A diplomat's wife in Mexico

by Edith O'Shaughnessy

On board the Minnesota, in the very comfortable quarters of the admiral. We were awakened by the band playing the “Star-spangled Banner,” “God Save the King,” the beautiful Spanish national air, the “Marseillaise”—all according to the order of the arrival of the ships in the harbor. A delightful breeze is blowing and the electric fans are at work.

The last word I scribbled yesterday afternoon was when I was waiting in my state-room for Nelson to come back to our Mexican train, with our officers, under the white flag. I was delighted and deeply moved when suddenly big, agreeable, competent Captain Huse appeared at the door and said, “Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, I am glad to see you safely arrived and to welcome you to our lines.”

Poor General Corona stood by at the meeting, and I turned to him with a more than hearty handshake. He kissed my hand, and his eyes filled. Poor, poor people! As Captain Huse helped me out of the train, to my joy and surprise I saw Hohler standing by the track. He had taken down a trainful of agitated Germans, English, and Americans, two days before, and was to go back to Mexico City with our returning train and escort. I had a few words with him, amid the dry cactus of the parched field, and commended to his courage and good sense our poor, distracted compatriots left in the volcanic city. There may be no concerted massacre of Americans, but the day will come when there will be other horrors. Hohler said he had not slept for three nights, and only prayed for a couple of hours of oblivion before tackling anything else. I wished him Godspeed, and gave him a handclasp to match the temperature.

Then Captain Huse came up to me, saying: “We must go. Time is passing, and we are unarmed.”

As I turned to walk down the track with him I saw the pathetic spectacle of Madame Maass, whom I had parted from on that starry night of the Fletcher dinner, four months or more ago. She had walked, bareheaded, up that dusty stretch of track, from one train to the other, to go to join her husband at Soledad. The step on to the train by the steep embankment was so high I could not get up, nor could she descend; so she leaned down to me and I reached up to her. Tears were streaming down her grimy face; her black skirt was torn and rusty, her other clothing nondescript, to say the least; a pathetic, stout, elderly woman caught out in the troubles of war—or of peace, as they tell me it is called in Washington.

Then Captain Huse and two of his officers, Lieutenant Fletcher, nephew of Admiral Fletcher, and Ensign Dodd, walked down the track with me about two kilometers. The rails were torn up, but the road-bed was undestroyed, and as we walked along in the blazing sun, with scrubby, dusty palms and cactus in the grayish fields on either side, my back turned to the Mexican train, I was divided between joy and sorrow—joy to see and be with my own again and the haunting thought of poor, distracted Mexico, and of our own people, whom we had been obliged to leave to Heaven knows what fate. It is easy to be the last out of the danger zone, but very, very hard to be the first; I hope that another time, if fate puts us again in such strange places, we will be the last to go.

We finally got to our own train, which was run by a poor, dilapidated, leaking, propped-up engine, all that was left. The Mexicans had been quick about the machines, and every locomotive had been seized by them and sent away, after which they had destroyed those kilometers of track. Everybody climbed into the relief-train, and there came the question of getting our luggage from one train to another. Captain Huse had been obliged to come without an escort, accompanied only by Fletcher and Dodd, unarmed. Until they had us they could not make terms. So, to make a very long story short, several cutthroat-looking peons, casting deadly glances at los Gringos, transferred a lot of the hand-luggage, aided by the men of the party. All I possess of value, except that left at the Embassy, is contained in a single, large trunk, now reposing in the cactus-fields in the enemy’s lines, watched over by the same shambling, dark-browed, cutthroat Mexicans who helped to transfer the small baggage.

Captain Huse, finding himself with a broken-down engine and a lot of unarmed civilians, and with sundown approaching, was too anxious to get into his own lines to think of such trifles. He said, afterward, “You didn’t realize what danger we were in.” I remember that I saw his face suddenly light up, as we slowly moved along. He had caught sight of the outposts that Admiral Fletcher, with vigilant forethought, had placed five miles out of town, with guns and telescopes, ready to rush to our aid, if necessary. Then he knew all was well, and, in spite of the fact that I had not been able to realize any danger, my eyes filled again at the sight of our brave men, some looking through their telescopes, others ready with their guns.

I asked Captain Huse, “Are we at war with Mexico?”

And he answered, “I don’t know.” Adding, “They say not; but when one armed force opposes another armed force, and many are killed, we are rather of the opinion that it is war.”