would we maintain it except the continuous application of the same measures by which we had set it up?
The government that we would set up in Mexico, whether administered by Mexicans or by Americans, would, naturally, be a government designed to suit ourselves—that is, to suit the political and military leaders who would have "the job" in hand, and especially the financial interests which furnished the motive for the enterprise. The theory that we could at once withdraw is based on the assumption that this kind of a government would also suit the Mexicans. If the Mexicans wanted that kind of a government, it is probable that they would have already established it themselves—and the present friction would not exist.
As has been seen, one of the stock assertions of the intervention propaganda is that the Mexicans do not want the government that they have at present. The more the propaganda is examined the more vital this proposition is found to be in the interventionist scheme, so many others hinge upon it. If this proposition falls, a very large part of the interventionist structure goes into a state of collapse.
A conclusive answer to it is found in the history of the rise to power of the present government and its perpetuation. The Carranza party attained its dominating position not suddenly and by a military coup, but slowly, superseding a government which had come into possession of the military and financial resources of the country. It survived plots and counter-plots, personal revolts and counter-revolutions heavily backed by money and influence beyond the border. It rose triumphant in spite of the persistent enmity of influential foreigners, and the unfriendly meddling of foreign governments.
Carranza personally was never a military hero nor a brilliant orator; he is advanced in years; he wears whiskers; he was connected with the old regime. These circumstances would invalidate any theory that the present government achieved success on the personality of its leader. Why, then, did it succeed over Huerta, Villa, Felix Diaz, Zapata, and all the rest?
The interventionist reply is that Carranza owes his tenure to the favor of Wilson. This is one of the commonest of the ​interventionist lies and one of the most easily provable as such, as will be demonstrated in due course. The present Mexican Government is certainly far more acceptable to the Mexican people than any government foreigners might set up. Having overthrown the present government, therefore, and having set up our "stable government," what would become of the latter the moment we attempted to withdraw? It would either fall or it would find a revolution on its hands. It would prove to be unstable. We could insure its stability only by remaining and supporting it with arms.
Once it is admitted that the present government and its policies would be preferred to the substitute that we would attempt to impose, or that any considerable fraction of the Mexican people would for any reason resent our interference, it must also be admitted that nothing short of a protracted military occupation, accompanied by ruthless warfare against the party now dominant, and against all other nationalistic or patriotic elements, would be required before we would be able to assert the authority that we would have to assert in order to carry out any program of "rehabilitation" that is advocated.
The idea that we could "set up a stable government" in Mexico and then withdraw is a delusion. The idea that we could remain and establish a regime that would benefit the Mexican people is equally a delusion. It is hardly beneficial to a country to kill thousands of its most intelligent and progressive citizens, which would certainly be done.
Nor is there any reason to believe that the government we would impose would be any more honest, democratic, or in any way more beneficent than the government that we would overthrow.
The governments that we set up in Haiti and Santo Domingo are military despotisms. There is no freedom of speech or of the press, no political liberty of any kind.
In Nicaragua, which we have absolutely controlled since 1912, conditions are quite as bad. We essayed to set up a "stable government" in this "sister Republic." The only way we have found to keep it "stable" is to keep the population forever under our guns. Under our beneficent rule the Nicaraguans have no freedom of expression, no political liberty of any sort. The ​Nicaraguan elections, as "supervised" by American forces, are as much a farce as the elections staged in Mexico in the darkest days of the Diaz despotism.
Americans governed Vera Cruz for seven months, but they did not give the Mexicans a free press. General Funston suppressed Mexican newspapers in Vera Cruz.
We have not given self-government to Porto Rico or the Virgin Islands. In 1917 we landed forces in Cuba to support a government that had perpetuated itself by fraud.
A prominent American, in urging the righteousness of our Haitien adventure, declared: "What those people need more than anything else is for us to teach them honest government." During the regime of Roosevelt, we forced an American Receivership of customs upon the sovereign Republic of Santo Domingo. Soon after Wilson became President, a Senatorial investigation revealed a scandalous situation in which American politicians, in league with American bankers and concessionaires, were preying upon Santo Domingan finances by virtue of political control exerted under the terms of the customs Convention.
Our government of Mexico during the period of conquest and "rehabilitation" would be in the hands of military men, consuls, and carpet-baggers. It would be a Czaristic bureaucracy, the greater part of its energies devoted to the putting down disorder by more violent counter disorder.
Such a government might dole out a certain amount of charity, but it would not voluntarily lay the foundations for the economic betterment of the masses. If we intervened in Mexico our first concern would be to "protect American property," and to advance "American interests," not to benefit the Mexicans. Indeed, our chief complaint against the present government is that it is attempting to administer Mexico for the Mexicans, a policy that is alleged to conflict with American property interests.
Of course, the absence of turmoil, and the resumption of industry on a normal scale, are necessary prerequisites to any general improvement of economic conditions. But I will show that purely selfish interference on our part is largely responsible for the continuation of the turmoil. The interventionist pretense of consideration for the welfare of the Mexican people is sheer hypocrisy.
Chapter 6
6.
THE JAPANESE AND GERMAN BUGABOOS
Is intervention defensible, then, on grounds of national self-interest?
In this connection the German and Japanese perils and the Monroe Doctrine are the first to bob up.
In the half dozen years before the United States became a military ally of Japan a long series of newspaper hoaxes, in which the Japanese were represented as plotting for economic and political subjugation of Mexico, was perpetrated upon the American public. We heard of huge economic concessions, land colonization on a large scale, naval bases, secret alliances, the shipping of Japanese soldiers to Mexico, the recruiting of Japanese in the Mexican army, Japanese military plans for an attack upon America from Mexican territory.
Reports of this character were invariably utilized to engender distrust and hatred of Mexico and to manufacture sentiment in favor of grabbing that country "before it is too late." Few of the newspapers which circulated them would now attempt to maintain that they were anything but lies.
For three years past we have had a similar propaganda with Germany represented as the Peril. The purpose is obviously the same, and the stories are equally without a foundation of fact. The National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico itself openly stands sponsor for a series of "revelations" by a former military spy, Altendorf. The veracity of Altendorf's employers, and of the interventionist press in general, may be guaged by a few quotations from articles which were recently given wide publicity.
"Within a very few years, if they are permitted to carry out the plans they have formulated and are now executing as rapidly as they can, the Germans will have absolute economic, political, and military control of Latin-America with headquarters in Mexico. Then they will be ready to attempt once more the realization of their dream of world conquest."
"Dr. Altendorf asserted that Carranza had been bitterly disappointed by the failure of the plan to invade the United States in 1918, when he ​hoped to win back Texas, Arizona, California, and New Mexico. He said that the defeat of Germany had not altered the attitude of Carranza and that, through the good offices of Carranza, the Germans had been more active since the Armistice than ever before in obtaining control of the basic industries of Mexico."
"The activity of Carranza in driving Americans out and confiscating their property is explained by the fact that Germans with plenty of money stand ready to pick up the property at bargain rates."
"According to Dr. Altendorf, the Germans have acquired the titles to mines, oil fields, and other properties constituting the bulk of Mexican wealth, after the titles had been taken away from Americans and other foreigners. Almost invariably, he said, Germans got control of the properties of Americans, who were slain by Mexicans, who were driven from the country, or who were deprived of their titles by chicanery."
"As soon as the treaty is ratified there will be a hegira of a quarter of a million Germans from the United States who will take with them to Mexico $400,000,000 capital. There are already 150,000 Germans in Mexico and German immigration on a large scale will soon turn the country into a German colony."
It ought not to be necessary to comment on this propaganda. Its purpose cannot be mistaken. To anyone even moderately informed upon Mexico it convicts its author, his employers, and that part of the press which gave it prominence, of deliberate conspiracy and fraud.
Carranza has not driven Americans out of Mexico. He has not confiscated any American property and sold it to Germans. Germans have not obtained control of any of the basic industries. In the oil and mining industries Germans are conspicuous by their absence. There are not 150,000 Germans in Mexico or one-fifth of that number. No one, of course, can tell how many Germans will go from the United States into Mexico, or how much money they will carry with them.
If Germany is held in complete economic and military subjection to her conquerors for a period of years, as the Peace Treaty provides, how can she gain either military or economic control of a continent thousands of miles distant, "within six months" or any other period? ​Excepting the Spanish, Americans and Britons are the most numerous foreign elements in Mexico. It is they who threaten to control the basic industries. If the victors of the European war, one of them "mistress of the seas," and another a next-door neighbor, find it difficult to make a colony of Mexico, how can defeated Germany hope to do it?
The persons responsible for the fiction that Mexico would like to become a colony of Germany are the same who are responsible for the fiction that Mexico would like to become a colony of the United States. There is not a particle of serious evidence in favor of either.
Chapter 7
7.
THE MONROE DOCTRINE ARGUMENT
The danger from England is far more nearly real. British capitalists want the same kind of a government in Mexico as American capitalists do, and they are quite willing that we shall undertake the expense of establishing it. One of the most shopworn of interventionist arguments is that if we do not take military action to "straighten out" Mexico England will do so, thereby infringing the Monroe Doctrine and precipitating a crisis with ourselves.
This may be accepted as a possibility. The British Government has repeatedly proven itself capable of exactly the kind of an aggression that an expedition "to protect British lives and property" in Mexico would involve. But the military difficulties of a British conquest, by reason of distance, would be infinitely greater than the difficulties in the way of an American conquest. That is perhaps the reason why England is quite willing for America to "attend to her interests" there. Why not wait and see if England would consider it practicable to enter upon a war of conquest upon Mexico before entering upon such an enterprise on England's behalf ourselves?
Assuming that England would consider it practicable to take military action in Mexico, does it follow that we would be justified in entering upon a war of conquest simply to prevent some other nation from entering upon a war of conquest? Would the presence of England in Mexico be a menace to the United States? Is Canada a menace? ​Or, if we must have a war over Mexico of some kind, why not fight to save Mexico from aggression by others, instead of fighting a war of aggression upon her ourselves?
"If we don't do it, England will!" This is reminiscent of the swindler's stereotyped defense: "If I didn't get the sucker's money, somebody else would."
Behold the ancient and venerable document, the Monroe Doctrine, brought out of its closet and paraded before us, to what end? Not to preserve the independence of Latin American States, but to destroy it; not to prevent the absorption of Latin America by a foreign power, but to facilitate it — and ourselves that foreign power!
The only escape from this absurdity is through a confession that our "unselfish protection" is a monster hypocrisy, that the Monroe Doctrine is not for our neighbors, but for ourselves.
"But the Monroe Doctrine at least requires us to compel Mexico to observe her international obligations."
What obligations? The obligation to pay her external debts? The Mexican Government has not repudiated any part of its foreign debt. It has only asked its creditors to be patient, just as England, France and other debtors of Wall Street are doing. The Mexican Government has repeatedly announced its determination to pay all legitimate foreign claims of whatever kind. A number of our American States have repudiated their foreign debts at various times, and the British bondholders are still unpaid. Would we consent to a British military occupation of the United States for the collection of these debts? What other international obligations are specified? There is no other obligation except the obligation to apply the laws of the land without discrimination against foreigners. This obligation is lived up to. In fact, one of the bitterest complaints against Carranza is that he refuses to accord foreigners special privileges, as the Old Regime had done.
Even should Mexico repudiate her foreign debts and enter upon a general policy of nationalization of private property, we would not be justified in attacking her. In using force to compel Mexico to observe her international obligations we would be violating one of our international obligations, an obligation greater than any Mexico would infringe—the obligation to respect Mexican sovereignty.
​If we think it necessary to maintain the Monroe Doctrine against England (which we have not always done) we must find some other way of doing it than by aggression upon our weaker neighbors.
There is nothing about the Monroe Doctrine that would justify us in perpetrating an aggression upon any Latin American neighbor in order to prevent some other country from perpetrating an aggression upon it, or in order to compel it to observe so-called international obligations.
There is, however, a policy, popular in Big Business circles and in Democratic and Republican Party camps, which masquerades under the name of the Monroe Doctrine, sometimes termed the "new" Monroe Doctrine, which would commit America to such a course.
"We want Mexico." That is the kernel of the matter, and it comes out, at times, in just those words. Which reduces the whole argument to a money-making proposition. "We approve of the "new" Monroe Doctrine; we want to control Mexico because it would mean money in our pockets."
This argument depends for its favor upon a mental confusion as to the application of the pronoun "we." If We conquered Mexico, a horde of political job-hunters would settle into soft nests; naval and military officers would receive promotion; army and navy contractors would wax fat; existing American holdings would increase in value; opportunities for profit-making enterprises would multiply.
But what would all this mean to the vast majority of the American people?
Chapter 8
8.
OIL WELL PATRIOTISM
I take the following from the testimony of E. L. Doheny, a leading spirit of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico, and the largest producer of Mexican oil—Senate Foreign Relations Sub-Committee Hearing on Mexican Affairs, Page 254, September 11, 1919:
This is perhaps as plausible a phrasing as can be of the grab-whatever-you-want-wherever-it-is theory of national interest and international morality. It involves, however, a number of erroneous assumptions.
Applied to the matter in hand, it involves, first, the assumption that Mexican oil is essential to the life of the American nation. This assumption is absurd so long as domestic oil is exported in large quantities and is wasted in production in very much larger quantities.
In an article in Sperling's Journal, in September, 1919, E. Mackay Edgar, a well known international banker of Great Britain, remarked:
In a letter to the Westminster Gazette, in the Spring of 1918, Viscount Cowdray, the British oil king, said:
We have heard the same kind of thing from American experts. Well, if the United States Government "ought to hold for its industries and its people" any oil lands anywhere, it would seem evident that it ought first to "hold" the lands that are already under the American flag, where war is not a part of the process; that it ought to look first to the effective conservation of the domestic supply, which is being wasted by the very gentlemen who are urging a great grab from our neighbor.
The Doheny theory involves, second, the assumption that if the production or control of Mexican oil should pass out of the hands of American citizens, American industry and American automobile owners would in some way be deprived of its use.
It happens that the percentage of gasoline in Mexican oil ​is small. But that point is of little importance, inasmuch as there is no reason to believe that Mexican oil would not still be obtainable, and in exactly the same manner as before—by the simple process of purchase.
Supposing that Mexican oil should pass into the hands of the Mexican Government, or of Mexicans, what would they do with it except to sell it to whomever was willing to pay the price?
Nor is there any reason to believe that the price would be higher. Conversely, there is no reason to believe that if the Government of the United States should tomorrow grab all of Mexico for Doheny and his friends, the price of oil would fall to the American consumer by so much as a fraction of one per cent.
Quite to the contrary, it is more likely that if some of the oil resources of the earth were pried loose from Doheny, Standard Oil, and their foreign partners, the Rothschilds and the Cowdrays—by the Mexican Government or any other factor—the monopoly of this commodity might not be so nearly complete, there might be a little real competition, and the American users of the flivver and the limousine might have cheaper oil and gasoline.
There is no need for alarm. So long as petroleum is produced in so many quarters of the world, the American people may rest assured that it will be available for American use, and on terms no less favorable if the sources of supply are owned by foreigners than if they are owned by Americans.
The tactics of the gentlemen who suggest the use of the public armed forces to "hold" their claims in foreign lands sufficiently refute any pretense that they may make of concern for the American consumer. For it happens that these gentlemen, instead of directing their energies to increasing the supply for the benefit of the nation, have frequently sought to limit it for the sole purpose of increasing their own profits at the expense of the rest of us. The very interests which are wont to advocate grabbing the natural resources of other countries "for the use of American industry" are the same which favor, and put through, protective tariffs and "anti-dumping laws," forcing the American consumer to pay them higher prices than he would have to pay were free importations permitted from abroad.
The aim of this fallacious propaganda is to delude the ​American people into fancying that the interests of its makers are their own, in order that they may be willing to go to war for them. It comes down to a question of the wisdom of the policy of "protecting American property" abroad with the army and navy of the public.
It is universally assumed, in the propaganda for the aggressive foreign policy to which Big Business is seeking to commit the nation, that the protection of the foreign enterprises of any American citizen is to the interest of all American citizens. It is assumed that foreign investments are in some way national institutions, monuments to the patriotism of their founders, as sacred as the very Stars and Stripes themselves. The assumption is the legitimate offspring of another assumption—that what is best for the nation's multi-millionaires is best for the nation.
Yet it would be difficult to show how the ownership of Mexican oil by Mr. Doheny benefits the ordinary American. The burden of proof is on the Dohenys, and they have not proved the point; they have only affirmed.
Quite to the contrary, it is much better that Mexican oil should be recognized as the property of Mexicans, if ownership by Americans would be likely to involve us in war or lead us into paths of aggression. So long as American industry is in neeed of capital, so long as American railroads are crying for a billion dollars a year more capital with which to make necessary improvements, so long as our western states plead for capital to come and develop their natural resources, no American dollar that runs into foreign countries, looking for cheaper labor and bigger profits, demanding "preparedness" to protect it, agitating for war to make its profits good, can claim to be a patriotic dollar. On the contrary, every adventuring Wall Street dollar that calls back to its army and navy to protect it is a traitor dollar.
In going to war to "protect American property" in Mexico we would spend far more of the people's money than the aggregate value of all the holdings that the war Was intended to protect.
Would it not be better, then, for the nation to buy out our patriotic citizens having investments in Mexico—to pay every American dollar back, not merely every dollar that has actually been invested, but every dollar that any American might claim to have invested, rather than to spend an equal sum and send ​tens of thousands of Americans and Mexicans to their deaths besides?
Of course I am not advocating this alternative. Indeed, it is doubtful if the patriotic gentlemen would accept it. They would demand pay not only for their investments, but for their prospects, which they value even more highly—and for which they wish you to risk your skins. What they want is for you to risk your skins and your property to protect their prospects, under the misapprehension that patriotism demands it.
The Doheny theory—which is only a form of stating the theory of Imperialism—assumes that the national interests are something different from what they are. It assumes that international law is not what it is. It assumes that the sovereignty of a country extends to the persons and property of its citizens; wherever they may be, which is not true. It overlooks the fact that Mexico is a sovereign state, and that the Mexican nation, acting through the Mexican Government, has first call upon the resources of Mexico; that it has the right to control, tax, or use those resources as it sees fit, in accordance with its own views of the general welfare, and without dictation or interference from any outside power.
Shorn of all humbug, the Doheny theory amounts to this, that the American Government ought to grab for American capitalists anything anywhere that they may happen to lay claim to, regardless of the rights or interests either of the American people or the people of any other country.
Chapter 9
9.
PLEDGES OF PRESIDENT AND PEOPLE
For every interventionist argument there are a number of good and sufficient answers. One answer to all of them is the book of faith by which we professed to be guided in entering and prosecuting the war "to make the world safe for democracy."
It may be painful at this time to recall the articles of that book of faith, as they were enunciated by the President of the United States. But whatever discrepancies there may be between the President's promises and his performances, and whatever ​may be the causes thereof, the President was not alone in swearing allegiance to these principles.
The President's words were endorsed and echoed by every one of the rich gentlemen, every one of the newspapers, and every one of the politicians who are now asking the country to approve a program of intervention in Mexico, as well as by every one else who joined in the cry of "Stand Behind the President," or participated in any way in the war propaganda.
Wherefore, any repudiation or belittlement of these principles now by any one who claimed allegiance to them during the war would place him in the position of having deliberately participated in another conspiracy of deception, involving the death of 75,000 young Americans on foreign battlefields and in military camps, the grievous maiming of a quarter of a million others, the expenditure of thirty odd billions of the people's money, and the submission of 100,000,000 to countless forms of suffering and sacrifice.
Who, of these gentlemen of finance, of the press, or of politics, dare say that they were only fooling when they told us that the War was necessary in order to vindicate the principles of democracy? How would such a statement differ from a confession of murder in the first degree?
Yet it is difficult to see how the advocacy of a war upon Mexico, or of any interference in Mexico that might lead to war, or of any meddling whatever in the internal affairs of Mexico, is anything except just that kind of a confession. So long as intervention in Mexico is advocated, whether under that name or any other, there is every reason and necessity to quote and quote again the solemn assurances of principle upon which American armies were sent overseas.
The basic principles of the democracy for which America professed to fight were universally declared to be absolute equality among nations, great and small; equal and absolute independence of all in their domestic affairs; the self-determination of peoples; the absolute inviolability of sovereignty which is and always has been the corner-stone of international law. However the phrasing varied, every democratic pronouncement was in some sense a reaffirmation of these principles.
"We are glad ... to fight," announced the President in his War Message, "for the rights of nations, great and small and ​the privilege of men everywhere to choose their own way of life and obedience . . . for the rights and liberties of small nations."
"We are fighting for the liberty, the self-government, and the undictated development of all peoples," he said to Russia (May 26, 1917). “No people must be forced under a sovereignty under which it does not wish to live."
"What we demand in this war," he told Congress, in the speech of the Fourteen Points, "is that the world . . . be made safe for every peace-loving nation, which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world, as against force and selfish aggression."
"Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action," he announced, in the speech of the Four Principles (February 11, 1918).
Speaking in contemplation of war, in his inaugural address, 1917, he informed us:
"The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded, if it is to last, must be an equality of rights," he said, in his Peace Without Victory Address. "The guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak."
In summing up the meaning of the Fourteen Points (January 8, 1918) he pointed out:
Summing up the pledges enunciated September 27, 1918, the President said:
Far from holding that the Monroe Doctrine gives America a right to dictate in the affairs of its neighbors, under any pretext, he asserted that it precluded us, equally with all other nations, from exercising such dictation. In the Senate Address on the terms of a democratic peace (January 22, 1917) he offered this final characterization of his proposals :
At the beginning of 1918 the President put the same sentiment in the form of a pledge to Latin American countries, to be transmitted to them by the head of the United Press :
Bear in mind that these cannot be taken merely as expressions of a personal view, as pronouncements of abstract ideals to be realized at some indefinite time in the future, as hopes of a leader of a political party, or even merely of statements of policy of an elected Executive. They are the pledges of a people—of every part of the people, at least, that endorsed our "war for democracy." They constitute a solemn contract, sealed with the blood of our seventy-five thousand dead, binding the nation collectively and individually.
Not only does the international program to which we pledged ourselves in the European war preclude us from any form of ​intervention in Mexico, but previously to the war the present Administration had repeatedly invoked every so-called "American principle" against such action.
In an address at Chicago, January 31, 1916, the President declared that, by the terms of the Monroe Doctrine,
"We stand pledged to see that both the continents of America are left free to be used by their peoples as those peoples choose to use them, under a principle of national sovereignty as absolute and unchallenged as our own."
In the Message to Congress, December 7, 1915, in expounding the Pan-American Doctrine, he asserted that, "All the governments of America stand, so far as we are concerned, upon a footing of genuine equality and unquestionad independence."
In a speech at Columbus, December 10, 1915, in invoking the Virginia Bill of Rights in favor of Mexico, he said:
And again, seven months later, at Detroit (July 10, 1916):
In his original statement to Congress of policy in regard to Mexico (August 27, 1913) the President said:
Repeatedly he pronounced against imperialistic policies as un-American, and specifically against the policy of employing the public armed forces "for the protection of American property" in neighboring countries. In a speech at Cincinnati, October 26, 1916, he said:
And again, in his Speech of Acceptance, 1916:
He even acknowledged Mexico's right to disorder, Mexico's right to spill as much blood as she pleased in the process of changing her government, Mexico's right to take as long as she pleased in effecting changes:
Such quotations could be multiplied. They are so well known that perhaps I have indulged in them at unnecessary length. On the other hand, they cannot be repeated too frequently so long as Mexico stands in danger from us. Either we were despicable hypocrites in the war, or we are hypocrites now ​—those of us who are attempting to fabricate some pretext for aggression upon Mexico.
Chapter 10
10.
THE WILSON POLICY OF INTERVENTION
Mexico does stand in danger of us, and it is not only because our financiers and their press were fooling when they told us how they loved democracy, but also because the eminent statesman who uttered these solemn pledges is not living up to them, has never lived up to them, has never attempted to live up to them.
Without examining into the relationship between the Wilson Administration and the intervention conspiracy, it is impossible either to appraise the danger of war, or to take effective measures to avert it; it is impossible either to understand the cause of the Mexican "turmoil," or to arrive at the rational solution.
Neither the wickedness of Carranza nor the depravity of the Mexican nation, but the policy of Wilson, is the key to the Mexican situation. That policy is still very widely misunderstood in the United States, and only because it has been consistently and almost universally misrepresented by the press, and all other agencies under the influence of the interventionists, including the Administration itself. This misrepresentation can be explained only as an integral part of the intervention conspiracy.
The Wilson Mexican policy has always been a policy, not of non-intervention, but of intervention. One of the lies of the intervention propaganda is that Wilson's policy is a policy of non-intervention. Any opponent of intervention who repeats this lie or assumes it to be a fact, whether out of respect for the high office of the President or for any other reason, disarms himself and plays into the hands of the intervention conspirators.
Military invasion is the most drastic form of intervention. The Wilson Administration has perpetrated two protracted invasions of Mexico, one lasting seven months, and the other eleven months, as well as numerous invasions of shorter duration, each one legally an act of war. . It has repeatedly threatened Mexico with force. It holds the threat of force constantly over Mexico. Every diplomatic representation involving a ​threat is a form of intervention. Not to speak of aeroplanes, which have strangely flown hundreds of miles over Mexican territory, not once but many times, American war vessels have been held for a long period in Mexican ports in violation of international law and over repeated protests of the Mexican government.
The Villa raid, the President held, was a violation of Mexican sovereignty; the "punitive expedition," he said, was NOT a violation of Mexican sovereignty (Speech of Acceptance, 1916). He commanded Huerta to salute the flag, but refused Huerta's offer to salute the flag simultaneously with an American salute to the Mexican flag. He declined to enter into a reciprocal agreement with the Mexican Government, already recognized as such, for the crossing of the international line by military forces in pursuit of bandits—insisting that American forces should cross, but that Mexican forces should not cross under similar circumstances. He refused Carranza's request for mediation of the difficulties growing out of the "punitive expedition." In almost innumerable other ways the President has denied to Mexico the "genuine equality," the "unquestioned independence," the "scrupulous respect for sovereignty," so frequently and solemnly promised.
The PURPOSE of the Wilson policy is as widely misunderstood as is its essence. To discover the real purpose it is necessary to look beyond the Wilsonian pronouncements of high intention, to glance at the subject matter of the various diplomatic representations to Mexico, and especially at the EFFECT that they, the overt acts, and the other features of the policy tend to produce.
For it happens that, while saying one thing to the American people, the President has been saying another thing to Mexico; that, while the opponent of intervention can find a complete vindication of his position in the words of Wilson, the interventionist can find as complete vindication of his position in OTHER Words of Wilson; that every Wilson quotation herein against intervention can be paralleled by another Wilson quotation of a diametrically opposite import. Every salient argument of the interventionist propaganda reappears, in some form or another, in the President's pronouncements attempting to justify his meddling policy. ​Wilson words balance Wilson words. It is only the words that are backed by ACTION, therefore, that tend to establish the Wilson purpose. The Wilson diplomacy has been directed toward "protecting the lives and property" of "nationals" in the good old imperialistic way. More, it has tended to bring about all the conditions most pleasing to the interventionist. Stopping short of a war of conquest, it has tended perfectly to prepare the way for such a war—when the time is ripe. The sum and substance of the Wilson policy leaves no hope for the opponent of intervention, but affords every hope and encouragement to the interventionist.
Although international law is clear that foreigners who deliberately remain, for business or other reasons, in areas disturbed by revolution, must take the same chances as citizens, and have no right to demand the armed forces of their home governments to protect them; and although American courts and American statemen have frequently acknowledged this principle; and although the President himself applied it to Mexico to the extent of advising Americans to leave disturbed districts at various times; nevertheless, he has repeatedly threatened Mexico on behalf of "American lives."
I quote him on three widely separated occasions:
August 27, 1913:
March 9, 1915:
July 22, 1919:
Again, although the President repeatedly pronounced against intervention on behalf of property interests in general, and American property interests in particular, he also repeatedly threatened Mexico on behalf of property interests. In a communication devoted to the question of oil taxes, and to the application of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, and in which the killing of Americans was not mentioned, President Wilson notified President Carranza:
As it is beyond any probability that the killing of Americans in Mexico could suddenly be ended; and as negotiations covering a period of six years, involving every form of pressure and coercion, have not yet brought President Carranza to the Wilson view as to the protection due American property; and as President Carranza has given every evidence of a determination to oppose any more far-reaching violations of Mexican sovereignty than have yet been restored to, the publication of the notes of April, 1918, and of July, 1919, will have to be accepted as notification to America and to the world that the President is seriously contemplating war with Mexico.
The only alternative to this view is that these notes are a bluff. But there are many reasons for believing that they are not a bluff.
To go back, first, to an earlier period, we once sent a "punitive expedition" to Mexico. It was recalled only after the President must have been quite certain that we were about to go to war with Germany. Although the President had declared that the expedition was "for the sole purpose of taking the bandit, Villa," it remained in Mexico nine months after the chase of Villa had been definitely abandoned. Why?
The answer was frankly given by Franklin K. Lane, Wilson's Secretary of the Interior, and Chairman of the Mexican American Joint Commission, at the end of November, 1916, in a public statement explaining the American Government ​position on the question of the withdrawal of the "punitive expedition."
Mr. Lane's position in the Wilson cabinet, the importance of his statement, and the fact that it was issued immediately after a long conference with the President, make it reasonably certain that the views represented were those of the President. Although, in explaining the dispatch of the expedition to the public (March 25, 1916) the President had warned the country against a conspiracy "for the purpose of bringing about intervention in the interest of certain American owners of Mexican properties," and had asserted that: "This object cannot be attained so long as sane and honorable men are in control of this government," the Lane statement is virtually a threat of war in the interest of American owners of Mexican properties, and an admission that the troops were being retained in Mexico for the very purposes which the President had so categorically pronounced against. Read the following sentences carefully and see if they do not justify this assertion:
The Wilson policy of serving vested interests went so far as to involve a general opposition to Mexican economic reform. Although the President had declared for “the eighty per cent" and had promised: "Eventually I shall fight every one of these men (foreign capitalists) who are now seeking to exploit Mexico for their own selfish ends. I shall do what I can to keep Mexico from their plundering. There shall be no individual exploitation of Mexico if I can stop it," yet every item of the revolutionary program ​displeasing to Wall Street met with official protests, often of a threatening nature, from him.
Although he had diagnosed the cause of Mexican unrest as "a fight for the land," and had endorsed that fight, yet from the beginning down to the present he has offered representations in opposition to the program of land nationalization and distribution which the Mexicans have tried to put into effect, as well as in opposition to all efforts to assume adequate control of mining, oil, and other great industries; to conserve the natural resources, especially in oil; to revoke invalid and oppressive concessions, to effect legal confiscations, to democratize finance, to curb or destroy the monopolies created by the old regime, or adequately to tax or control vested interests anywhere.
Every such representation involving a threat constituted an act of intervention and an effort to over-ride Mexican sovereignty for purely property reasons.
The Wilson policy of serving vested interests even went so far as to involve a stubborn and prolonged opposition to the Mexican party most genuinely committed to reform, and, by the same sign, of aid and comfort to counter-revolutionary elements.
As no other Mexican leader has ever been so violently hated and plotted against by the vested interests as Carranza, so none—not even Huerta—has met with such embarrassing hostility from the Wilson Administration, and there is every reason to believe that this hostility was due solely to the unwillingness of Carranza to accord to the foreign exploiters of Mexico the guarantees of governmental benevolence which they desired.
The current falsehood that Carranza owes his tenure to the favor of Wilson rests chiefly upon the facts that Wilson did not recognize Huerta, that he ultimately recognized Carranza, and that on one occasion he permitted Carranza troops to cross American territory in their campaign against Villa. How fallacious the reasoning is can only be disclosed by sketching the relations of Wilson to the various Mexican leaders from the beginning.
Chapter 11
11.
WILSON'S AID TO HUERTA
There seems to be an almost general belief that Wilson was unalterably opposed to Huerta from the first, the reason being ​that, as a democrat, he could not approve of any government "stained by blood or supported by anything but the consent of the governed."
This is an error. April 11, 1913, a Washington dispatch to the New York World, said:
"When asked about it this afternoon, President Wilson said the de facto government of Mexico would be recognized as the new Provisional Government when it had worked out the problem now before it—the establishment of peace."
May 5, the same paper published a dispatch from its Mexico City correspondent, as follows:
"Negotiations between the State Department at Washington and the Mexican foreign ministry regarding recognition of the Huerta Administration have progressed rapidly in the past few days. . . . The United States Government demands (among other things). . . acceptance by Mexico of an international commission to pass upon all claims for damages sustained by foreigners. . . since the beginning of the revolutionary disorders in the republic."
Reports of this character also appeared in other papers. November 10, confirmation came from England. In a speech on that date explaining the British recognition of Huerta, Prime Minister Asquith said:
"We were informed by the Government of the United States that, as regarded the recognition of Huerta, no definite answer could be given, except that they would wait some time before recognizing him."
If the President was unalterably opposed to Huerta from the beginning, why, for nearly six months, did he retain as ambassador to the court of Huerta, one Henry Lane Wilson, who had assisted in setting up the Huerta regime, and who, so long as he remained, was Huerta's most conspicuous apologist and support?
Why, for 176 days after his inauguration, did the President employ his power to embargo arms to assist Huerta in the latter's efforts to crush his enemies, and so "work out the problem" of peace?
Although Wilson did not recognize Huerta in Washington, he recognized the assassin along the border. Under the orders of the Executive, the military patrol, as well as the civil authorities, treated the Huerta government as the lawful government of Mexico, while the enemies of Huerta—Carranza and his friends—were dealt with as bandits. For 176 days the agents of Huerta were permitted to purchase arms in the United States, ​and export them through the regular channels, while the agents of Carranza, when caught trying to export arms, were thrown into jail and their shipments confiscated.
At the end of 176 days the President placed an embargo also against Huerta, but the policy was still a discrimination against Carranza, since Huerta, holding the seaports, was able to procure arms from Europe.
Not until February 3, 1914, eleven months after his inauguration, did the President place Carranza on an equal footing with Huerta, by lifting the embargo entirely. The President's explanation of his reasons for lifting the embargo, issued on that date, amount to a confession that, for eleven months, while conducting a sham battle against Huerta, he had assisted Huerta against Carranza by "a departure from the accepted practices of neutrality."
From which it must be evident that the "blood-stained governments" pose was an after-thought.
In any event, that pose could not have been sincere, since the President proceeded to recognize blood-stained governments set up in other parts of the Western Hemisphere, to employ our armed forces to maintain a blood-stained government set up by a previous administration in Nicaragua, and himself set up bloodstained governments in Haiti and Santo Domingo.
The President did turn definitely against Huerta in the latter part of August. Why? Owing to secret diplomacy, it is impossible to state the full conditions demanded of Huerta. Subsequent events, added to current reports, justify the inference that what Wilson sought was, literally, to "maintain the dignity and authority of the United States," as he told Congress when he took Vera Cruz—particularly to IMPOSE THE AUTHORITY of the United States upon Mexico; to procure from Mexico acceptance of the principle of American intervention in Mexican affairs.
Subsequent events began to happen at Nogales, Sonora, at the end of November. Carranza was at Nogales. On August 27, Wilson had placed an embargo on arms against Huerta. But he had omitted to lift the embargo in favor of Carranza. Carranza was asking nothing of the Government of the United States except freedom to purchase arms. Carranza was anxious to dispose of the "blood-stained government" of Huerta, but Wilson was not in a hurry to allow him to do so. Wilson held the screws ​upon both Carranza and Huerta while, through John Lind, he attempted to induce Huerta to step down in favor of a Provisional President whom he himself would approve. Only after negotiating with Huerta for more than eight months did Wilson deign to turn to Carranza, although the latter was the recognized leader of all the Mexican elements then opposed to the "usurper."
On the day that John Lind departed from Mexico City, having received no reply to his final ultimatum to Huerta, another private ambassador of Wilson called on Carranza at Nogales. Still holding the screws on Carranza, Wilson, through William Bayard Hale, attempted to dictate terms to the First Chief of the Constitutionalist Party. Although secret diplomacy also shrouds the Hale proposals, the reports both from Nogales and Washington indicated that upon their acceptance depended the recognition of Carranza. Their character may be guessed from a statement given out by Carranza: "We will accept no transactions, nor the interference of any nation to regulate Mexico's interior conditions."
That was Carranza's final answer. The Hale interviews were broken off. The Washington atmosphere dropped abruptly. Carranza was not recognized. The embargo against him was not lifted.
Instead, an order was issued for his arrest, in case he should cross the American line, and shortly afterwards it became known that Wilson agents were grooming Villa.
From Nogales we go to Vera Cruz. We shot up that city, killed ten children, six women, and some two hundred men; we lost nineteen American boys. Why did we do it? Here is the President's explanation to Congress:
"I, therefore, felt it my duty. . . to insist that the flag of the United States should be saluted. . . . I, therefore, come to ask your approval that I should use the armed forces of the United States. . . to obtain from General Huerta. . . the fullest recognition of the rights and dignity of the United States. . . . We seek to maintain the dignity and authority of the United States." (Message of March 20, 1914.)
Now what terrible offense required that the flag be saluted? Here is the official report of the incident in full, as sent by ​Admiral Mayo to Admiral Fletcher, and transmitted by Fletcher to Washington:
"This forenoon Mexican soldiers arrested paymaster and whale boat's crew of Dolphin, part of whom were in boat with flag flying, marched them two blocks through streets, then back to boat, and there released them. General Zaragoza expressed regret verbally. In view of publicity of event I have called for formal disavowal and apology (and) punishment of officer in charge of Mexican squad, and salute to American flag within 24 hours from 6 p. m. Thursday."
Tampico was under siege by the Constitutionalist forces at the time, and warnings had been issued prohibiting landings at the particular dock at which the Americans were arrested.
Very well, we shot up Vera Cruz. Carranza protested, and President Wilson replied to him as follows:
"The feelings and intentions of the government in this matter. . . are based upon. . . a profound interest in the re-establishment of their (the Mexicans') constitutional system."
The President's various answers as to why we shot up Vera Cruz do not agree with one another.
Nor do any of those answers agree with the action that the President proceeded to take, unless you except the single sentence: "We seek to maintain the dignity and authority of the United States."
For the President voiced no more demands that the flag be saluted. The flag was never saluted. Nor did he make any other demands upon Huerta to obtain from him "the fullest recognition of the rights and dignity of the United States" as a substitute for a salute to the flag.
Evidently the President forgot the flag incident on the very day of the attack. There are other reasons for the suspicion that he never considered it in any other light than as a subterfuge. One of them appears in the Message urging upon Congress the repeal of the Canal Tolls Exemption Law, one month and four days before the flag incident:
"I shall not know how to deal with other matters of even greater delicacy and nearer consequence if you do not grant it to me in ungrudging measure."
President Wilson never took Congress or the public into his confidence as to the meaning of this sentence. Instead, he begged that he be not required to explain. Has any other plausible ​explanation been suggested than the one that might be expressed in these words:
"I am planning to invade Mexico. England has agreed that there shall be no interference, PROVIDED I put through this bill?"
Vera Cruz was occupied in great haste. The order was issued before Congressional authorization had been obtained. The haste was explained as due to the President's desire to prevent two shiploads of arms from reaching Huerta.
This is perfectly understandable as a maneuver in a general campaign to oust Huerta. But the action that followed is difficult to explain as a part of such a campaign. For Wilson permitted Huerta to get the arms. The occupation occurred in time to prevent the disembarkation of the arms at Vera Cruz. When the munitions ships backed away and sailed for another port, Puerto Mexico, Admiral Fletcher wirelessed Washington suggesting that he occupy that port also. "No" was the answer he received. So our marines, who had killed 200 Mexicans and lost 19 of their own number, for the supposed purpose of seizing these arms, looked on while the arms were delivered to Huerta.
Nor does the action which the President proceeded to take with regard to Carranza comport either with his message to the latter or with the theory that he was concerned solely with ridring Mexico of Huerta. For the President again clapped down his embargo against the land ports, every one of which was now in the hands of Carranza!
Huerta was still able to procure arms by sea. That the new embargo was favorable to Huerta is indicated in a Niagara Falls dispatch (from the A-B-C Mediation Conference) June 4:
"Senor Emilio Rebasa, head of the Mexican (Huerta) delegation, was elated today over the news from Washington that the United States had declared an embargo on the exportation of munitions of war from the United States into Mexico."
Why, after shedding American and Mexican blood to injure Huerta, should the President "elate" Huerta's partisans?
As a matter of fact, did the occupation of Vera Cruz determine the fall of Huerta?
It is almost universally assumed that it did. A glance at the war-map (or the news of that day) is sufficient to compel the contrary conclusion. The Constitutionalists were in possession ​of all of northern Mexico. Villa had just taken Torreon. Gonzales had taken Victoria and was in the act of taking Monterrey. Obregon, in the Northwest, had just won a series of victories. Tampico was near the point of surrender. Huerta was already doomed.
There are those, indeed, who hold that the American invasion gave Huerta a new lease of life. For the first time bona fide volunteers came to Huerta's recruiting stations. A member of the Huerta cabinet repaired to the penitentiary, made a speech to the imprisoned deputies (of the Madero Congress), and set them free.
"If it is a question of supporting Huerta against a foreign invasion, then we will support Huerta," these deputies agreed.
"Had Huerta attacked the Americans we would have supported him," one of these deputies told the writer. "But when, instead of sending the volunteers toward Vera Cruz, he shipped them North, we saw through his game. Had the invasion come two months sooner, all Mexico might have combined to resist the Americans. As it was, the occupation of Vera Cruz did not hasten by a day the fall of Victoriano Huerta."
Perhaps the final proof that, in going down to Vera Cruz, Wilson was not concerned solely with ridding Mexico of Huerta, is found in the fact that the expedition lingered after he had gone. Huerta fled from Mexico July 15. The evacuation of Vera Cruz was not ordered until November 14—four months later.
Is it conceivable that Wilson did not go down to Vera Cruz either to get the flag saluted, to help the Constitutionalists, or even to hurry the fall of Huerta, but that the occupation was one maneuver in a scheme to dictate who should succeed Huerta—and under what conditions?
Chapter 12
12.
WILSON AND THE BANDIT VILLA
In his Message of April 20, the President had said: "If armed conflict should unhappily come. . . we would be fighting only General Huerta."
Then why that four months? ​For answer, every logical person will look in just one direction—at what happened between July and November, 1914.
In that four months the defection of Villa was accomplished. Wilson withdrew from Vera Cruz only after the announcement had been blazoned in Washington that the early triumph of Villa was assured.
Americans have short memories. How many have forgotten that Pancho Villa, the most ignorant, vain, unprincipled, and perverted of all Mexican leaders, a bandit who was able to become the head of a splendid army only because in the beginning he chose to fight on the side of the genuine revolutionists, was known for many months, in Washington, along the border, in Mexico, and in New York, as the special favorite and protege of Wilson?
The grooming of Villa had gone on for some time. Since Nogales Wilson had been cold to Carranza. Proposals that had been rejected by Carranza were now made to Villa—and were entertained. Rich Americans complained that they could not "do business" with Carranza. But Villa shouted aloud his love for Americans, and his determination to give satisfactory protection to their property interests.
While our forces lingered in Vera Cruz, Villa suddenly became the hero of the Mexican Revolution—on the American side of the line. America's most frankly pro-intervention newspaper publisher established a news bureau at El Paso, employing three writers, who were engaged almost exclusively in sending out stories delightfully portraying Villa's exploits. The same publisher kept a special correspondent with Villa for more than a year, and no secret was made of the fact that this correspondent also acted as the ex-bandit's personal press agent. The interventionists of today came out for Pancho Villa as "the strong man" who would "set up a stable government" and meet "Mexico's international obligations." The powerful newspapers which touted Villa misrepresented and disparaged Carranza.
The evidence is overwhelming that, while Wilson held Vera Cruz, Villa made his peace with Wilson, with the great foreign interests, as well as with at least a fraction of the Mexican reactionary party known as the "Cientificos," and that his rebellion against Carranza was fomented during that period.
One George C. Carothers, a special agent of Wilson, became ​Villa's chief adviser. Senor Cardoso, a pronounced Clerical, a friend of Villa, and a violent enemy of Carranza, became Wilson's diplomatic agent at Mexico City. With the assistance of these men and other special agents, and under the direction of Bryan, the State Department became a pro-Villa anti-Carranza press agency.
An American General carried to Villa the President's assurance that he would never, under any circumstances, recognize Carranza.
When the Constitutionalist Party failed to go to pieces, as expected, Wilson proceeded to assist Villa militantly against it. In January (1915) Carranza felt obliged to prohibit the use of code messages by Consuls between his territory and territory under the control of Villa. It was said that American consular agents, acting as Villa spies in the Carranza camps, were abusing their privileges to transmit military information, via U. S. code, to other consular representatives in the Villa camp, who then turned the information over to Villa.
The following month Carranza was moved to issue a sweeping order forbidding his military chieftains from having any dealings whatever with confidential agents of foreign governments. In his explanation of the order, Carranza referred to the "painful experience" involving "the defection of General Villa." It was said that American consular agents were attempting to foment the rebellion of other military leaders of the Constitutionalist party.
When, at the end of January, Obregon drove the Villistas from Mexico City, the Government of the United States came along with a series of demands, protests, threats, and hostile maneuvers, calculated to make the Constitutionalist position untenable.
Obregon demanded the surrender of a Spaniard, Angel del Caso, one-time Villa agent at Washington, who had taken refuge in the Spanish Legation. Backed by Cardoso, Wilson's agent, the Spanish Minister refused to surrender the fugitive. Whereupon Carranza gave the Spanish Minister, Caro, twenty-four hours in which to get out of Mexico. Bryan sent a note, threatening "serious consequences," should Caro be expelled. Carranza courteously cited an American precedent for his act, and proceeded to expel Caro. The latter was taken aboard an ​American man-of-war. A few days later the Spanish Government conceded Carranza's right to expel Caro under the circumstances, incidentally exposing the impropriety of the numerous "rescues" of reactionaries the Administration was at that time staging on Mexican soil.
Carranza was in possession of the Tampico oil region. On the arrival of his forces there, the Administration advised the oil companies against paying taxes to him, and warned him against trying to collect such taxes. In January, Carranza placed an embargo on oil shipments, as a means to enforcing the collection of taxes. Bryan wired a command to Carranza to remove the embargo, threatening "serious consequences." American warships were sent to Tampico, and the threat of intervention made it possible for foreign ships to get away from Mexican harbors without the payment of taxes.
At the same time Wilson was making representations against the Carranza oil decree, which embodied the first formal move toward conserving the petroleum deposits for the Mexican people. He was also making representations against the Carranza land decree, which embodied the first formal move, on a national scale, toward restoring the lands to the Mexican people.
The Spanish business element had, to a large extent, made common cause with Huerta, as had many of the Spanish clergy. When Villa made his peace with the Reaction, these elements transferred their allegiance to the bandit. Acting under Article Thirty-three of the Mexican Constitution, Obregon and Carranza expelled a number of Spanish priests and other Spaniards. Wilson protested violently against action of this sort, and, in a second protest, warned Carranza of "the terrible risk" "from without" which he ran, by reason of his "contempt for the rights and safety of those who represent religion." March 4, Captain Williams of the Cruiser Cleveland peremptorily compelled the release from the Manzanillo jail of three Spaniards and took them on board the Cleveland.
During this same period, the Constitutionalists confiscated the estates of Felix Diaz and other conspicuous plotters of the old regime. The Wilson Administration protested against any action being taken, "that savors of confiscation." Carranza replied, asking what our Colonial Revolutionists did with the estates of the Tories in Seventy-Six. ​Again, Carranza decreed that customs duties be paid in gold. The Administration protested, demanding that they be made payable in paper. Carranza replied: "Kindly look at the back of one of your own United States notes." Here is what our State Department found: This Note is Legal Tender at its Face Value for all Debts, Public and Private, except Duties on Imports and Interest in the Public Debt."
Our State Department even attempted to browbeat Carranza into accepting Villa paper as legal tender.
During all this time a violent drive for intervention on behalf of Villa was being carried on in the American press.
When General Obregon laid a special tax upon the rich of Mexico City—to feed the poor—the protest that came from Washington on behalf of rich Americans and other foreigners was so threatening that Carranza thought it best to yield. At the same time, Wilson, through Bryan, was apologizing publicly for a similar tax imposed by Villa in Monterrey, which was allowed to stand against foreigners as well as Mexicans.
Having denied to the poor of the Mexican capital the emergency relief—the only relief available—we sent a note to Carranza, threatening to hold him and General Obregon personally responsible should any Americans suffer by reason of rioting on the part of the poor!
More than that, we capitalized the sufferings of the poor for the manufacture of interventionist sentiment. The American press was filled with inflammatory stories comparing Mexico City to the concentration camps of Cuba, and to Pekin during the Boxer troubles, and suggesting intervention "for the sake of humanity," to "protect American lives and property," or "to assist Villa to set up a stable government."
As all private reports from Mexico City during that period were censored, telegrams and even letters, the only source of information, for the Government or for the press, was the diplomatic communications of Senor Cardoso. As practically all reports of this sort emanated from Washington, and as nearly all of them showed on their face that they were inspired by the State Department, the primary responsibility for the interventionist storm of February and March, 1915, lies upon the Wilson Administration.
March 5, the State Department formally notified Americans to leave Mexico. ​March 6, a communication from Bryan to Carranza contained an open threat to land marines. "That ought to make Carranza sit up and take notice," the British Ambassador gleefully remarked.
March 8, five more warships were rushed to Mexican waters, and the entire Atlantic fleet prepared to weigh anchor at an hour's notice.
March 9, the climax came in the note charging the Constitutionalist leaders with "wilfully" bringing about "a deplorable situation" in the Mexican capital; threatening to hold General Obregon and General Carranza personally responsible for any injury to any American there; threatening to take "such measures as are expedient to bring to account those who are personally responsible for what may occur."
Of course, Carranza and Obregon could not absolutely guarantee that no American would suffer in the Mexican capital—any more than the President could guarantee that a mob would not burn a Mexican at the stake in Texas, or that a footpad would not shoot down an Englishman in an alley of Washington. At a dozen other places besides Mexico City and Vera Cruz, American special agents and naval commanders were harassing the Constitutionalists. Under the circumstances, American newspapers very naturally interpreted the note of March 9 as preliminary to acts of war against the party of Carranza.
No further action was taken, however; for at this juncture Obregon evacuated the capital. As Obregon at once marched north into Villa territory, the conclusion is justifiable that the evacuation was undertaken to avoid war with the United States.
Immediately a Villa Government, headed by Garza, was again set up in Mexico City. The Brazilian Minister informed us that conditions were improved, and the famine relieved, although the Garza army brought no food whatever into the city with it.
The Garza forces, as they entered the city, killed an American citizen, John McManus. But nothing was said about the great government of the United States "bringing to account those who are personally responsible." McManus was killed by the enemies of Obregon and Carranza, friends of the Brazilian Minister and proteges of Wilson. The little matter was instantly arranged by the payment of cash by Villa—and the American ​press pointed to this as proof that Villa was willing "to do the right thing."
The next strikingly unneutral move of the Administration would seem to prove beyond any question that it was actuated by a determination to place the Villa party in the Mexican capital and keep it there. That move was a demand upon Carranza to agree to the "neutralization" of Mexico City, as well as of a railroad leading to it from the sea. This, of course, would render it impossible ever to oust the Villa Party.
At the same time Wilson was striking hard at the Carranza cash-box from behind. A major share of the Constitutionalist funds were coming from Yucatan, where the slave kings of hemp had remained in control throughout the Madero and Huerta regimes, and had been unseated only by the Constitutionalist Party, which had freed the slaves.
The hemp kings timed a counter-revolution perfectly with the thrusts of Wilson at Obregon, temporarily regained control, and announced their purpose to set up an independent State. As one of the measures taken to reduce them, Carranza ordered a blockade of the port of Progreso and detailed a gun-boat to enforce the order. Wilson notified Carranza that a blockade would not be tolerated, and dispatched warships to break the blockade.
The port was kept open, and the slave kings were able to import supplies and export hemp. Had they been better prepared for action, or backed by any considerable fraction of the population of Yucatan, the action of Wilson would probably have been decisive in their favor—and today Yucatan would be a slave State under the "protection" of the United States. By a swift operation of land forces, however, the Constitutionalists succeeded in regaining control of Yucatan.
Chapter 13
13.
WHY WILSON FINALLY RECOGNIZED CARRANZA
All maneuvers of this sort, of course, were flagrant acts of intervention. We had no more right then to demand the neutralization of Mexico City than we have now to demand the neutralization of Cork, and no right whatever to interfere with the Progreso blockade. We were simply attempting to impose ​"the dignity and authority of the United States"—our authority to determine Mexico's form and personnel of government, with a view to meeting the wishes of "American owners of Mexican properties."
For the time Villa was our protege. But Villa was only a pawn. While we pushed the fortunes of Villa we also protected and encouraged leaders of the old regime who had either come to an understanding with Villa, who were trying to do so, or who promised to serve our purpose in the event of Villa's failure.
Before the flight of Huerta we had staged a rescue of Felix Diaz, one of the responsible assassins of Madero. Diaz was later well received in Washington, where his agents held private conferences with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
During the period in which the Zapatistas were in control in Mexico City (January, 1915) Leon Canova, one of Wilson's many agents, abused his privilege as a consular representative to procure the escape from Mexico of Eduardo Iturbide, one of the props of the Huerta regime.
Canova smuggled Iturbide out of the Mexican capital in a Pullman drawing-room, turning the Mexican agents back from the door with the declaration that, as a representative of the United States, he must be respected, or there would be trouble. General Palafox publicly charged Canova and Silliman, another Wilson agent, with receiving 500,000 pesos for aiding Iturbide, and withdrew the charge only after a formal demand for a retraction by Bryan.
On arriving in El Paso, Canova flatly denied knowledge of the case. A few days later Iturbide told the story of his escape, implicating Canova. Canova and Iturbide proceeded together to Washington. After "thanking Secretary Bryan for helping him to escape from Mexico," in the words of the press dispatches, Iturbide opened headquarters in Washington and started vigorously plotting with Felix Diaz and other elements of the "old-time regime."
The way Canova's unneutral act was regarded by the Administration may be judged by his reward. Canova was promoted to the head of the Bureau of Mexican Affairs in the State Department.
While Villa was in possession of the Mexican capital, announcement was made that the bandit had entered into a ​tentative arrangement with Wall Street for a loan of three hundred million pesos. Shortly afterwards, a shipment of between three and four million dollars in gold reached Villa from New York. At the same time it was announced that the Harriman and Pierce interests would be permitted to foreclose on the Mexican National Railways. January 22, 1915, Enrique C. Llorente, Villa's confidential agent at Washington, called on Secretary Bryan, denounced the land and oil decrees of Carranza, and pledged his chief to respect all foreign holdings.
Villa halted the division of lands in his territory, reversed himself on the clerical question, took 1500 ex-Huerta officers into his military organization, made his peace with the Terrazas-Creels, and established relations with an invisible Junta in New York, dominated by the Cientifico section of the Madero family.
Circumstances of this character, becoming known all over Mexico, hurried the dissolution of the Villa coalition, and paved the way for the decisive defeat administered at Celaya by Obregon. Gutierrez, then Zapata, broke with Villa. The Wilson help availed nothing, once the peons became aware that Villa had been corrupted. When it became evident that the bandit was doomed, he was abruptly abandoned by his American Godfather.
But, far from cheerfully recognizing Carranza, the President produced another trick from his sleeve.
It was when Villa was at the height of his power, and his early triumph expected, that the President delivered his famous let - them - take - as - long - as - they - like - and - spill - as - much blood - as - they - please - it's - none - of - our - business speech. (Indianapolis, January 8, 1915.) Can it be a mere coincidence that he confessed to favoring the opposite policy at precisely the juncture when Villa's fortunes were definitely on the wane?
Of course, the sentiment of the Indianapolis speech was never lived up to for a day, as has been seen. But the communication of June 2 was the most open attempt, to date, to justify a general policy of intervention. On June 2, 1915, the President sent a letter to all of his consuls, to be circulated among Mexicans, declaring Mexico to be "starving and without a Government"; announcing that "the Government of the United States. . . must presently do what it has not hitherto done or felt at liberty to do, lend its active moral support to some man or group of men. . . who can. . . set up a government at ​Mexico City which the great powers of the world can recognize and deal with"; asserting that if the "leaders of faction" did not promptly unite and act for this purpose, "this government will be constrained to decide what means should be employed by the United States in order to help Mexico save herself and serve her people."
Following this, the President put forward what was known as his "Pan-American scheme." Six Latin-American diplomats at Washington were induced to append their names, with that of Secretary Lansing, to an "appeal to Generals, Governors, and other Mexican leaders," inviting them, in effect, to repudiate the political organizations to which they belonged, to repair individually to a given spot, and there agree upon a new provisional Government.
Villa had been decisively beaten and his splendid army was in fragments, never to be brought together again. Zapata's zone of operations was always limited. The only organization of national scope remaining in the field was the one headed by Carranza. Under these circumstances, Wilson's "Pan-American scheme" was viewed, both in Mexico and in the United States—and by the American press—as a last desperate maneuver to eliminate Carranza, break up the Constitutionalist Party, and set up a conservative government under the tutelage of Wilson.
The Administration plan, as exploited in the press at the time, was to cause the selection of Vasquez Tagle for provisional President, with the understanding that Iturbide would be subsequently "elected" President. Vasquez Tagle was a Cientifico. He had been a member of the Madero cabinet, the only member who had not resigned after the treason of Huerta. Upon this fact was based an ingenious argument, widely exploited in the press, intended to show that Tagle was logically and legally the man to succeed to the Provisional Presidency. Iturbide was represented as having been entertained by members of the Wilson cabinet and as being the first choice of the Administration for the Presidency of Mexico.
The President's Pan-American scheme failed only because every Governor and every General politely replied, referring his proposals to Carranza, each refusing to be drawn from his allegiance. Although the deliberations of the Pan-American diplomats were secret, it was reported that the six Latin-American Governments unanimously insisted that the only proper ​course open was to recognize Carranza—and that it was due to this stand of the Latin-American Governments that the President reluctantly consented to recognize Carranza.
Our recognition of Carranza did not, however, by any means see the end of the Administration plots against him.
Chapter 14
14.
WHY "HE KEPT US OUT OF WAR" WITH MEXICO
The best things that can be said of the Wilson Mexican policy are chiefly of a negative character. The President did not recognize Huerta. He did not recognize Villa. Ultimately each of his various invasions came to an end. His aggressions were never carried to the extreme conceivable limit. He never fully satisfied the demands of the most passionate and headlong of the interventionists.
It is for this reason that there are perfectly honest persons who are still inclined to trust him to continue to "keep us out of war" with Mexico. Such confidence is illusory and is perhaps the most dangerous factor in the situation.
For the worst thing that can be said of the Wilson Mexican policy is that it unerringly operates to bring about every condition which the most violent of the interventionists desire.
I do not charge that any party to the intervention conspiracy wants war merely for the sake of war. What is wanted is protection of a highly benevolent character to those who are interested in the exploitation of Mexican resources for their own private profit. Wall Street wants war only because it despairs of procuring the kind of protection it wants without war.
Even now, if by threats, diplomacy, bribery, or other means less drastic than war, Wall Street could be assured of a "stable" reactionary government in Mexico, similar to the Diaz autocracy, or even a far more liberal government, so long as it is sufficiently friendly to "business," it is certain that the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico would at once disband, and the intervention propaganda disappear.
Again, even the interventionist, however energetically he may work for war, does not want war until war can be successfully put over. There are persons who for years have agitated for war with Mexico, knowing full well that the time was not ​ripe, but knowing that the dissemination of interventionist propaganda was one means of ripening the time; knowing, even, that criticism of the President, and misrepresentation of his policy, was one means of ripening the time.
The fact that the President has not yet attempted a war of conquest on Mexico is no evidence that he will not engage in such a war, when the time is ripe. His diplomacy has been directed unfalteringly toward protecting vested interests in Mexico, and especially toward seeking to set up a government satisfactory to vested interests. In pursuance of this end, he has threatened war, has perpetrated legal acts of war, has placed us in a position where war could not have been avoided had the Mexican Government been as unyielding in maintaining the "dignity and authority" of Mexico on Mexican soil as he in maintaining the "dignity and authority" of the United States.
So, even if we did not have the example of Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Nicaragua, before us, we would know that the President did not refrain from the extreme step because of any question of principle.
Why, then, have we not yet essayed to conquer Mexico?
There have been questions of expediency. "Our job" in Mexico is not one that can be attended to, as in Haiti, by mere fiat of the President, and practically in secret. It must have, at least, partially, the backing of public opinion. In 1914, we took Vera Cruz under the guns of American battleships. We could have held Vera Cruz indefinitely under the guns of American battleships. But we could not have sent an army on to Mexico City. The forces of occupation numbered fewer than 7,000, and it required several weeks to get that number there.
In 1914, the United States was blessed with unpreparedness. The army that we had in 1914 was incapable of conquering Mexico. We would have had to manufacture an army to attempt such a thing—the war would have had to become a political question. It happened that the Vera Cruz expedition did not excite any wildly warlike spirit in the American people. Recruiting in our army and navy did not pick up. Conscription in those days was a thing beyond the American imagination. In 1914 we were in a position to meddle and coerce, but not to crush.
In 1915 and 1916, we were engaged in controversies with European belligerents. Our pacific and idealistic President ​threatened both sides with war purely on behalf of American rights to trade upon the high seas.
After Wall Street began making great loans to the Entente Governments, and so became financially interested in an Entente victory, the expediency of avoiding war with Mexico became apparent. Although there were those who advocated a war upon our neighbor, as a means to building an army in preparation for Germany, others pointed out that such a war would necessarily turn aside the flow of American munitions from Europe, and so jeopardize the interests of the Entente.
Nevertheless, following the Columbus raid, the "punitive expedition" took the field, resulting in the most dangerous Mexican crisis to date. But even during the "punitive expedition" the aggressive spirit of the American people was strangely lukewarm. One irritating newspaper hoax after another was pulled off, with the evident purpose of stirring the people into a frenzy against Mexico. After the Carrizal clash, it is probable that there would have been war with Carranza, had not the report of an American Captain, written when in the expectation of death, come to light in time to prove the Americans the aggressors. Even then, an ultimatum was sent to Carranza, who avoided war only by surrendering his American prisoners, while not raising an issue over Mexican prisoners held by the American forces.
An examination of the RESULTS of the Wilson Mexican policy will show that, in holding off insofar as he has held off, the President has proved himself a better friend of the interventionists than they themselves are.
For the final answer to the interventionist philosophy is that we ourselves are decisively responsible for the so-called Mexican problem. In this answer is wrapped up the remedy. We created the conditions which we are now asked to end by intervention—we meaning, primarily, the financial interests which demand intervention, and the Wilson Administration, acting in cooperation with them.
If an American Ambassador had not lent his active support to the plot against Madero, it is improbable that the latter would have been killed, and more improbable that there would have been a Huerta problem. The Huerta problem, of course, was inherited from the Taft Administration. ​If we had not departed from "the accepted practices of neutrality" for eleven months, to assist Huerta against Carranza, preventing the latter from purchasing arms, there would have been no Tampico flag incident and no Vera Cruz occupation. Huerta would have been driven out before the date of the "insult" to the flag.
If we had not nursed Villa and then abandoned him, it is improbable that there would have been a Columbus raid. The vengeful rage which was, at least in part, the acknowledged motive for the raid, would have been lacking.
If we had held to "the accepted practices of neutrality" from the first, and permitted the unrestricted export of arms and munitions, through the regular channels, to Mexico—as we did to European countries—it is reasonably probable that the most popular Mexican party would long ago have worked out the problem of internal peace, and our most plausible pretext for meddling would now be lacking.
Ever since early in 1913, down to the present writing, the Government headed by Carranza has begged this privilege of the United States, asserting that it was the one thing necessary to put an end to counter-revolution and banditry, and the only thing asked of this country. These appeals have been in vain.
There is no virtue in any theory that the lifting of the embargo would tend to increase Mexican disorder. The present Mexican Government rose to power and maintains itself in spite of the embargo handicap. It holds every sea and land port. It is not in the smuggling business, while its enemies are. Were the embargo raised, there is no reason to believe that the bandits would be able to procure any considerable fraction of the arms imported. Our present policy is still a "departure from the accepted practices of neutrality," in favor of bandits and counter-revolutionists.
Our "punitive expedition" furnished a strange spectacle of a powerful Government invading the territory of a weaker neighbor to alleviate a condition of lawlessness for which it was itself responsible. Having refused Carranza the arms absolutely necessary for the effective policing of the border, we justified our expedition on the ground that Carranza was incapable of effectively policing the border!
Furthermore, having failed to catch Villa ourselves—having given up the chase—we remained month after month in Mexico, ​excusing our stay on the ground that Carranza had failed to furnish sufficient guarantees of the protection of the border. At the same time we continued to withhold from Carranza the only means by which such guarantees could be given—we continued to prevent Carranza from procuring arms!
Why have we had an arms embargo against Mexico almost continuously throughout the Administration of President Wilson?
The answer has a thousand times been spread abroad in the interventionist press: We would only he letting the Mexicans get guns with which to fight us later."
In other words, the embargo is a measure in anticipation of war. Not defensive war, for that is out of the question, but aggressive war.
In continuing the embargo the Administration virtually confesses that it contemplates further armed invasions of Mexico.
The arms embargo is an interventionist maneuver purely, but it is only one of many factors which the Administration employs—whether deliberately for that purpose or not—to maintain and aggravate the very conditions which we are asked to end by intervention.
Border raids would not be financed in the hope of provoking intervention unless we were threatening intervention because of border raids.
Every time we have invaded Mexico it has been a source of extreme political embarrassment to Carranza, which his enemies were quick to take advantage of. One evidence of the popularity of the Carranza Government is that it was able to continue in power throughout the eleven months of the "punitive expedition," in spite of the patriotic passions aroused by the presence of an alien army on Mexican soil.
Every time Carranza has postponed a revolutionary reform, in face of American threats, it has been a source of political embarrassment to him. The Mexican people expect their government to realize the high promises of the revolution.
Every time Carranza has revised his taxation program, or remitted a tax, in face of American threats, it has been a source of internal disorder. The educational institutions must receive their pay, as well as the public offices and the army, or the government will fall. The railroads must be kept up. Because of his unwillingness to accept conditions touching Mexican ​sovereignty, Carranza has not been able to borrow a dollar abroad. Our hostility is primarily responsible for all disorder arising from financial difficulties.
Again, our hostility to the Carranza Government has been a source of hope and encouragement to counter-revolutionary plots of every kind.
Our interventionist policy has encouraged American recklessness of life in Mexico, as well as anti-Carranza propaganda and plots by Americans in that country. "I have been advised to leave Mexico, but I intend to stay on and insist that my home Government protect my property and me." This sentiment has been repeatedly expressed to the writer by Americans in Mexico, even by Americans who were engaged in anti-Carranza agitation and plots at the time.
Chapter 15
15.
WILSON, DOHENY, AND PELAEZ
Coming down to the situation at the end of 1919, our interventionist policy has encouraged open and armed defiance of Mexican authority by American property-holders, as well as interventionist propaganda in the United States.
Both in their authorized propaganda, and in sworn testimony at Washington, the oil men boast that the Administration is fully informed as to their activities, here and in Mexico, approves of them, and is cooperating closely with them. This is confirmed both by the news of current happenings and by official pronouncements of the Government.
In a communication denying that the oil companies seek intervention, published in the New York Nation, July 26, 1919, and signed "The Association of Oil Producers of Mexico," appears the following statement:
This seems fairly innocent until one looks a little farther. We find an admission that the oil companies are supporting a rebel army on Mexican soil, and the following assertion is made:
"'King' Pelaez's troops are operating in the oil fields only, far from any railroad, for the reason that the government is attempting to confiscate their oil values."
That is to say, the oil men are employing a bandit army to defy the Mexican Government, as part of a scheme to prevent the application of Mexican laws to the Mexican oil industry.
Confirming this well known fact, Mr. LaGuardia, of New York, in a speech in the House of Representatives, July 10, 1919, said:
I call your attention to this small strip in red. . . . This is under the control of the Pelaez faction. . . . These forces protect the oil industries from being robbed by the Carranza faction. It is supported and paid for by the oil companies."
This armed defiance of the Mexican Government, to which American oil men make confession, is the result of a controversy with the Mexican Government over various purely internal questions, involving the imposition of taxes, the question of prior rights to the products of the sub-soil, and the question of the foreigner's privilege to appeal to his home government for intervention on behalf of what he considers to be his property rights. One of the assertions sent out officially by the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico and widely circulated in the press, reads as follows:
"No foreign corporation or individual can legally acquire or hold any mines, oil wells, land, or other real property in Mexico unless he renounces his citizenship."
This purports to be a textual translation of a clause in Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution. It is a typical example of interventionist falsehood. The Mexican Constitution does not require any foreigner to renounce his citizenship, as a condition to acquiring Mexican property. It requires foreigners only to agree "to be considered Mexicans in respect to such property, and accordingly not to invoke the protection of their governments in respect to the same."
We require the same thing of foreigners in this country, although it is not in the Constitution. The purpose of the clause ​is to compel aliens to seek the same fountains of justice as citizens; that is, the courts, which are open in Mexico the same as in the United States. A French wine manufacturer of California who feels that his property has been confiscated by the prohibition laws may seek justice in American courts, as any American may do. We do not permit him to continue making wine, while forcing American wine manufacturers out of business. Nor do we permit him to call the French Navy to San Francisco harbor, there to train its guns on that port, while the French Foreign Office threatens war on behalf of French wine "rights" in the United States.
All questions at issue between the foreign oil corporations and the Mexican Government are legal questions which fall into the same general category. The author has read the arguments on both sides, and the Mexican Government seems clearly to have the better case. But it is not a question for the author to decide, or for the oil companies to decide, or for the American State Department to decide. Although we are all entitled to our opinions, we are not entitled to appeal to external force to compel acceptance of them by Mexico. It is a question for the Mexican courts to decide. Mexican judges are as competent and honest as American judges. Th oil companies are wealthy enough to hire the best Mexican legal talent. If they cannot get what they believe to be their rights from Mexican courts, they, nevertheless, have no alternative but to bow to the decision of Mexican courts. If they proceed to raise and support armies to defy Mexican authority, they become liable to deportation for taking part in political affairs, or to prosecution as outlaws and rebels.
If Mexican oil men, or American oil men, attempted to do in Texas, Oklahoma, or California, what American oil men are doing in Mexico, there would be a few legal hangings of oil men in the United States.
Why, then, does not the Mexican Government proceed more vigorously than it has yet done against the American supporters of Pelaez?
The only answer known to the author is that they are being protected in their unlawful and rebellious conduct by their home governments.
The Chairman. Has our State Department been aware of the fact that you have been making payments to Pelaez?
Mr. Doheny. Yes; not only aware of it, but so far as they could, without giving it in writing, they have approved of it."
Before going farther on Administration complicity in this matter, let us glance again at the oil region and see how the oil companies' support of Pelaez operates, and the situation which it tends to bring about.
As part of its program of conservation, the Mexican Government has provided that there shall be no new drillings until certain conditions have been complied with and certain payments made. The oil operators admit that they have entered into an agreement among themselves not to comply with these requirements. Under the "protection" of Pelaez, they continue drilling, without meeting any of the requirements.
In some cases the drilling of new wells has been stopped by government forces. In "Pelaez territory" it goes merrily on. But when the present Government regains control of "Pelaez territory" there will be a reckoning. The outlaw wells, under the law, are subject to confiscation to the Mexican nation. By their own action the oil operators place themselves where their interests require, not merely temporary defiance of the present Mexican Government, but its overthrow. The question as to whether or not Pelaez would destroy property if they ceased paying him becomes immaterial; they would go on paying him solely as an incident in their effort to overthrow the Mexican Government.
From the same Senate Hearing, I quote the following from the testimony of Amos L. Beaty, General Counsel and Director of the Texas Oil Company (Sept. 18):
"On three of these properties we are drilling without payment. We are doing this in the face of the warning that the Mexican Government has given our company that if a well is brought in without payment it will be taken over by the Government. We are not doing it for the purpose of creating strife. We are simply doing it in the certainty of our rights, and in the hope that we will ultimately get protection in some way."
The oil operators know very well that Pelaez cannot give them permanent protection. With all their support, Pelaez cannot alone overthrow the Mexican Government, or even capture ​the port of Tampico, or even maintain himself securely in any part of the oil fields.
THERE IS WHERE FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS COME IN.
In a signed statement, published in the New York Times, July 15, 1919, the Association of Oil Producers of Mexico announced that the oil men, "relying on the protection of their governments, refuse to submit to the coercion of confiscatory laws."
What reason had the oil men to believe that they could rely on the protection of their governments?
The same association answers in another signed statement, published in the Tribune (April 11, 1919):
"Against this constitutional precept (Article 27), and confiscatory decrees based on it, the American, French, British, and Dutch Governments lodged protests clearly characterizing the Mexican program as confiscatory. It was thereafter that the oil companies united to protect themselves against spoliation."
From which it would appear that the oil corporations started their rebellion only after being assured of the sympathy of their home governments.
From the testimony of Doheny, Beaty, and others, we learn that the Association for Protection of American Rights in Mexico was the outgrowth of a series of meetings held by oil men in New York, as a result of the decree of February 19, 1918, in which the Government of the United States called the attention of the Mexican Government "to the necessity which may arise to impel it to protect the property of its citizens in Mexico. ”
In his testimony Mr. Doheny refers to "the dispute between the oil companies and the United States Government, on the one hand, and the Mexican Government, on the other." Other oil men mention the issue in similar terms. Finally (Page 267) Mr. Doheny testifies that the oil companies refused to comply with the decree of February 19, 1918, “with the consent and approval, and at the suggestion, of our own State Department."
Which would seem to convict the Wilson Administration of being the determining factor in the launching of the oil corporations' rebellion against the Mexican Government.
What does this mean except that the government of the United States has assured the oil kings that they will be successful in their rebellion against the Mexican Government, even if it requires the employment of American armies to make good the assurance?
Chapter 16
16.
MANEUVERING FOR WAR
We have been taking, to a considerable extent, the word of the oil men on these matters. But the Government of the United States has not prosecuted any oil operator for perjury nor in any way contradicted what they have said as to its understanding and cooperation with them.
Moreover, the word of the oil men is supported by circumstances almost too numerous to mention. It is supported by the Note of April 2, 1918. It is supported by the earlier record of the Administration, which I have outlined. It is supported by official pronouncements and news reports down to the present writing.
Although, during the war, we asserted our right to embargo any commodities we cared to embargo, we denied the same right to Mexico. April 12, 1917, we were informed from Washington that an oil embargo contemplated by Carranza would not be put into effect. "Definite assurances received by the State Department," said The Times report, "relieves a very delicate and serious situation." It was reported that British officials had asserted that England would not tolerate a Mexican embargo, and that it would be considered an unneutral act by both England and America.
August 15, 1918, we were informed that the United States and Great Britain had "joined in diplomatic representations to the Mexican Government against the oil land decrees of ​President Carranza." Two days later we were informed that a "threatened crisis in relations between Mexico and the Entente allies and the United States had apparently been averted" by the modification of one of these decrees.
Meanwhile, American warships were continuously maintained in the Tampico harbor. April 12, 1919, Colonel James R. McLean of the British army, who was reported as being on his way to Mexico, on a diplomatic mission relating to oil, said in an interview at New York: "Carranza will talk now, because he is frightened. If the United States would send some of its new ships into the Gulf of Mexico and let their shadows fall on Mexican soil, it would clarify the situation." The shadows of American warships were then on Mexican soil and had been for a long time. February 6, 1919, Ambassador Fletcher asserted that no decrees had as yet been enforced and no taxes collected under Article 27 of the new Constitution. The repeated postponement of the application of the decrees can only be due to an earnest desire of the Mexican Government to avoid war.
Again, the word of the oil men is supported by the Note of July 22, 1919, threatening a "radical change of policy" because of the lack of protection given to American lives in the oil region. Singular disorder in the oil region would inevitably result from the state of War between government forces and the rebel forces supported by the oil corporation.
The oil men are not satisfied with the "protection" for which they pay Pelaez, but appeal to their home government for further protection. It is obvious that the Pelaez "protection" does not safeguard American lives, but only adds to the danger, especially as Americans are continually traveling over hostile ground. It is obvious that the Mexican Government cannot guarantee the safety of Americans either in "Pelaez territory" or anywhere in the zone between "Pelaez territory" and Government territory, and should not be asked to do so. It is obvious that when a Carranza force scatters a Pelaez force there is certain to be some indiscriminate looting and killing by the fugitives.
It is obvious that if Carranza should make a serious effort to destroy Pelaez the temporary danger to American lives and property would vastly increase. Somebody might touch off an ​oil well. What would the warships in the Tampico harbor do then?
Carranza is not making a serious effort to destroy Pelaez. The attitude of the Government of the United States justifies a fear that such an effort would result in another invasion "to protect American lives and property." The secret of the security of Pelaez is revealed. It is the same as the secret of the postponement of the application of the oil decrees. The cat is out of the bag. By our threat of force we have not only halted the economic program of the Mexican revolution, but have stopped its military operations against the bandits. American intervention is already here. It holds Carranza in a dilemma where there seems to be no choice except between defensive war and surrender to the authority of the Wilson Administration to dictate Mexican oil legislation.
Again, the word of the oil men is confirmed by an official explanation of our arms embargo, given by our Ambassador, Mr. Fletcher, recently. The argument is the same as that of all interventionists, that if we permitted arms to go to Carranza they would be "more apt" to be used against us than against bandits. It amounts to a confession that if Carranza does not yield in the matter of oil legislation we intend to give him a chance to defend Mexico against us.
To make sure that Carranza may not procure the arms with which to defend Mexico against us, we have even sought, by diplomatic representation, to prevent their export to Mexico from other countries. This is itself an offense which, were the tables reversed, would probably be considered by our cheerful jingoes as good cause for a Declaration of War.
The word of the oil men is confirmed by other circumstances still. Something happened at Paris. Exactly what happened at Paris may forever remain "an international secret" (to employ the President's own phrase) of the President's open diplomacy.
But we know a few things which may form the basis of a reasonable guess. At the end of January (1919) a committee representing the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico in general, and the copper and oil interests in particular, sailed for Europe. The committee was ​headed by E. L. Doheny, January 23, just before leaving, Mr. Doheny gave an interview:
"We go to Europe as representatives of five groups of American business men in Mexico, mining, agricultural, and cattle, banking and securities, petroleum and industrial. * * We merely go to ask a big question. We have hopes that the Peace Conference may see fit to answer it. * * How far may new governments go in ignoring or confiscating the vested rights of foreign inhabitants and of foreigners in the lands where the new governments are established?"
Notwithstanding this statement, the committee was allowed to sail. It was the acknowledged policy of the administration at the time not to permit any one to leave the country whose business had not been examined into by it and approved by it.
January 26, Ambassador Fletcher was reported as coming from Mexico with Mexican data for the Peace Conference. Mr. Fletcher came, but did not return to Mexico. At the end of the year, he has not yet returned.
At Paris, Senor Pani, Carranza's Minister to France, was not permitted to present his credentials; nor was he received by the Peace Conference. Instead, we were told that Senor de la Barra "represented Mexico" at the Peace Conference. De la Barra had been a member of the Diaz Government, a Cientifico, an attorney for Wall Street interests, a capitalist, and had often been mentioned as a favored American choice for President of Mexico. In August, the French Government awarded de la Barra a Medal of Public Gratitude upon the recommendation of Foreign Minister Pichon.
We do not know what Mr. Doheny had to do with this peculiar action. But we do know that there has been effected an important merger of British, Dutch, French, and American oil interests. We know that Thomas W. Lamont, a partner of J. P. Morgan & Co., while acting as a Government official at the Peace Conference, not only participated in the formation of the international banking consortium, but also in the formation of an international committee of twenty bankers "for the purpose of protecting, the holders of securities of the Mexican Republic and of the various railway lines of Mexico, and generally such other enterprises as have their field of action in Mexico"—to quote the words of the announcement issued from the New York office of J. P. Morgan & Co. ​We know also that a committee of oil men and bankers held a series of conferences with the State Department in July regarding the Mexican situation and were reported as "gratified with the outcome of the conferences." We know that thereafter the formation of the Mexico International Corporation was announced, a financial merger of all the great Mexican interests—just as the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico is a publicity merger of the same interests; that there was immediately a great activity in all kinds of Mexican securities; that unauthorized reports continually appeared in print, to the effect that an understanding had been reached in Paris looking toward the "clean-up" of Mexico; that within that period the greatest of our interventionist drives was launched.
Were any further confirmation needed of Administration participation in the intervention conspiracy it would be found in its active cooperation in the propaganda itself. When the organization of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico was under consideration, a committee of its promo'ters conferred with the State Department. Acting Secretary Polk "both welcomed and approved of" the plan, according to a written report of the committee.
Testifying to this effect, C. H. Boynton, continued:
"Later a larger committee came to Washington and presented the plans of the organization to Mr. Fletcher. . . . From that day on the bulletins of the Association and a knowledge of its activities have gone to officials of the State Department, and up to this minute I have never received from any government official or from any one who was in a position of authority. . . the slightest intimation that there has been a thing done that was. . . objectionable to the Administration."
The full meaning of this can be appreciated only by an examination of the propaganda of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico.
Further, the State Department actively assisted by becoming, as in years past, a source of many of the inflammatory, exaggerated, and frequently untrue "news" stories which went the rounds of the press. It assisted by issuing passports freely to writers devoted to the intervention propaganda, while withholding passports to known anti-interventionists.
The lying Altendorf revelations reached the public only through the cooperation of the War Department. Altendorf was ​permitted to resign from the Army Intelligence Service to become a press agent of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico. The "revelations" themselves were put out with what amounted to an endorsement of the Intelligence Department. General Churchill was represented as vouching for the "trustworthiness" of Altendorf, and the Department as "confirming" his story.
Upon the War Department also lies the responsibility for the wide circulation of a map, representing the enemies of the Mexican Government as controlling more than one-half of Mexico. According to this map, practically the whole of the State of Chihuahua, including the cities of Chihuahua and Juarez, is in the hands of the Villistas; nearly all of Sonora, including the port of Guaymas, is in the hands of the Yaqui Indians; nearly all of Oaxaca, including the city of Oaxaca and the port of Salina Cruz, is in the hands of Felicistas and Meixuerio; a great part of the States Tamaulipas and Vera Cruz, including the port of Tampico, is in the hands of Felicistas and Pelaez; and nearly all of Lower California is in rebellion under Cantu.
The War Department surely knows—and nearly every newspaper which published this lying map surely knows—that it is four years since the Villistas were in possession either of Chihuahua City or Juarez, that the Yaqui Indians have never been in possession of Guaymas, that Carranza has for nearly four years been in continuous possession of Salina Cruz and Oaxaca, that neither Pelaez nor the Felicistas have ever been in possession of Tampico; that it has been at least three years since the tale that Cantu was in rebellion against Carranza was exploded.
The promoters and organizers of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico have made it very clear that they feel assured that the decisive Government action which they decline to term intervention awaits only a properly prepared public opinion.
Chapter 17
17.
THE SOLUTION OF THE MEXICAN "PROBLEM"
However well one may understand the motives of Wall Street, so long as he misunderstands the motives of the ​Administration he is lulled into a false security from which he cannot be awakened until it is too late.
So long as the public credits the Administration with the high purposes which it claims for itself, it cannot believe the Administration capable of an injustice against Mexico—and when the latter proposes an injustice, the public may readily be persuaded to view it as justice.
Just so long will America be in danger of embarking upon a brutal aggression in the guise of a shining mission of mercy.
A war upon Mexico cannot be brought about by the Wall Street gentlemen except as they operate through the Administration at Washington. The present crisis could not have been brought about except through cooperation between these gentlemen and the Administration of Wilson. The interventionist propaganda would be of no more importance than a jackal's howl did not the interventionists have the cooperation of the Government of the United States.
The sad truth is that the Administration of Woodrow Wilson is committed to a policy which must inevitably result, if continued, in one of two things: (1) The acceptance by Mexico, under threat of war, of the authority of the United States to dictate Mexico's internal policies; (2) an American war of aggression to impose acceptance of such authority.
The prosecution of this policy has produced the oil crisis, which is as sharp as can be without actual hostilities between the two countries. Although, by postponing its program of reform, the Mexican Government has postponed hostilities again and again, it has neither abandoned that program nor conceded the authority of the United States to insist upon its abandonment. It has never yielded in principle, and it appears to be unwilling to yield sufficiently to satisfy those who hold the reins here.
I quote from a Message of Carranza, September 1, 1919:
The facts being as they are, the only rational course is to appeal over the head of the Wilson Administration to the American people—to appeal to public opinion to pronounce against the purely imperialistic policy which is being followed with regard to Mexico.
Not that this is peculiarly a policy of Wilson, or of the Democratic Party. It is a policy that has taken hold of the dominant element in both parties. Were a Republican Administration in power, the situation would be much the same; the danger would be as great provided the Republican Administration concealed its real purposes as well, which is unlikely. Attention is directed here to what a Democratic Administration has done because a Democratic Executive still holds the reins—and of the three Departments of Government, the Executive happens to wield overwhelmingly the decisive power, especially in the choice of foreign policy.
Against the terrific forces that are bent upon Mexican aggression, public opinion, unorganized and inarticulate, would have a faint chance indeed, were the enterprise a less ambitious one. Were the Mexican "job" as small as the Santo Domingan "job" it would have been well under way long ago. But Mexico is one of the strongest countries ever to be threatened with purely imperialistic conquest. The probable cost in men and money alone is sufficient to cause any but madmen to hesitate. But it appears that Wall Street has gone quite mad with a lust for spoils, and our politicians quite mad with serving Wall Street.
To "straighten out" Mexico we would probably have to clap on conscription again, float more bond issues, set again in full swing the vast machinery of war-time restriction. The practical difficulties in the way of launching the enterprise are such that it is not Utopian to hope that public opinion may yet be decisive to prevent it.
​Intervention is not defensible on any ground. It is bad democracy. For all of us except a handful, it is bad business. It is impossible to exaggerate the probable disaster to both countries. Not only would the Mexican people pay, but the American people would pay—in blood, taxes, higher living costs, in the friendship of our neighbors, in the Constitutional liberties of which peoples are invariably robbed in war-time, in our own character, in all the elements that make for a higher civilization and for world peace.
In the cause of the Mexican "problem" is found its solution. As our meddling has been a decisive factor in creating and prolonging the disorder, and in subjecting Americans to danger, so an opposite policy would tend to produce the opposite result. We must stop threatening Mexico, stop invading Mexico, stop embargoing Mexico, enter into a fair agreement for policing the border, keep a few of our fine promises, make a fair trial of treating our neighbor as an equal.
The question would remain as to what the Mexican Government would do to the great property interests which we are told are in jeopardy. The Mexican Government has asserted that it does not intend to confiscate them. But supposing it should confiscate them. Then let it confiscate them. The interests of the American people are not the interests of the oil corporations in this matter. They are, rather, the interests of the Mexican people. The progress of reform anywhere is marked by the surrender of the privileges of a few in deference to the necessities of the many. Perhaps some American would really suffer. But the Americans who are interested in the exploitation of Mexican oil are, for the most part, millionaires with great holdings elsewhere. Were they dispossessed in Mexico, without a dollar of compensation, they would not forego any luxury; nor would their families starve. There may be foreign "rights" in Mexico. But how about the rights of Mexicans? Great public works, serviceable to the Mexican nation, education, improvement, material and moral rehabilitation, await only the necessary funds. Mexico has both the legal and moral right to tax such funds from the rich holdings in her natural resources. The vested interests of a minority, whether native or foreign, cannot stand against the needs of the great majority. It is more to the ​interest of the American people that their neighbors should have decent homes, decent wages, public education, and progressive, institutions of their own making, than that American oil gamblers should carry out their schemes.
I plead for the right of the Mexican Government, undoubtedly supported in its policies by a large proportion of Mexicans, honestly seeking to serve the Mexican masses, to make such disposition as it sees fit of Mexican oil, regardless of the results to Wall Street.