Had a wearing sort of day, full of corners and edges; also the first real dust-storm of the season, which helps to make nerves raw. The government sends down three Gatling-guns, which Nelson is to get into the country “anyway he thinks best.” It will not be a simple matter. Everything is in a combustible condition here, needing but a match to ignite the whole.
Evening.
Just returned from Chapultepec from Señora Huerta’s reception. It was her first in two months, as she had been in mourning for her brother. The “court” wore black. I found myself next to Huerta for tea, having been taken out by the Minister of Communicaciones—the Minister of “Highways and Buyways,” he might be called. I had a little heart-to-heart talk with the President—unfortunately in my broken Spanish. He gave me some flowers and all the good things on the table, and in return I gave him a red carnation for his buttonhole. He called for enchiladas and tamales—pink jelly and fussy sandwiches don’t appeal to him—but the majordomo, with a grin, said, “No hay.”
A few of the gens du monde were there. It seems cruel for them to boycott their own government as they continually and consistently do. Huerta has promised to put a larger house at our disposition for the Red Cross, and I begged him to come, if only for a moment, to the benefit circus performance on Friday. He has some military engagement for that night. I think we will be able later to get up a really productive bull-fight for the Red Cross, if he will sanction it. There is always money for bull-fights in this country. If the bull-fighters didn’t come so high, and if the bulls were not so dear, a bull-fight would be a wonderful way of putting any organization on its feet!
Huerta sat with Nelson the whole time after tea, in the bedroom next to the big salon, and Nelson broached to him the subject of the guns. He said he could bring in any blankety thing he pleased, or the Spanish equivalent, but he warned him to do it quietly. We were almost the last to leave and Huerta took me on his arm down the broad, red-carpeted stairs, telling me that Mexicans were the friends of everybody, and offering me a pony for Elim. When we got to the glass vestibule, in front of which the autos were waiting, he made us take his auto. “Your automobile,” he insisted, when I said, “Oh, but this is yours!” What could I do but get in, to the salute of officers, our empty car following us. All his courtesies make it a bit hard for us. I felt like a vampire in a churchyard or some such awful thing, when I was sitting there in the big salon, knowing that Huerta is up against the world and can’t but slip at the end, no matter how he digs in his feet. He needs fidelity. It is nowhere to be had, and never was to be had in Mexico, if history is to be believed. When Santa Ana left Mexico City with twelve thousand troops in 1847 to meet and engage Scott at Puebla, he finally arrived with a fourth of that number—the others vanishing along the road a few at a time.
There was a good deal of uniform up there this afternoon. I looked at those gold-braided chests with mingled feelings—pity at the thought of the uncertainty of life, and a sickening feeling of the undependability of the sentiments that fill them when the constitution is in question.
We hear that Diaz Miron leaves for Switzerland to-night; which, if true, ends that little flurry. The long arm of the Dictator moves the puppets as he wills, and I imagine he intends to take no risks concerning the brightest jewel in his crown—i. e., N., the last link with the United States. I keep thinking what a “grand thing” a dictatorship is if it is on your side. Most of the dozen Huerta children were at the reception—from the youngest, a bright little girl of seven, to the fatuous eldest officer son of thirty or thereabouts. A big diamond in a gold ring, next to a still bigger one in platinum, were the most conspicuous things about him.
A new comic journal called Mister Lind made its first appearance to-day. It is insulting and unclean, with a caricature of Lind on the second page. I can’t decide whether the name is bright or stupid.
The Mexicans are master-hands at caricature and play upon words, and there are generally some really trenchant political witticisms in their comic papers. There are wishes for Wilson’s early demise scattered through the pages in various forms. But I imagine they are boomerang wishes, and the journal itself will have a short and unprofitable life. The big middle page has a picture, calling itself El Reparto de Tierras (“The Division of Lands”). It represents a graveyard; underneath are the words, “tenemos 200,000 tierras tenientes” (“we have 200,000 landholders”)—a sad play upon the division of lands. Above it vultures are portrayed, wearing Uncle Sam’s hat. Another caricature shows the Mexicans carrying a coffin labeled Asuntos Nacionales (National Affairs), with President Wilson as a candle-bearer. The press gets more anti-American every day.
