NO INTERVENTION IN MEXICO
The arrest of General Huerta on the Mexican border on a charge of violating the neutrality laws of the United States by plotting another Mexican revolution within our borders, adds new spice to the Mexican situation. Perhaps one revolution more or less in Mexico wouldn’t make much difference, but the United States is bound to protect its neutrality and not permit the various factions of Mexican banditti to carry on their operations or to enlist men on our soil. No actual or would-be Mexican leader has as yet displayed sufficient patriotism to subordinate his personal ambitions to the welfare of his country. These leaders are not amenable to advice from Washington, and hence there does not appear to be any way for the United States to enforce order and protect life and property in Mexico short of intervention. However, intervention is not to be thought of for the present. This is a very inopportune time for our country to engage in a military adventure in Mexico. President Wilson, in a speech last winter, asserted that the Mexican people had the same right to cut each other’s throats as the people of Europe had. If that was true then, it is equally true now. The stories of anarchy and starvation among the Mexican people are no doubt greatly exaggerated. We are so informed by a gentleman who has spent the last two years in and near Mexico. He says that the soil of the country is so rich and the skies so kindly that a very little labor suffices to raise ample food, and that conditions in all the towns he visited were orderly and business going on as usual. Most of the men make a business of fighting for some chief, while the women and children do the work and keep the pot boiling. Almost all the casualties are among the belligerents who have adopted fighting as an industry. It was so in Europe during the formative years of the various nations. Mexico’s political development is about that of the twelfth or thirteenth century in Europe. We should wait patiently until some leader arises strong enough to dominate the situation and enforce order, in the mean time bringing to bear such moral influences as we can to hasten the pacification of our sister republic. But we do not think that public sentiment in the United States is ready to approve the shedding of red American blood in a Mexican crusade to compel that people to adopt our ideals.