Villa, not being able to get the full amount of the ransom out of Terrazas père, has decided not to execute the son, but to take him with him when he besieges Torreon, and to place him wherever the bullets are thickest. The mad dance of death goes on, and I feel as if we were the fiddlers. Mr. Lind has so idealized the rebels in the north that he has come to think them capable of all the civic virtues, and he is obsessed by the old tradition of north beating south whenever there is an issue. His deduction is not borne out by facts, as in Mexico it is the south that has produced the greatest number of great men—“the governmental minds”; the south has come nearer to loving peace; the south has shown the greatest degree of prosperity and advancement. Vera Cruz is the poorest possible vantage-ground for a study of conditions; it is a clearing-house for malcontents of all kinds, mostly rebels, fleeing from the consequences of some act against some authority. My heart is heavy at the grim fatality that has permitted our policy to be shaped from there.
A dust-storm this afternoon, with all the color gone out of the air, and a few thick drops of cold rain. I left cards for an hour or two, then came home. I am glad to be here in my comfortable home, though I can’t help a shiver as I think of the horrors sanctioned, even encouraged, by us on every side. B. said once that the policy of the United States in lifting the embargo was to really give Mexicans a taste of civil war! There were some chirpings from Carranza the other day, to the effect that “I understand Villa, and Villa understands me.” Doubtless this is true; but they say that after their rare meetings the old gentleman has to go to bed for several days.
I have just been reading an article by Mr. Creelman on Lind. He has caught the spirit of Vera Cruz and described exactly Mr. Lind and his ambiente there. He speaks of him as “Mr. Wilson’s cloistered agent.” “In a small, dark room with a red-tiled floor, opening on a shabby Mexican courtyard,” he adds, “in the rear of the American Consulate in Vera Cruz, sits John Lind, the personal representative of the President of the United States, as he has sat for seven months, smilingly watching and waiting, while Mexico and her 15,000,000 men, women, and children have moved to ruin.” It makes me “creepy,” it is so true!
March 10th, 5 P.M.
I am back from saying good-by to dear Madame Lefaivre; she starts off to-night with swollen foot and leg, and I am very much fearing the long voyage for her. With her usual good nature she had had her paint-box unpacked and was sitting on a trunk, putting some restoring touches to a Madonna of most uncertain value, just discovered by the German consul-general. The Lefaivres have a pied-à-terre in Paris, with beautiful things inherited from Madame Lefaivre’s father. Lefaivre has decided to go, if the heavens fall, and, as we laughingly told him, if his wife falls, too, for that matter. I besought him to delay, for political reasons, but the long sojourn is on his nerves, and he has a bad throat. I am sorry to see them go, on my own account—such good friends. I am writing this, expecting Hohler and a woman special correspondent for tea. Burnside tells me she has been in many storm-centers and is bright and discreet.
March 11th.
N. is pretty hot about the arms which are in the customs here in Mexico City. The officials keep him running from one to the other; they don’t really want us to have them, though the French, German, English, and Japanese legations have long since been well stocked. I came down-stairs to hunt for literature, about four o’clock this morning, and heard the “Pretorian guard” in the parterre, laughing and joking, as guards in all ages have done. There are unlimited cigarettes and limited pulque to make their watch easy.
Later.
We hear that Mr. Lind is having parleyings with the Zapatistas! If he is going to dream this dream and pass it on to his friends in Washington, they will all have the most awful nightmare ever visited on dreamers. Zapata has been the terror of every President—Diaz, de la Barra, Madero, and Huerta—for nearly five years. His crimes and depredations are committed under the banner of “Land for the People,” and there has been a certain consistency about his proceedings, always “agin the government”; but that he has, after these years of bloodshed, rapine, and loot, rendered conditions more tolerable for any except the rapers and looters, is most debatable. I once saw some living remains brought to the Red Cross after one of his acts at Tres Marias, about fifty kilometers from here. A train was attacked, looted, oil was poured on the passengers, and the train was set on fire. The doctors who went to the station to get the remains out of the train say the sight was unforgetable. The name Zapata has now become a symbol of brigandage, and many operate under it. No general sent into Morelos has ever brought order. For instance, one was sent to Michoacan with two thousand cavalry, to put down a small force of several hundred brigands; though he had the grazing free, he charged the government 50 centavos per horse! It became a vicious, but profitable, circle, as you can well see.
There has been a great break in exchange. The peso, which was two to one when we first came to Mexico, and lately has been three to one, or nearly that, broke Saturday, and went to four and a half to the gold dollar. Various explanations. Huerta has been threatening to found a bank of his own if the bankers did not do something for him. Some say that the bankers brought on the break in exchange to scare him, and others that Huerta proposed establishing a bank of his own to scare them! Anyway, exchange broke. During his conversation with the bankers, apropos of the loans they were loath to give him, Huerta is said to have jocularly remarked that there were trees enough in Chapultepec Park to hang them all on without crowding. Those old cypresses have witnessed a good deal, but a consignment of indigenous and foreign bankers hanging with the long, gray moss from their branches would have savored of novelty.