January 4th.
Last night N. went to a big dinner at the Jockey Club. It was given by Corona, the chic governor of the Federal District, for the President, who made speeches at intervals. Several times Huerta seemed to be on the verge of mentioning the United States, but N. said he kept a restraining eye fastened on him. After dinner N. was called to the telephone. When he came back there was a subtle something in the air which made him feel that in his absence the President had drifted near the Washington rocks, for Huerta took pains to go over and embrace him. Later the President quoted the saying that “all thieves are not gachupines,” but that “all gachupines are thieves,” whereupon, catching the Spanish minister’s eye, he felt obliged to go over and embrace him, too! However, drifting a bit nearer to Scylla and Charybdis matters little to him.
He was not responsible for the much-talked-of New-Year’s greeting to President Wilson. It was sent out from the Foreign Office with the other usual annual messages to the heads of Powers, and in the Foreign Office they explained that they did not like to pass over the United States.
The admonition given out by the State Department yesterday, the third to Americans, warning them not to return to Mexico, was printed in small type in a corner of the Mexican Herald. Formerly it would have occupied a whole page, but the people are getting blasé about warnings. Each man looks to himself for protection—on the even chance. I don’t know whether this admonition was in any way an outcome of Mr. Lind’s conference; it might easily be, as one of his strong beliefs is that foreigners would better get out. This is also Carranza’s idea.
January 5th.
Von Hintze has returned. The excuse given for the murder of a German subject who was quietly asleep in the railroad station at Leon was that the guards, who also robbed him, thought he was an American! Well, there are some things one can’t talk about, but I seemed to be conscious, hotly, of each individual hair on my head.
No news from the Chester conference, but, of course, we are all on the qui vive for possible results. Things get more chaotic all the time, and whatever is to be done should be done quickly. There is some regard for life and property under the near gaze of the Dictator in the provinces he controls, but in the north reigns complete lawlessness. Everywhere brother is killing brother, and as for the sisters, they are often lassoed and captured as if they were stampeding cattle. Educated people, who have been prosperous all their lives, are now without food or shelter, knowing that strangers eat at their tables, sleep in their beds, and scatter their treasures. If only poor old Huerta could have begun in some other way than by riding into the capital in a path of blood spilled by himself and others, he would probably have been able, with recognition, to do as well as any one, and better than most. As it is, he is like a woman who has begun wrong. The neighbors won’t let her start again, no matter how virtuously she lives.
The “bull-fight charity,” organized to raise funds for the Red Cross, is considered the hit of the season. It had been advertised as a “humane” fight, as the bull’s horns were capped. However, the toreador was killed—amid immense excitement, pleasurable rather than otherwise. As I was coming home, about five this afternoon, from a peaceful day at Xochimilco, I saw in every direction immense clouds of dust. For a moment I thought that a storm was rising, but it was only the dust raised by the vehicles bringing spectators back from the bull-ring, half a kilometer beyond the Embassy. Having tried, on two awful and useless occasions, to “get the spirit of the game,” I have put the whole question of bull-fights out of my consciousness.
Several people have just been here on their way home. Mr. Lefaivre thinks this unfortunate government might possibly get money from abroad if it could be placed in the hands of a commission for spending and accounting, and would be willing to urge it on his government under such conditions. The idea of such a commission, for several reasons, has not been popular here. It would, of course, be mixte (foreigners and Mexicans). It would reflect on their cultura (a Spanish word for personal dignity and urbanity), and on their bizarría, meaning gallantry, mettle, valor, generosity. Last, but not least, what would be the use of an arrangement where there would be no “pickings” for anybody?
Well, the sun shines faithfully on what might be an earthly paradise, and Xochimilco was beautiful beyond words. We motored out, skirting a bit of the picturesque Viga Canal (fifty years ago the fashionable drive of Mexico City), to the old water-gates, where we got into a great flatboat and were poled by a big-hatted, white-trousered Indian along the watery aisles in between the beautiful floating islands—Chinampas, the Indians call them—so near that one could almost reach the flowers and vegetables planted on them. Masses of lilies, stocks, and pansies are now in bloom and are reflected everywhere in the smooth water. Silent Indians, in narrow canoes often simply hollowed out of trunks of trees, passed and repassed us. Sometimes it was a couple of women in bright garments, poling quietly along, with heaps of flowers and vegetables between them. Sometimes there was a family, with a bright-eyed baby lying against the carrots and cauliflowers, the eternal trio—when it isn’t the national sextette or octette so familiar here. The picturesque life of a changeless people little, if at all, modified since the coming of Cortés, unfolded itself to our gaze. They offered us bouquets as they passed, and bunches of carrots and radishes and aromatic herbs, until our boat was a mass of flowers and scent, and a dreamy, hypnotic quiescence took the place of our strenuousness. Some one said, in a far-away voice, “La vida es sueño” (“Life is a dream”). But, fortunately or unfortunately, a practical-minded picnicker was able to shake off his share of the strange magic that was upon us, saying, with an attempt at briskness, “This isn’t for us!”