A diplomat's wife in Mexico

by Edith O'Shaughnessy

November 11th.

We lunch at the German Legation to-day, with Mr. Lind. He hasn’t any clothes, but as he doesn’t work along those lines I suppose it doesn’t matter. There is no question of the tailor making this man.

A heavenly, transforming sun, for which I am giving thanks, shines in at my windows. I am going out to do some “junking” with Lady C. With exchange three for one, every now and then some one does unearth something for nothing. The Belgian minister, who has money and flair, makes the most astounding finds. He got for a song what seems to be an authentic enamel of Diane de Poitiers, in its original frame—a relic of the glories of the viceroys.

Something that developed in a conversation with Mr. Lind has been making me a bit thoughtful, and more than a little uneasy. He has the idea, perhaps the plan, of facilitating the rebel advance by raising the embargo, and I am afraid he will be recommending it to Washington. We had been sitting, talking, after dinner, shivering in the big room over a diminutive electric stove, when he first tentatively suggested such action. I exclaimed: “Oh, Mr. Lind! You can’t mean that! It would be opening a Pandora box of troubles here.” Seeing how aghast I was, he changed the subject. But I cannot get it out of my head. The Mexican book is rolled out like a scroll before him; can it be that he is not going to read it? Any measures tending to undermine the central authority here, imperfect though it be, can only bring calamity. I witnessed that at first hand in the disastrous overturning of the Diaz rule and the installation of the ineffective Madero régime. I think Madero was more surprised than any one that, after having taken so much trouble to help him in, we took so little to keep him in. The diplomats are forever insisting that Diaz’s situation in 1877 was analogous to Huerta’s now, and that after a decently permissible delay of ten months, or whatever it was, we recognized him. So why not Huerta? He, at least, is in possession of the very delicate machinery of Mexican government, and has shown some understanding of how to keep it going.

Later.

The lunch at the German Legation was most interesting. Lind, Rabago, the Belgian minister, and ourselves were the guests. Rabago doesn’t speak a word of English, and Mr. Lind not a word of Spanish, so there was a rather scattered conversation. Everybody smiled with exceeding amiability—all to show how safe we felt on the thin ice. The colleagues are always very polite, but none of them is really with us as regards our policy. Standing with von Hintze by the window for a few minutes after lunch, I used the word intervention, and von Hintze said something about the unpreparedness of the United States for war. This, though true, I could not accept unchallenged from a foreigner. I answered that if war were declared, we would have a million men at the recruiting offices between sunrise and sunset. It sounded patriotic and terrifying, but it was rendered rather ineffective by his reply, “Men, yes, but not soldiers. Soldiers are not made between sunrise and sunset.” He added something about the apparent divergence in public opinion in the States, and threw a bit of Milton at me in the shape of “not everybody thinks they serve who only stand and wait.” Ignoring this quotation from the blind bard, I said that whatever the divergence of public opinion might be before war, the nation would be as one man with the President after any declaration. I also told him we did not regard the Mexican situation so much as a military situation as a police and administrative job, which we were unwilling to undertake. I then made my adieux, leaving the “junta” in full swing, the Belgian minister’s agile tongue doing wonders of interpretation between Lind and Rabago. The result of the palaver, however, as I heard afterward from the various persons who took part, was nil.

Mr. Lind keeps me on the qui vive by predictions of a rupture in the next few days. He is naturally becoming impatient and would like things to come to a head. I have not drawn a peaceful breath since landing.

Runs on the banks to draw out silver in exchange for paper have complicated matters. When I went this morning to the Banco Internacional I saw people standing at the paying-teller’s desk, with big canvas bags in which to carry off silver. Since the law to coin more silver has been passed, I should say that each patriot intends to do his best to line his own cloud with that material.

November 12th.

A telegram came from Washington last night. Rupture of diplomatic relations unless Huerta accedes to our demands. N. has taken it to the Foreign Office, to Rabago and to Garza Aldape, to prove to them that, though they may not believe it, we are ready to take strenuous measures. It is all more like being on a volcano than near one. Neither the Mexican nation, nor any other, for that matter, believes we are ready and able to go to war; which, of course, isn’t true, as we may be called upon to show. War is not, to my mind, anyway, the greatest of evils in the life of a nation. Too much prosperity is a thousand times worse; and certainly anarchy, as exemplified here, is infinitely more disastrous. We ourselves were “conceived in wars, born in battle, and sustained in blood.”