The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-07-29
PRESS ON RANCHO VILLA

extravagances that any composer of chansons or epics would dare to i'm. pose upon the credulity of his readers or hearers. How Villa betrayed his friends, executed or tortured his vic tims, robbed and pillaged towns and countrysides, defied two governments and finally through sheer audacity forced the president of great repub- lie to pardon him and to grant him a princely domain as a reward for his evil deeds is romance that would be incredible if it were not true.. Nat urally, the dramatic passing of man who successfully eluded a United States army and whose fruitless pur- suit cost this government hundred million dollars, has evoked much com ment from the American press.
 This somewhat satiric summary of Villas life and death is given by the News of Dallas, Texas, the state that helped to bear the brunt of the ban dit's raids across the border: "Villa has paid for his life with his life. Having settled accounts on earth, he has gone on to greater reckoning. There may be some mourners in the hill country of Mexico where his own kind dwell. There will be a few TO- mancers here and there who will straightway set out to idealize his crude, ruthless career. Pancho may have reformed in his latter days, but, if he did, he reformed at a profit handsome enough while it lasted. After all is said and done, Villa must be accounted the product of an era in Mexico's history of which that country will never be able to be proud. But, at that, Villa may measure up pretty we'll with the bandit chiefs of other lands and ages. Under other environment and with other blood in him, Pancho Villa might have been a shifty oil promoter and have robbed widows and orphans with lies and false promises, or he might have been a demagogue with his hand in the public treasury. Having, however, none of the refinements of the civili- zation with which we are acquainted, Villa could but rob the rich by force of arms and divide the lesser portion of his spells with his ragamuffin band of confederates. Finding ambush fighting more profitable than working in the open, Villa chose it as his busi- ness and did well at it."
 :, That Villa deserved the manner of death that was meted out to him is the opinion of a number of editors, while a further appraisal of his qualities is given by the Detroit Free Press, as follows: "It is quite true that Villa had talent. He possessed cunning to the point of genius. He fooled Mr. Wilson and MT. Bryan until the Amer ican people wanted to hide their faces in shame. He also knew how to quit when the quitting was good, which is the principal reason his life lasted three or four years longer than it had any right to last. He was shrewd guerrilla leader. And for Aittle while, a combination of circumstances with which he really did not have very much to do, except as he mag nified the opportunities they afforded him, made it seem that he might be something more. There were moments when even careful people began to wonder whether Villa might not pos sess some constructive ability as an offset to his fearful bump of destruc- tiveness. But the almost ludicrous fiasco after the advance at Mexico City pricked that bubble and showed him for what he was, cut-throat and theft of exceptional brute courage and snake-like craftiness, with a distinct talent for getting free advertising from gullible correspondents and vel low sensationalists. The best that can be said for Villa is that he was to some extent the product of social con- ditions with which he found himself surrounded. But instead of using his talents to rise above those conditions and better them, he committed the SUI preme infamy of exploiting them fol his own selfish gains and to gratify his diabolical humors."
 The ironical aspect of violent death to a reformed desperado pos sesses a dramatic attraction to the Knoxville Sentinel: "There was a time when the tidings of the violent taking off of Francisco Villa would have been welcome to the civilized world and most welcome to the people of the United States. He was a man of much blood. That he should have survived all of the hazards and hair breadth escapes of his guerrilla war fare and violent career to die in his boots when he was attempting to pur- sue peaceful career as an agricul- tural husbandman under his own vine and fig tree is one of the ironies of | fate concerning which we never cease