Benson shook his head. “If we see Valles now and strike a bargain, we can get our cattle across the border before he’s all in.”
“Good enough reasoning,” the dean admitted. “But—ever since the first defeat he’s been in one of his towering rages. Even his own generals hardly dare go near him.”
Benson shrugged; with British obstinacy he clung to his point. “It won’t be the first time I’ve seen him in his rages. He may be dangerous—to Americans, but John Bull looks after his people and even Valles is careful of how he flies in the old fellow’s face. I shall go to see him at once, and if he refuses—well”—his voice grew harsh and menacing—“he’ll hear the truth about himself.”
Not knowing him, the correspondents received it in silence. While they smoked Benson went on in his hard, rough voice. “I tell you, amigos, that your people have made a sad mess of this whole Mexican business. For three years, now, you have been trying to apply the principles of your Declaration of Independence to a race which won’t have evolved to a point where it has the faintest understanding of them for a thousand years to come. You stand on your Monroe doctrine, but refuse to take up its obligations and give alien nationals the protection you will not allow their own government to extend. While your statesmen prattle about the sacred right of revolution and Mexico’s ability to settle her own affairs, the country is overrun with bandits and mobs of pelados who are killing off the decent people and destroying billions in property they never created.
“Bah!” he snorted his disgust. “Don’t talk to me of republics. Do you suppose that either England or Germany would have stood for the anarchy which rules here? For centuries John Bull has been ruling brown peoples and he knows his job. ‘Be good and you’ll be happy!’ he tells them. If they’re not—they get it, hot and heavy, on the spot where it will do most good. The brown man is all right in his place—which isn’t on top of the white man—but your government, so far, has failed to perceive it.”
He went on from a pause: “Republics are incapacitated by nature in any case for the job. They are too divided in their counsels—swayed to-day by capital that will accept any dishonor rather than jeopardize its revenues; to-morrow by sentimentalists who hold up hands of horror at the very thought of war; governed most of the time by a ridiculous yellow press. Individually, you Yanks are good people, but taken collectively, as represented by your government and papers, you are hypocritical, weak, hysterical, sentimental, without dignity or force. You are grown fat with wealth, soft with luxury, too lazy and indifferent to undertake your responsibilities abroad, and if you were not, you lack the first essentials—centralized federal authority and military strength to enforce your will. If you do anything here it will be accidental—such as when the blowing up of the Maine aroused one of your periodical brainstorms, stung you into action. But in the mean time the destruction of Mexico will be complete. There will be nothing left of the civilization built up at such enormous pains by Diaz and which it was your duty to maintain.”
Silence followed, the uncomfortable silence that attends the digestion of unpalatable truth. While they talked, the cars had resolved into dim masses that swayed and swung through hot dusk that was splashed, here and there, with the red glow of charcoal cooking fires. On those immediately ahead and behind, dim sombreroed figures still loomed in half-gloom. The flash of a match occasionally set a dark face out in startling relief. The tinkle of a guitar accompanying a high, nasal peon chant, mingled with the roar and rattle of wheels. For some time its whine rose under the stars before the voice of the dean broke the silence.
“What you say is true—most of it. We have been tried in the balance and found wanting. We’ve neglected our duty to the Mexicans and our own people—that’s the hell of it! But nations, like individuals, learn their lessons through painful mistakes. We’ve had bad leadership and worse counsels—so much of it that it would almost seem that we were irrevocably stamped as incapable. But it’s only a phase. Under it all the heart of the people still beats sound and true. Sooner or later its voice will be heard. And when it is—the bleating of the sentimentalists will be drowned in the tramp of marching men.”
“You bet you!” It rolled out in chorus.
“In the mean time,” a voice added, “what’s the matter with a little drink?”