The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-09-02

| too often alien to their own, have dictated what their privileges and opportunities should be and who should control their land, their lives, , and their resources,-some of them Americans. pressing for things they | could never have got in their own
 country. The Mexican people are
 entitled to attempt their liberty from
 such influences; and so long as I have anything to do with the action of our great Government I shall do every
 thing in my power to prevent any
 one standing in their way. I know | that this is hard for some persons to
 understand; but it is not hard for
 the plain people of the United States to understand. It is hard doctrine only for those who wish to get some thing for themselves out of Mexico.
 There are men, and noble women, too, not few, of our own people, thank God! whose fortunes are invested in
 great properties in Mexico who yet see the case with true vision and as-
 sess it's issues with true American feeling. The rest can be left for
 the present out of the reckoning until
 this enslaved people has had it's day
 of struggle towards the light: l have heard no one who was free from
 such influences propose interference
 by the United States with the internal
 affairs of Mexico. Certainly no
 friend of the Mexican people has pro-
 posed it.
 "The people of the United States
 are capable of great sympathies and
 a noble pity in dealing with problems of this kind. As their spokesman
 and representative. have tried to
 act in the spirit they would wish me
 show The people of Mexico are
 striving for the rights that are fun
 damental to life and happiness,-fif- teen million oppressed men, overbur- dened women and pitiful children in
 virtual bondage in their own home of
 fertile lands and ineXhaustible treas
 ure! Some of the leaders of the rev
 olution may often have been mistak- en and violent and selfish, but the rev. olution itself was inevitable and is
 right. The unspeakable Huerta be- trayed the very comrades he served, traiterously overthrow the govern
 ment of which he was a trusted part, impudently spoke for the very forces that had driven his people to the re- beIlion with which he had pretended to sympathize The men who over came him and drove him out rep resent at least the fierce passion of l reconstruction which lies at the very | heart of liberty; and so long as they | represent, however imperfectly. such
 a struggle for deliverance. I am ready | to serve their ends when I can. So | long as the power of recognition rests with me the Government of the Unit ed States will refuse to extend the hand of welcome to any one who obtains power in a sister republic by treachery and violence. No per manency can be given the affairs of any republic by a title based upon in trigue and assassination. I declared that to be the policy of this Admin ! istration within three weeks after l assumed the presidency. I here again
 VOW it. I am more interested in the fortunes of oppressed men and pitiful
 women and children than in any prop ertv rights whatever. Mistakes l
 have no doubt made in this perplex- ing business, but not in purpose or , object.
 More is involved than the immedi- ate destinies of Mexico and the rela- lions of the United States with dis tressed and distracted people. All America looks on. Test is now be- ing made of us whether we be sincere lovers of popular liberty or not and are indeed to be trusted to respect national sovereignty among our weak CT neighbours. We have undertaken these many years to play big brother to the republics of this hemisphere.
 This is the day of our test whether
 we mean, or have ever meant, to play
 that part for our own benefit wholly or also for theirs. Upon the outcome of that that test Gts outcome in their minds, not in ours) depends every
 relationship of the United States with Latin America, whether in politics or in commerce and enterprise. These are great issues and lie at the heart
 of the gravest tasks of the future.
 tasks both economic and political and very intimately inwrought with many of the most vital .s the new issues of the politics of the world. The re-
 publics of America have in the last