Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-04-20

written by an EvESrNG LEDGER staff corre-
spondcnt, who sent to the Mexican border
to study conditions.1
A CLOSE-RANGE, unprejudiced view of
"A the Mexican situation can lead to but
one conclusion-that is, that every hour of
posponement of Intervention means an ad-
ditional hour of cumulative horrors and tor
lures for the Mexican people. BY the Mex
lean people we mean the submerged So per
cent, in whose behalf, it has been pro-
claimed the Administrations policy of
watchful waiting was framed.
Live along the Mexican border for n few
months nowadays and your blood will boil
at the very mention of watchful waiting
Cross over into the fostering and revou-
tion-blighted provinces and you will see and
hear things that will make you ycarn for
the mailed might of a Kaiser You will
see the widely press -agcntcd liberators
villa, Carranza, Iapata and all the rest of
them in their true light, as so many Ali
Babas scOurging the country with unor-
ganized and unrestraned bands of
rauders, burning and pagng and ootnE,
and exchanging this loot and pillage for
American made shot and shell. You will
| hear of monasteries and nunneries sacked
and outraged, of scores Of villages razed
to the ground or transformed into tenn
porary intrenchments for the sort of bor-
| der warfare that was characteristic of the
Dark Ages.
Refugees in Texas
You will learn of tens of thousands of
the submerged So per cent. who have been
driven into the Wilderness like so many
bands of nomad Indians Texas has given
shelter to at least 100000 refugees, and
every little group of these that has crossed
| the Rio Grande had tale of wantonness
and barbarity to tell that should shock the
sensibilties of the most case hardened
watchful waiter in the universe
1t is not worth the toll of American lives
1t might take to intervene is one of the
patent arguments of the watchful walters.
What about the toll of lives that is being
taken with AmerIcan-made ammunition that
our Government facilitates in its passage
over the metals to Brownsville, to Laredo
and to FL Paso permitting the agents of our
manufacturers to sell to the highest bandit
bidder for cash. There is a SNUG answer
to this Oh, let the gangs shoot each other
up, and we will soon be rid of them. on
the same Complacent theory, Mayor Mitchell
of New York. might open up a little am
munition bazaar and invite the gunmen of
the East Side to come and arm themselves
with the latest styles in automatics, so that
they might all the more swiftly destroy one
another, or he might distribute sticks of
dynamite to the children on the Fairgrounds
of New York to play pitch and toss with.
Lessons in Killing
The warning factions in Mexico have only
a comparatively small nucleus of bad men
in their ranks. The bulk of these so-called
armies have been recruited with poems and
the sons of poems, who in the beginning were
herded like goats. Deadly weapons were
placed in their hands and they were in
structed how to kill. 1t is a primitive i'm
pulse to kill as II is primitive impulse TO
pillage and destroy. There is joy and ex-
altaton and romantic fascination in rob-
berry and piracy. Every man who has been
a boy realizes this, and if it were custom
under our modern processes of so-called
civilization to provide children with
lethal weapons we would soon arrive at the
same conditions of chaos, anarchy and
bloodshed that now obtain pretty generally
throughout Mexico.
Our press dispatches are constantly re-
porting revolutionary battles of one sort or
another. The majority of these dispatches
come out of Washington. and Washington
gets them from the press agents OF the Varl-
Gus factions or from the scattered remnants
of our consular service I'm Mexico, and these
dispatches are censored over the wire by
the leaders and officers OF whatever particu-
lar band Of maTauders happens TO be in
command of that particular locality at the
time. In the course OF one day we win have
three versions, each one contradictory Of the
other, OF single alleged engagement.
OF course, there is vast amount OF di-
vergent testimony coming out OF Mexico
every day. You will And in all the border
towns fugitive Mexicans who favor one fac