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 The deplorable spectacle which Mexico has been presenting to 
 the public eye, variably considered as anarchical and as the struggle 
 of men engaged in a reckless quarrel of social dissolution and fratri- 
 cidal destruction, does not suggest the lofty sight of the liberating 
 war initiated and lead by Mr. Carranza, First Chief of the Consti- 
 tutionalist Army, and vested by a decree of the same revolution, 
 with the Executive Power of the Republic. 
 
 This state of disorder is simply and purely the consequence, first 
 of insubordination, and second of the revolt of a military 
 chief commanding a number of troops belonging to the army 
 hereinbefore mentioned. It has therefore, arisen from an act of 
 treason against the armed movement which followed the usurpa- 
 tion of the Government of Mexico by General Victoriano Huerta 
 and the murder committed by him in the persons of President 
 Madero and Vice-President Pino Suarez. It is nothing more than 
 the result of mutiny on the part of a number of rebel soldiers 
 headed by Francisco ViUa against the General in Chief of the 
 army, Venustiano Carranza, and not the sequence of the revolution 
 itself which continues unaltered in its march towards its noble 
 ideals, carrying as its banner the public liberties of Mexico, and the 
 Plan of Guadalupe as its only rule of action. 
 
 The disloyalty of ViUa, Chief of one of the best equipped divisions 
 of the Constitutionalist Army, means the insurrection of a band of 
 undisciplined men against the Commander in Chief of a popular 
 army which came to exist and was formed^ organized and led to 
 victory in behalf of a cause also popular ; that of freedom, emanci- 
 pation and regeneration of a country. This army carried its 
 victory to the extent of dethroning the Government of an usurper 
 and tryant, Victoriano Huerta, and in the midst of its work of re- 
 constructing the government of the Republic, the revolt of Villa has 
 occurred, and while it may retard the final success of the revolution, 
 seriously injuring the country in its internal and international 
 life, it will in no way be able to check it or even deter it. 
 
 Between the Villa movement and the revolutionary attitude of 
 Carranza there is a fathomless difference equal to that which dis- 
 tinguishes a seditious faction from a liberating army ; the difference 
 
3-f 
 
 which exists between a revolution inspired by the principles of free- 
 dom and the quarrel of a gang of mutineers. The struggle which the 
 Mexican people are waging for their freedom and political and 
 social emancipation offers other examples fatally equal to the above 
 which have occurred with lethal frequency. This struggle has been 
 raging for over one hundred years, interrupted at times by few 
 periods of ephemeral peace, incomplete advancement and slow 
 intellectual uplifting, such, for example, as the period of autocrasy 
 of General Diaz, which endured over thirty years, until he was 
 dethroned by the revolution headed by Francisco I. Madero, con- 
 tinued by Venustiano Carranza and assailed today by Villa and 
 his accomplices. 
 
 After a war of eleven years in support of the independence 
 proclaimed in 1810 by the venerable priest of Dolores, Miguel 
 Hidalgo, it happened that Agustin Iturbide, a member of the Royal 
 Army of Spain, joined the Independent Army, claiming that he was 
 animated with the desire to contribute to the success of the cause, 
 but when the independence of the Republic was accomplished in 
 1821, Iturbide ignored its efforts and the sacrifices of its heroes 
 and martyrs, and with the support of the privileged classes, which 
 from that day to the present time have constituted the reactionary 
 or anti-democratic party, declared himself Emperor of Mexico. His 
 government lasted ten months and he paid at Padilla with his life 
 the crime of having betrayed the cause of freedom. 
 
 In 1829, the Spaniards attempted to reconquer Mexico, General 
 Vicente Guerrero, one of Mexico's great patriots, was then Presi- 
 dent of the Republic, and under his leadership the Mexicans de- 
 feated the invaders and thus he affirmed the independence of the 
 nation. During this defensive movement, Anastasio Bustamante, 
 who had been entrusted by President Guerrero with the command of 
 an army corps in order to prevent the landing of the invaders at 
 Vera Cruz, revolted against President Guerrero, on the day he learn- 
 ed that the Spaniards had been defeated at Tampico; he bribed 
 Francisco Picaluga, an Italian sailor, giving him fifty thousand 
 dollars, to the end that on the occasion of a banquet given on board 
 the ' ' Colombo, ' ' he should arrest President Guerrero and turn him 
 over to Bustamante himself. Guerrero was murdered in February 
 1831 and Bustamante, a traitor and an assassin, assumed the presi- 
 dency of the Republic. 
 
 In 1845, when Texas was annexed to the United States and war 
 between the two countries followed, on that account. General Joa- 
 quin de Herrera was President of Mexico ; he sent General Mariano 
 Paredes to reinforce the ranks of the army of national defense 
 
/ 
 
 1-) 
 
 commanded by General Mariano Arista, who was then in the 
 frontier. General Arista begged Paredes to hasten his march, and 
 kept him informed about the movements of the invading army ; but 
 Paredes at once showed his ambition to become President of Mexico 
 and committed the crime of revolting at San Luis Potosi with the 
 same troops and money he had been given by the government to 
 check the advance of the invaders. He was supported by the privi- 
 leged classes, which at that time, instead of thinking in the defense 
 of the fatherland, were already plotting to bring a foreign prince 
 and place him at the head of the government. President Herrera 
 fell and Paredes saw the realization of his dream, but his name passed 
 into history as that of a disloyal soldier and a traitor to his country, 
 no less than Iturbide and Bustamante. 
 
 Towards the end of 1857, Comonfort, Provisional President of 
 Mexico, gave a coup d' etat to annul the Constitution which had 
 been proclaimed in February of the same year and which is the one 
 today in force in the Republic. The coup d' etat did not succeed and 
 Comonfort had to leave the country, but the presidency was then 
 occupied by General Felix Zuloaga, a representative of the re- 
 actionary party. 
 
 During the civil wars of Mexico it has been the custom that 
 when a political party takes hold of the capital, the same should 
 be considered victorious and therefore the reactionary party, which 
 on account of the coup d' etat took hold of the City of Mexico at a 
 very small cost, was considered as the victor over the liberal party. 
 It is at this time that the great patriot Benito Juarez appeared in 
 the field, by issuing at Guanajuato, a manifesto to the nation in 
 which he said, that inasmuch as he was the Chief Justice of the 
 Supreme Court and ipso facto, the Vice-President of the Republic, 
 he assiuned the supreme command of the nation, in view of the 
 retirement of Comonfort, and in accordance with the provisions of 
 the Constitution of 1857, whose depository and defender he was. 
 There were therefore two presidents of Mexico: Juarez, who was 
 vested with this character by a precept of the Constitution, and 
 the other man who assumed power through the coup d' etat. The 
 three years war, that is, the war of Reform, began with the defeat of 
 Juarez' forces at Salamanca, General Parrodi leading the liberal 
 army, while General OsoUos commanded the reactionaries. When 
 Juarez was informed of this first disaster, he said calmly: "Our 
 fighting cock has lost a feather." This liberating war ended \vith 
 the victory of the Constitution of 1857, that is, the triumph of demo- 
 cracy and of the Republic over slavery and reaction, the Consti- 
 tutionalist -Army having made its triumphial march into the 
 
Capital of the Republic commanded by an armed citizen, General 
 Gonzalez Ortega, on the 1st of January 1861. 
 
 Once again the hand of the reaction was raised against the men 
 and principles which had been gained and established; but this 
 time the reaction appeared in the form of a royalist party whose 
 aims were to change the republican, democratic, representative 
 government, consolidated by the Constitution and its amendments, 
 into a monarchical government headed by a foreign prince. The 
 work of the reactionaries and the baj'^onets of Napolean Third im- 
 posed upon Mexico the Empire of an Austrian prince, Maximilian of 
 Hapsburgh, who paid with his life at the ' ' Cerro de las Campanas, ' ' 
 just the same as Augustin the First at Padilla, the price of his 
 adventure. This war lasted from 1862 to 1867, and during all 
 of this period President Juarez was seen to carry his government, 
 never disowned by either natives or foreigners, from the Capital 
 of Mexico to San Luis Potosi, and successively to Saltillo, Monterrey, 
 Chihuahua and Paso del Norte, today Ciudad Juarez, where he re- 
 mained during the fiercest struggle for national independence. 
 
 President Juarez with his government reinstated the City of 
 Mexico as Capital of the Republic, after a long and indomitable 
 pilgrimage. He entered the legendary city on July 15, 1867. He 
 returned to it after an absence of four years, bringing with him 
 unblemished the flag and the Constitution of the Republic. On that 
 same day he issued a manifesto full of dignity and patriotism in 
 which are set in relief and as the teachings to posterity, the following 
 words: "That the government and the people should respect the 
 rights of everybody. Between individuals as between nations, the 
 respect to the rights of others brings peace." 
 
 President Juarez died in July 1872. He was succeeded by Presi- 
 dents, Lerdo de Tejada, Porfirio Diaz, during one constitutional 
 term, and Manuel Gonzalez, during another. Since that time, 1884, 
 Porfirio Diaz occupied the presidency of Mexico until he was forced 
 to resign it on account of the revolution initiated by Francisco I. 
 Madero, who, pursuant to a popular election, assumed the presi- 
 dency of the Republic in November 1911. 
 
 Only a short time after Mr. Madero was inaugurated as Presi- 
 dent of Mexico, one of the leading chiefs of the Revolutionary Army, 
 who had militated under him and had distinguished himself for his 
 courage and adhesion to the cause represented by that great patriot, 
 felt the malefic influence of ambition, and, from Governor of the 
 State of Chihuahua, a distinction he had received as a recognization 
 of his services, he, like Paredes, lent an easy ear to the voice of 
 reaction: the presidency is first, the fatherland comes next to it. 
 
He thereupon revolted against the government and against the man 
 from whom he had received so many honors. He treacherously- 
 disposed of the elements of war which had been entrusted to him 
 by the government and the President and fought the Federal Army 
 with the intention of destroying both the government and the 
 President. This perfidious man was Pascual Orozco. 
 
 Under such conditions, President Madero called General Victor- 
 iano Huerta to his side and entrusted him with the command of an 
 expeditionary column against the traitor Orozco, whom he success- 
 ively defeated at Conejos, Rellano and Bachimba, clearing the road 
 to Ciudad Juarez with his forces. Huerta returned a victor to the 
 City of Mexico, where President Madero lavished honors and dis- 
 tinctions upon him. 
 
 While the rebel Emiliano Zapata was waging his vandalic war in 
 the southern portion of the Republic, General Reyes, who for a long 
 time had been hatching an uprising in the Texas frontier, crossed 
 the Rio Grande at Starr County, and a short time later was made a 
 prisoner at Linares, wherefrom he was brought to the Capital to be 
 tried according to the law. 
 
 A few months later, General Felix Diaz was also brought to the 
 Capital as a prisoner, after his unsuccessful uprising in Vera Cruz. 
 Reyes and Diaz, aided by their friends, plotted a new uprising while 
 in prison. With the assistance of several military chiefs who had 
 caused one or two regiments of the garrison to revolt; they were 
 freed from prison and at the head of the boys from a military train- 
 ing school they attacked the National Palace which was defended by 
 the Presidential Guards. Reyes lost his life in front of the Palace, 
 and Felix Diaz, through the connivance of General Mondragon and 
 General Davila, who commanded the forces at the Arsenal, took 
 hold of the latter fortress and with its powerful elements of men and 
 war material, fought the forces of President Madero, who once more 
 entrusted the command of the Government's army to General Vic- 
 toriano Huerta. This time Huerta had already felt the presidential 
 thirst and simulating a defense in which he sacrificed thousands of 
 men, and acting in collusion with Felix Diaz and the Corps of 
 Engineers, commanded by General Aureliano Blanquet, took hold 
 of the President and Vice-President, subjected them to imprisonment, 
 compelled them to resign their posts and with the points of bayonets 
 on their breasts forced a minority of Congress to proclaim him 
 Provisional President of the Republic. This happened about Feb> 
 ruary 19, 1913, and on the evening of February 22, he murdered 
 with incredible cruelty and barbarism the victims of his treason: 
 President Francisco I. Madero, and Vice-President Jose Maria Pino 
 Suarez. On the very same day and hour in which Vennstiano 
 
Carranza, Constitutional Governor of the State of Coahuila, re- 
 ceived telegraphic information of the above horrible crime, he rose 
 in arms against such treacherous usurpation. 
 
 In a small hamlet named Guadalupe, of the State of Coahuila, 
 he proclaimed the political plan known under the name of the little 
 village, which was subscribed by a scant number of men. This hand- 
 ful of patriots was the nucleus of the Constitutionalist Army, which 
 grew, as if a biological phenomenon had taken place, acquiring the 
 formidable proportions which permitted it to defeat the disciplined, 
 well trained and well equipped armies which during a period of thirty 
 years had been the subject of governmental organization. It was 
 the veteran army that had supported Diaz during his long and ab- 
 sorbent autocracy, the one which had shown its military value in the 
 numerous uprisings which uselessly occurred against that long blend 
 of oligarchy, teocracy and democracy impersonated by Porfirio Diaz. 
 Its resistance was useless against the impulse of the then powerful 
 army of citizens who had rallied around Venustiano Carranza ; they 
 Tushed the hosts of Huerta to defeat and did not stop until they had 
 overthrown him and entered the Capital of the Republic on August 
 19, 1914, not without a terrible loss of life during the battles which 
 were fought and great destruction of property. 
 
 The triumphal entry of the Constitutionalist Army, at whose head 
 was its First Chief, into the Capital of the Republic, forms epoch in 
 the history of Mexican democracy, parallel to that of President Ju- 
 arez, first when the struggle for reform was consumated and the Con- 
 stitution of 1857 became consolidated; and later, when the second 
 independence of Mexico was accomplished, with the downfall of 
 Maximilian's Empire, and the Republic was reestablished; and 
 not only because of this, but also because of the spirit of popular 
 recognition with which both men were hailed by the whole nation. 
 
 The First Constitutional Chief, pursuant to a provision of the 
 Plan of Guadalupe, has been since the depositary of the Executive 
 Power of the Republic. 
 
 For some time past Francisco Villa, Commander of the Northern 
 Division of the same Constitutionalist Army, has exhibited his dis- 
 like for the First Chief, obeying his orders with displeasure and 
 criticising some of his acts. The First Chief, however, continued 
 to distinguish him with his kindness, honoring him with distinction 
 and supplying him with money and all kinds of elements for the 
 support of the army corps he commanded. First Chief Carranza 's 
 power of observation, did not fail to anticipate an insubordination 
 of General Villa, which did not take long before it was revealed 
 
with ostensible marks of the most radical sedition and with the 
 appearance of a new political movement engendered by the re- 
 actionary party. For this reason and with the intention of avoiding 
 this reactionary movement, the First Chief called a meeting of 
 generals ia the City of Mexico, in October 1914, which, among 
 other matters, was entrusted with the mission of bringing back to 
 the brotherly ranks the Northern Division which Villa had caused to 
 revolt, and induce it to continue over the common trail of military 
 operations, to the end that it should in perfect unity, accomplish the 
 work of national regeneration until the country and the Mexican 
 people should be saved. This division had shown great courage and 
 endurance in the performance of their noble work, which had already 
 cost enormous and most painful sacrifices. At the same time, the First 
 Chief, sent his resignation to the convention as the head of the army 
 and depositary of the Executive Power of the Nation, in order to 
 determine from its acceptance or refusal the extent of his moral 
 worth in the estimation of his subordinates. This convention de- 
 clined to accept by an unanimous vote the resignation of Mr. Car- 
 ranza, and emphasized their action by a vigorous demonstration of 
 esteem, adhesion and respect for the First Chief of the Constitu- 
 tionalist Army, Depositary of the Executive Power of Mexico. 
 
 The seditious activities of General Villa had already pervaded the 
 minds and influenced the spirit of the most prominent generals of 
 the assembly of October 4, 1914, inducing them to proceed to 
 Aguscalientes as a deliberative body to resume their functions. In 
 the City of Aguscalientes the convention fell into the armed power 
 of General Villa, who reorganized the same at his will, allowing the 
 civil element which the convention in the Capital of Mexico 
 had segregated from its midst, to participate in its deliberations. 
 He induced Zapata to send a large number of representatives : and 
 that which in its origin was a simple economic, intimate meeting of 
 generals, convened for the purpose of cooperating with the Executive 
 in the management of the existing military government, pending the 
 complete pacification of the country, constituted itself and per se 
 a sovereign convention, with only one directing voice, that of its 
 oppressor, General Villa, who converted it into a megaphone of his 
 repudiation of the First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army and 
 Depositary of the Executive Power of Mexico, against whom he is 
 today hurling the flag of rebellion. 
 
 ViQa carried his boldness to the extent of offering $200,000 to 
 each delegate who would give him his support. 
 
 The so-caUed convention comes to a crisis, when its Chairman and 
 the leaders of the most important divisions of the Constitutionalist 
 
Army retired en masse, and it finally became a caucus of representa- 
 tives of Villa and Zapata only, who elected General Eulalio Gutier- 
 rez, with the title of a twenty days President, to take the place of 
 Mr. Carranza. Mr. Carranza then transferred his government to 
 Cordoba and later on to Vera Cruz, where he established, as Juarez 
 did in another epoch, the legitimate government and the Capital 
 of the Republic. Gutierrez at the same time gave the appointment 
 of Commander in Chief of the army which supported him, that is, 
 of the rebel division, to Villa, the author of the rebellion, and 
 together with him he entered into the city of Mexico, covered by a 
 very transparent veil of legality, but with a very heavy conscience 
 of sedition, at a time when the fatherland and the Mexican people 
 were in painful distress. 
 
 Zapata accompanied them to the historic city and together with 
 Villa, using Gutierrez as a marionette, took the reins of public 
 administration. 
 
 Under a dead surface similar to that of stagnant waters, a fright- 
 ful era began to unfold in the City of Mexico, a regular pande- 
 monium of disorder, homicides, treacherous murders, outrageous 
 impudicities, assassinations provoked by old personal grudges or 
 new hatreds growing out of collusion and complicity in the infer- 
 nal turmoil which was raging in the unfortunate City of Mexico. The 
 President himself, whom Villa had installed, feels that his life is 
 menaced by the wrath of passions of his maker, and horrified by the 
 ferocity of the latter, leaves the city, carrying with him his artificial 
 investiture, a few of his ministers, five thousand soldiers and ten 
 million of dollars belonging to the national treasury. During his 
 flight, Gutierrez denounces the military coercion of the convention, 
 and decreed the dischaige of Villa, Zapata and other generals from 
 their respective commands in the Northern Division, which had 
 denied its obedience to the supreme authority of the Constitu- 
 tionalist Army, whose headquarters were then established in Vera 
 Cruz under the leadership of First Chief Carranza. After making 
 reference to the murders of Aragon and Berlanga, members of the 
 Convention, the former having been sacrificed by Zapata, and the 
 latter by Villa, President Gutierrez said : ' ' During his recent return 
 to the Capital of Mexico, Villa committed new robberies and mur- 
 ders, violated domiciles, severed many lives and confiscated the prop- 
 erty of his victims. ***** h^ came to mj^ house accom- 
 panied by two generals and escorted by two thousand cavalry 
 soldiers, and revolver in hand poured all kinds of insults on me 
 because he had been apprised of my intention to discharge him and 
 
Zapata. To do this and save my government, I have left the City 
 of Mexico, which has been governed by force of arms by Villa and 
 Zapata, spreading terror and desolation everywhere." 
 
 In view of the elimination of Gutierrez, Villa placed Roque Gonza- 
 lez Garza at the head of this terrible state ef affairs, as he was Villa's 
 representative and factotum in the convention of comrades and 
 accomplices; arid this new potentate assumed the responsibility of 
 the doings of Villa and Zapata in the midst of the Mexican society, 
 designating himself Provisional President of the Republic, and as 
 such, he declared that Gutierrez was a fugitive from power. 
 
 At the same time, Gonzalez Garza, abandoned to his own fate by 
 Villa, divests himself of his pretended investiture and denounces 
 Villa's procedure; he declares that Zapata is a brigand; he also 
 states that Villa's forces have suffered terrible defeats in the north ; 
 that his most faithful generals have left him; that the people are 
 against him and that the reign of disorder is supreme. 
 
 At last Villa declares himself President outside the pale of the 
 Convention which he had been using to disguise his ambition and 
 which has opened his way, sacrificing every ethical and humani- 
 tarian principle. 
 
 The spectacle cannot be more discouraging and hideous. Never- 
 theless, nothing better could be expected from a sedition which was 
 consumated at the providencial hour in which an army of citizens 
 carried into effect the most glorious vindication of the rights of the 
 fatherland and was laying down the foundations for a new era of 
 freedom for its fellow-citizens. 
 
 The disloyalty of Villa has had no other reason to be than his own 
 debauchery, his former profession homo trium literarum, and the 
 inborn weakness of his ethics. His treason is the result of his 
 first characteristic, his crimes are in keeping with his early 
 pursuits and his third is responsible for his versatility, which has 
 made him the prey of the eternal curse of the freedom of the Mexi- 
 can people, that is, the reactionary party. Villa is the reincarnation 
 of the recreant we have historically pointed out with the ethical 
 purpose to show that his apostasy should be charged with all the 
 evils which the people have suffered on account of that inexorable 
 party ; and to indicate the fact that his rebellion is not strong because 
 Villa be the author of it and its leader, but because it is the 
 reaction with all of its physical and moral elements which avails 
 itself of his agency to face again the party of freedom, still stronger 
 and more enduring, because liberty being, as it is, the life itself of 
 the peoples, also means progress and civilization which prompts the 
 tireless march of mankind. 
 
The party of freedom and of the government "of the people, by 
 the people and for the people, ' ' has nothing to fear ; at the end of the 
 struggle, to which it is forced by this movement headed by a new 
 Cain, it wiU again be sovereign, because sovereign is the people who 
 proclaims it, and will quietly march to the conquest of its destinies. 
 The history of the country confirms this assertion beyond refutation, 
 because it does not show a single failure of the liberal party under 
 the reactionary, as demonstrated by the many acts of treason we 
 have pointed out, with the wish of fortifying the spirit of those who 
 are suffering the horrors of the present disturbance and to admonish 
 those who have mistaken them for the hardships of the liberating 
 war waging throughout the country, whose hosts militate under the 
 command of Mr. Carranza its initiator and chief. This is a just and 
 sacred war, and the former is but a mutiny fostering licentiousness 
 immolations and devastation, the real and everlasting methods of the 
 reactionary faction of the Republic. 
 
 That there has been such a misunderstanding in the public mind 
 there is no denial, but this is not surprising, because the press in 
 the interior of Mexico has been muzzled and the one abroad has not 
 been able to discern between the liberating movement and the rebel- 
 lion of one of its military elements, which came to light under the 
 pale of the misleading appearances of a convention of ficticious 
 legality ; a rebellion which has resolved itself in a storm of unpre- 
 cedented outrages in the history of Mexico 's misfortunes. Especially 
 the press in the United States has fallen into the above unfortunate 
 error; rather, audacious deceit, which fortunately, for the sake of 
 truth and right has never touched the mind of the Chief Executive 
 of the United States, nor of his Secretary of State or the most promi- 
 nent men of this country 's public administration. All the efforts of 
 Villa have tended to deceive the above great men, but to no avail. 
 The Executive power of the American Union is at the present time 
 in the hands of two men, singular for the purity of their liberalism, 
 their morality and humaneness. 
 
 The falacy of the outbreak by which the desertion of a combatant 
 seemed to suddenly assume the character of a political uprising to 
 supplant a revolution of fundamental principles could not have 
 escaped the vigilance of President Wilson and Secretary Bryan. 
 
 It was imperative to wait and observe the unfolding of such coup 
 de main, to know its instigators, the historical antecedents of them, 
 the causes of the defection; its morality, and the road it would 
 follow to assail the work, already accomplished in its greater part by 
 the revolutionists of Guadalupe, with whom the disloyal leader had 
 fought bravely. Only the most powerful reasons, which the best 
 
 10 
 
leveled mind could not resist, could have induced President Wilson 
 and his Prime Minister to see in the disloyalty of Villa a movement 
 worthy of being considered as that of a belligerent instead of an out- 
 rage against the Constitutionalist Army, from which he had deserted. 
 
 And, as a consequence of study and great circumspection, Presi- 
 dent Wilson has expressed himself with admirable energy and vehem- 
 ence during the political oration he delivered at Indianapolis, on the 
 very opportune occasion in which the centenary of the liberating 
 battle of New Orleans, was being celebrated on January 9 of the 
 present year. The President then said : ' ' There is one thing I have 
 got a great enthusiasm about. I might almost say a reckless en- 
 thusiasm, and that is human liberty. * * * I hold it as a funda- 
 mental principle, that every people has the right to determine its 
 own form of Government : and until this recent revolution in Mexico, 
 until the end of the Diaz reign, 80 per cent of the people of Mexico 
 never had a 'look in' in determining who should be their governor 
 or what their government should be. Now, I am for the 80 per cent. 
 It is none of my business and it is none of your business how long 
 they take in determining it. The country is theirs. The Government 
 is theirs. The liberty, if they can get it, and God-speed them in get- 
 ting it, is theirs. And so far as my influence goes while I am Presi- 
 dent nobody shall interfere with them, * * * That is what I 
 mean by a great emotion, the great emotion of sympathy. Do you 
 suppose that the American people are ever going to count a small 
 amount of material benefit and advantage to people doing business 
 in Mexico against the liberties and the permanent happiness of the 
 Mexican people? Have not European nations taken as long as 
 they wanted and spilt as much blood as they pleased in settling their 
 affairs, and shall we deny that to Mexico because she is weak ? No, 
 I say!" 
 
 And the consequence of that study, I repeat, of that admirable 
 circumspection, has been the above Dantonian declaration, of an 
 immovable attitude of non-interference in the affairs of Mexico, 
 an attitude which has been bitterly assailed by his political oppon- 
 ents, but which the whole world has applauded and sanctioned as 
 the most brilliant example of the respect for the rights of others 
 among nations; which according to the doctrine of Juarez, consti- 
 tutes peace. 
 
 The President's declaration was followed by that of his Secretary 
 of State, on the 23rd of January, 1915, in which he is quoted (Wash- 
 ington Post) as saying: "As long as I am Secretary of State, we 
 will under no circumstance interfere in Mexico. Villa should know 
 this by now." 
 
 11 » 
 
Before Villa 's defection, when the Constitutionalist Army march- 
 ing in unison, from battle to battle, tliroughout the Republic, against 
 the hordes of Huerta, the usurper and murderer, President Wilson 
 said (Saturday Evening Post, May 23, 1913)$ with regard to that 
 revolution : ' ' my ideal with respect to Mexico is that an orderly and 
 just government should be established there ; but all my sympathies 
 were with the eighty-five per cent of the chosen people of that Re- 
 public who are now struggling for their redemption. * * * I challenge 
 any one to cite me a single example in history showing that freedom 
 had ever come from above. Freedom has always been conquered 
 operating from below, in the under-soil, so to speak by the supreme 
 movement of the people, not of the leaders. That movement fer- 
 mented by pretention, injustice and oppression, wanting in the yeast 
 of human rights within their reach, even though it may frequently 
 fail, it succeeds in the end and always brings freedom. 
 
 "It is a curious thing that all those who cry out for the estab- 
 lishment of order in Mexico, should take into consideration, not an 
 order which would be beneficial to the Mexican people, but one which 
 would perpetuate the old regime, in behalf of the aristocrats, of the 
 vested interests, of the intriguers of traditional oligarchy, who are 
 responsible for the past and present disturbances of that country. 
 No one pleads for peace and order in Mexico to help the masses to 
 secure their share of rights and lands; they do want peace to the 
 end that the rich land owners, the feudal lords, the Hidalgos, the 
 natives and foreigners who have selfishly exploited her rich soil, may 
 continue their spoliations in spite of the protests of the people, whose 
 blood and wealth are their spoils. 
 
 "It is believed that the dangers which are menacing the Re- 
 public are the individual and cooperative injuries of those vampires, 
 without distinguishing that it is the aggregate injustices piled upon 
 the majority of the people, who are today struggling to recover by 
 force that which is due to them by right. Order they clamor for, 
 the order of latifundia and oligarchy, the old order ; but I declare 
 that the old order in Mexico is for ever dead. And my attitude, my 
 duty, as I see it is to help to cause those differences and privileges to 
 disappear as far as I may be able to do so, to the end that the new 
 order, based upon freedom and human rights may prevail. * * * 
 The present revolution is essentially, a revolution of the peons to re- 
 cover their lands. To a certain extent, the situation in Mexico is 
 similar to that of France in 1784; there may be many differences, 
 but the basic situation is the same." 
 
 {Retranslated from the Spanish. 
 
 12 
 
The occupant of the White House has seen under the clear light 
 of his erudition, with the exquisite sensibility of his humanitarian 
 devotion and his profound desire to enhance human freedom, what 
 the Mexican revolution is in reality ; which, as he says, is the struggle 
 of the chosen people of Mexico against their oppressors; of the 
 majority of the people who have been despoiled of their welfare 
 against the eternal vampires of their freedom, their property and 
 their blood. 
 
 This revolution started with the independence of the nation and 
 shall not end except with the freedom and happiness of the Mexican 
 people. It has lasted more than one hundred years and its natural 
 enemy, though enfeebled by the progress and victories obtained over 
 it by the liberal party, will still arise from its death bed to fight its 
 last battle. 
 
 Let us see what has been accomplished during that long and 
 
 bloody struggle. 
 
 In 1808, Primo de Verdad laid the corner stone for the edifice of 
 public liberties in Mexico when he said: "The sovereignty of the 
 state devolves upon the Mexican people." In 1810 Hidalgo pro- 
 claimed national independence and the abolition of slavery. In 
 1813, Morelos convened the first national congress, which declared : 
 "The sovereignty of the nation emanates directly from the people;" 
 slavery is hereby abolished ; privileges are also abolished ; domicile 
 and property are inviolable ; torment and aU infamous penalties are 
 abrogated ; and the freedom of labor, commerce and industry. 
 
 In 1821 the independence of Mexico was accomplished. In 1825, 
 Victoria, the First President of Mexico, gave freedom to all slaves. 
 In 1857, the Second Constituent National Congress, enacted the 
 Constitution of the Republic, in which was embodied the bill^ of 
 rights. In 1861, the laws of reform were promulgated, including 
 the nationalization of the property of the church ; the separation of 
 the church and the state. In 1867, the Empire of MaximHian came 
 to an end, and the Republic and its government were reinstated.^ 
 
 This progress is little less than wonderful in that it has out-dis- 
 tanced many of the most cultured nations, in the abolition of slavery, 
 the separation of the church and State and the constitutional guar- 
 antees of personal rights; but its accomplishment has required a 
 long series ©f internal struggles, among which there have been four 
 international wars ; and at no time have the liberal and the reaction- 
 ary parties failed to be face to face with each other ; the former, de- 
 fending the principles of human liberty, and the latter, those of retro- 
 gradation, oppression, the slavery of the people by the clergy, the 
 aristocracy, the privileges and the privileged. And those who have 
 
 13 
 
classified the Mexican people, on account of its constant state of war, 
 as an anarchical people, incapable of self government, incur in a pro- 
 found error and sin on the side of levity for their ignorance of 
 history. But light is made ; the highlj'- authorized voice of President 
 Wilson is raised; his Christian gentleness is inspiring and his 
 adjuration convincing to his fellow countrymen who for the first 
 time perhaps, listen and learn from the lips of their First Magistrate 
 the apostolic lesson of respect, consideration and sympathy for the 
 cause of Mexico's liberty, which embraces all the noblest aspira- 
 tions of humanity in its open struggle to live, and to be happy. 
 
 President Wilson has recognized as a profound moralist ; as a 
 christian philosopher and thinker; as a humanitarian statesman, 
 all the worth of Mexican strife in its civic significance, its sublime 
 abnegation, and he believes, with sound reason, in its final victory. 
 
 In this marvelous attitude of the one Statesman ' ' who, more than 
 all others combined," now holds it within the possibilities of his 
 power, in Washingtons simple words, to "make a nation happy," 
 and who may become the arbiter of the destinies of a world, not only 
 Mexico should trust but all the society of nations, to attain the free 
 operations, of their political and social order. 
 
 Unconsciously, it would seem, says a writer (North American 
 Review, January 1st, 1915) "Mr. Wilson drew the inspiration for his 
 Mexican policy from Mr. Madison, but happily thus far without pro- 
 ducing the original direful consequences of ' a war of arms brought 
 on by a programme of peace.' " 
 
 The same writer makes some admirable remarks about the anti- 
 slave war of the United States and the present European conflict, 
 which I can not leave out of these lines, because, due to an irrisistible 
 concomitance, it fortifies the thesis and the liberating program of the 
 present Mexican revolution. Sixty years ago, says the above men- 
 tioned writer, "Buckle heralded the 'decline of war' as a conse- 
 quence of the advance of science in the realms of knowledge and 
 understanding ; and six years later a million men of the North were 
 grappling at the throats of their brethren of the South. * * * 
 The South was right in law but wrong in morals, wrong in resistance 
 of freedom of mankind, and the South was beaten justly and right- 
 fully as the South now recognizes. No lesson of history, no deduction 
 from principles of human nature had been clearer than the fatality 
 of slavery upon public morals, upon politics, upon industry, upon 
 development and progress; and yet it took four years of the most 
 devastating warfare ever known and the desolation of half a con- 
 tinent to make convincing what all the wisest men in the world had 
 been saying for a century. That it could have been done in no other 
 
 14 
 
way is generally admitted now — ^but it was not conceded then. The 
 terrible war was waged under pretexts of human making, but for a 
 purpose now realized to have been devine. 
 
 ' ' May it not be so with this greatest of wars ? Our struggle liber- 
 ated the blacks of America, may not this be designed to free the 
 whites of Europe ? 
 
 ''The outcome God alone knows * * * and we care not for what 
 are called the causes of strife if the purpose, the devine purpose, 
 shall prove in the end to have been the extinguishment of slavery 
 from the face of the earth, the freeing of mankind the making in 
 Europe of a democracy, however limping and stumbling, so it have 
 at least the privilege in common with our own to grope and seek, 
 as a child in the dark, for the light of a better day. * * * 
 
 ' ' A hundred years hence we may look back to this convulsion as the 
 final storm before the clearing, precisely as now we revert to the 
 Waterloo of our birthyear and the last stand before Appomattox just 
 fifty years ago. For the present, having in mind, the extraordinary 
 delicacy of so crucial a situation and the possibly determining in- 
 fluence which may be wielded by this most powerful of neutral 
 Powers, we should fail in our obligation if we did not urge with 
 utmost earnestness the heeding of our President's solemn adjuration, 
 to be patient, supremely patient, even as he has been and is and, we 
 doubt not, will continue to be, in the face of aU complexities and 
 temptations. 
 
 ' ' The quarrels of nations, like those of individuals, grow out of their 
 ill-regulated passions ; and these can be checked and restrained, not 
 by considerations addressed to the intellect, or even, as so urgently, 
 so unwisely, so almost unpatriotically demanded by Mr. Roosevelt, 
 to questionable regulations, but, if at all, by the teachings of mor- 
 ality and religion exemplified by Mr. Wilson. Never was a war more 
 obviously and ruinously destructive of all public and private in- 
 terests than that into which the great States of Europe have blindly 
 plunged ; but to oppose their madness inopportunely upon grounds 
 drawn from political economy or international law would be like 
 preaching to a tornado. The tempest must blow itself out. Only 
 when the wind has lulled can the voice of reason or the whispers of 
 conscience be heard. 
 
 "And God is in His world, only abiding his time." 
 The above most beautiful and edifying thoughts portray faith- 
 fully President Wilson as the ablest ruler for the good of the people 
 of all those who have preceded him in the administration of this 
 great country. In him, Christian morality applied to the science 
 
 15 
 
of government, is the most powerful element of cohesion of all civic 
 virtues which spread from his brilliant intellect to vivify all princi- 
 ples of human liberty ; a noble passion which awakes his enthusiasm 
 without making of him a fanatic, but on the contrary, opening ample 
 fields for study, discussion and the determination of everything 
 which can be utilized for the enhancement of society in its constant 
 pursuit of that liberty which shall always redound in human happi- 
 ness. His incessant work in the forum, in the cathedra, in his books, 
 has for its only task to enlighten the burden of the working man, of 
 the popular masses, in their daily struggle for life ; and to this end, 
 there is an admirable work in his gigantic little book, "The New 
 Freedom." With a captivating simplicity, with a fraternizing 
 frankness, with a clear and didactic style, he discusses and expounds 
 in that powerful book the most arduous governmental problems, 
 more far-reaching, and of a more urgent solution, because of the 
 obvious necessity to protect the governed against oppression, 
 tyranny, exploitation and slavery exercised by the magnates of the 
 money markets, of industry and commerce, and because of the 
 influence that the latter bring to bear on legislative enactments 
 through collusion with legislators and other elements of the national 
 government; with his "thought always attentive to the fact that 
 human liberty consists in the perfect adjustment of human interests, 
 human activities and human energies. ' ' 
 
 "I believe in human liberty as I believe in the wine of life. In 
 a land of free men there is no room for guardians. ' ' 
 
 What a glorious conception, what a glorious positive philosophy in 
 a ruler who has a conviction of his creed and the courage to stand 
 by it and to battle for its application and development ; because civic 
 valor is one of the many virtues of this great citizen, the educator of 
 a generation in the school and the educator of many generations to 
 come as a Magistrate, 
 
 The Mabvin S. Yodng Company, 
 Printers Washington, D. C 
 
 16 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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