St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1914-06-03

A Democratic View of Pres. VIII
sons Mexican Policy.


sons Mexican Policy.
Under the caption Breakers
Ahead" Mr.. Watterson says in the
Currier-JournaI, apropos of the in
terview on Mexico by Samuel G..
Blythe with President Wilson in the
Saturday Evening Post of last week:
AS ethical and historic PROPOSE
lions all the President says here may
be true enough. If it related TO our
own country it would constitute a
good basis for party movement and
Presidential leadership. But it re-
lates to another country and when
it is supplemented or rather in this
interview prefaced by the the fol-
lowing it becomes debatable:
" Ny IDEAL declared Mr.. Wilson,
is an orderly and righteous gov
eminent in Mexico; but my passion
is for the submerged So per cent. of
the people of that republic who are
now struggling toward liberty
The President does not consider
here the character of 'S5 per cent. of
the people for whom he expresses
such concern; their capacity to take
care of themselves if given the
| chance; their fitness for citizenship
and self-government, and finally,
our duty toward them, foreign and
never an overfriendly people. He
talks very much as an honest, sym
pathizing, sentimental New England
clergyman might and did talk in
1866 of the negroes of the South.
"Such talk led to the visionary
freedmen's bureau and the cruel and
foolish tyranny of reconstruction,
involving years ofhurtful things done
with the nOblest intention on the
part ofmany who believed the blacks,
oppressed by the whites, required
only the ballot along with forty
acres and a mule to redeem and re-
vitalize the South.
Gin consequence of errors, alike
Injurious to both the blacks and the
whites of the South, the plan of
fanatical uplift had to be abandon
ed. 1t is partly the remembrance of
this which leads the Currier-Journal
to challenge the policy which the
President has adopted and to warn
him against it's dangers.
Reduced to plain terms and
brought down from generalities to
particulars, Mr.. Blythe represents
Mr.. Wilson as pledging himself to
three signal mistakes.
Each of these proposals is laid
in the gratuitous assumption that
the Mexicans are capable of self
government, that we have the right
to intervene and that they will well
come our Intervention, promising
that we have only to change the rul-
ers and the system to secure perma-
nent order and peace.
cit takes no account of Mexican
factions impossible to unite, of Mex
can am bifiOnS imnOGGfh1p IN caffafv
of Mexican passions impossible to
quell. 1t makes the United States
the most visionary as well as the
most generous of philantrophists
Can the President believe that
the moral obligation which he so
stoutly advances requires any such
sacrifice or that the voters of this
country will sanction the expendi-
ture of a billion or half billion of
money in such an adventure without
any return whatever?
1T is preposterous. Such states
manship exists only in heaven. It
has no abode on earth.
"On the interview we have quot
ed the President cannot stand. Part
Of Mexico we require. We must have
Lower California, with Magdalena
Bay for a naval station, and we
ought to have Sonora, If not Chihua-
hua. No patchwork land scheme in
favor of the poems will outlast the
presence of the forces sent to
achieve it. AS soon as pressure is
withdrawn hell will break loose
again. On the gage thrown down by
Mr.. Wilson even Theodore Roose-
welt may become dangerous.