To determine the truth in all these allegations, which were freely printed in the American press of the time, would demand more facts than are at present available; yet it is clear that these oil and other "concessions" presented the perpetual Mexican problem in a new and difficult light. The Wilson Administration came into power a few days after Huerta had seized the Mexican Government. The first difficulty presented to the State Department was to determine its attitude toward this usurper.
A few days after President Wilson's inauguration Mr. Irwin Laughlin, then Chargé d'Affaires in London—this was several weeks before Page's arrival—was instructed to ask the British Foreign Office what its attitude would be in regard to the recognition of President Huerta. Mr. Laughlin informed the Foreign Office that he was not instructed that the United States had decided on any policy, but that he felt sure it would be to the advantage of both countries to follow the same line. The query was not an informal one; it was made in definite obedience to instructions and was intended to elicit a formal commitment. The unequivocal answer that Mr. Laughlin received was that the British Government would not recognize Huerta, either formally or tacitly.
Mr. Laughlin sent his message immediately to Washington, where it apparently made a favourable impression. The Administration then let it be known that the United States would not recognize the new Mexican régime. Whether Mr. Wilson would at this time have taken such a position, irrespective of the British attitude, is not known, but at this stage of the proceedings Great Britain and the United States were standing side by side.
About three weeks afterward Mr. Laughlin heard that the British Foreign Office was about to recognize Huerta. Naturally the report astonished him; he at once called again on the Foreign Office, taking with him the despatch that he had recently sent to Washington. Why had the British Government recognized Huerta when it had given definite assurances to Washington that it had no intention of doing so? The outcome of the affair was that Sir Cecil Spring Rice, British Ambassador in Washington, was instructed to inform the State Department that Great Britain had changed its mind. France, Germany, Spain, and most other governments followed the British example in recognizing the new President of Mexico.
It is thus apparent that the initial mistake in the Huerta affair was made by Great Britain. Its action produced the most unpleasant impression upon the new Administration. Mr. Wilson, Mr. Bryan, and their associates in the cabinet easily found an explanation that was satisfactory to themselves and to the political enthusiasms upon which they had come into power. They believed that the sudden change in the British attitude was the result of pressure from British commercial interests which hoped to profit from the Huerta influence. Lord Cowdray was a rich and powerful Liberal; he had great concessions in Mexico which had been obtained from President Diaz; it was known that Huerta aimed to make his dictatorship a continuation of that of Diaz, to rule Mexico as Diaz had ruled it, that is, by force, and to extend a welcoming hand to foreign capitalists. An important consideration was that the British Navy had a contract with the Cowdray Company for oil, which was rapidly becoming indispensable as a fuel for warships, and this fact necessarily made the British Government almost a champion of the Cowdray interests. It was not necessary to believe all the rumours that were then afloat in the American press to conclude that a Huerta administration would be far more acceptable to the Cowdray Company than any headed by one of the military chieftains who were then disputing the control of Mexico. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan believed that these events proved that certain "interests," similar to the "interests" which, in their view, had exercised so baleful an influence on American politics, were also active in Great Britain. The Wilson election in 1912 had been a protest against the dominance of "Wall Street" in American politics; Mr. Bryan's political stock-in-trade for a generation had consisted of little except a campaign against these forces; naturally, therefore, the suspicion that Great Britain was giving way to a British "Standard Oil" was enough to arm these statesmen against the Huerta policy, and to intensify that profound dislike of Huerta himself that was soon to become almost an obsession.
With this as a starting point President Wilson presently formulated an entirely new principle for dealing with Latin-American republics. There could be no permanent order in these turbulent countries and nothing approaching a democratic system until the habit of revolution should he checked. One of the greatest encouragements to revolution, said the President, was the willingness of foreign governments to recognize any politician who succeeded in seizing the executive power. He therefore believed that a refusal to recognize any government "founded upon violence" would exercise a wholesome influence in checking this national habit; if Great Britain and the United States and the other powers would set the example by refusing to have any diplomatic dealings with General Huerta, such an unfriendly attitude would discourage other forceful intriguers from attempting to repeat his experiment. The result would be that the decent elements in Mexico and other Latin-American countries would at last assert themselves, establish a constitutional system, and select their governments by constitutional means. At the bottom of the whole business were, in the President's and Mr. Bryan's opinion, the "concession" seekers, the "exploiters," who were constantly obtaining advantages at the hands of these corrupt governments and constantly stirring up revolutions for their financial profit. The time had now come to end the whole miserable business. "We are closing one chapter in the history of the world," said Mr. Wilson, "and opening another of unimaginable significance. . . . It is a very perilous thing to determine the foreign policy of a nation in the terms of material interests. . . . We have seen such material interests threaten constitutional freedom in the United States. Therefore we will now know how to sympathize with those in the rest of America who have to contend with such powers, not only within their borders, but from outside their borders."
In this way General Huerta, who, in his own eyes, was merely another in the long succession of Mexican revolutionary chieftains, was translated into an epochal figure in the history of American foreign policy; he became a symbol in Mr. Wilson's new scheme of things—the representative of the order which was to come to an end, the man who, all unwittingly, was to point the new way not only in Mexico, but in all Latin-American countries. The first diplomatic task imposed upon Page therefore was one that would have dismayed a more experienced ambassador. This was to persuade Great Britain to retrace its steps, to withdraw its recognition of Huerta, and to join hands with the United States in bringing about his downfall. The new ambassador sympathized with Mr. Wilson's ideas to a certain extent; the point at which he parted company with the President's Mexican policy will appear in due course. He therefore began zealously to preach the new Latin-American doctrine to the British Foreign Office, with results that appear in his letters of this period.
To the President
6 Grosvenor Square, London,
Friday night, October 24, 1913.