A diplomat's wife in Mexico

by Edith O'Shaughnessy

April 22d.

The wedding morn of thirteen years ago! And we are in Mexico, in full intervention! The troops can’t get up from Vera Cruz by rail, as the Mexicans got away with all the locomotives when the town was taken. That beautiful plan of Butler’s ... I understand that he is in Tampico, with his marines, and the other marines are only due to-day in Vera Cruz. It will take three weeks, even without resistance, for them to march up with their heavy equipment.

At 12.30 last night N., who had gone to bed and to sleep, after a more than strenuous day, was called to the telephone by the excited consul-general, who had had the United States shield torn off the Consulate, and other indignities offered the sacred building, including window-breaking by the mob. N. wonders if Huerta will try to keep him here as a hostage. Huerta told N. that he intends to take our arms away, and, of course, there is no way of keeping them if he decides to do so. We have certainly trampled on the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after 1848, providing that all disputes should be submitted first for arbitration. So sing me no songs of treaty rights!

We heard last night that the Zapatistas were to unite with Huerta. It would be interesting and curious to see a “Mexico united” on any point. If those bandits come out of their barrancas and mountains and do to the Americans half the evil they work on one another, there will be many a desolate mother, wife, sister, and sweetheart north of the Rio Grande. N. says we may get off to-morrow morning. No night trips. Yesterday Carden and von Hintze tried to get Huerta to arrange for the despatching of a refugee train to leave not later than seven this morning, but why he should do that, or anything for any one, unless it falls in with his own plans, I don’t see. It is curious that the Americans did not get hold of a few locomotives. The railroad is indeed sounding brass and tinkling cymbals without them.

Every arm-chair, sofa, and bed in the house was occupied last night, and many of the inmates lay on the floor. Constantly, in the distance, sounds the beautiful Mexican bugle-call. The brass summons is clear and noble, and the drums beat to the nation’s pulse—a poor thing, according to us, but Mexico’s own. Where will it all end? With the taking of Vera Cruz, through whose customs a full fourth of the total imports come, Huerta is out a million pesos a month, more or less. We are certainly isolating and weakening him at a great rate. “Might is right.” We can begin to teach it in the schools.

We have heard nothing from Washington, and nothing from Vera Cruz. Alone on our plateau! Up to now, there are no great anti-American demonstrations. I put my faith in Huerta, in spite of the feeling which Burnside expressed, that he might show Nelson an Indian’s treachery. Aunt Laura is game. It is good fortune for her to have that comfortable home just across the way to go to.

Something is being prepared in town. To-morrow we may get away. N. begins to feel that he ought to be out of here, the Mexican chargé at Washington having left yesterday, with the entire Embassy staff. This we learn from the Foreign Office here, not from Washington.

The newspapers are rather fierce this morning. One head-line in the Independiente is to the effect that “the Federal bullets will no longer spill brothers’ blood, but will perforate blond heads and white breasts swollen with vanity and cowardice.” “Like a horde of bandits the invaders assaulted the three-times heroic Vera Cruz. The brave costeños made the foreign thieves bite the dust they had stained with their impure blood,” etc. The newspapers add that the Americans landed “without a declaration of war, feloniously and advantageously.” “Anathema to the cowardly mercantile projects of the President of the United States!” they shriek. They had a picture of Mr. Wilson sitting on heaped-up money-bags, Huerta standing before him, a basket of eggs on each arm. “The true forces of the opponents,” this was labeled. It is impossible to expect the Mexicans to seize the idea that the landing of our troops was a simple police measure. In face of the facts, such subtle distinctions will, I am sure, be overlooked. “El suelo de la patria está conculcado por el invasor extranjero,” is the fact to them! I inclose here what the papers call “el manifiesto laconico y elocuente del Señor Presidente de la Republica.”

“A LA REPUBLICA

“En el Puerto de Veracruz, estamos sosteniendo con las armas el honor Nacional.