July 3.
Tue analogy between Mexico and China, with special reference to President Wilson's refusal to recognize the Huerta regime as the only means of compelling the governing classes of Mexico into some respect for law and order, has been referred to once or twice in these columns. But the whole story is so important, so instinct with good counsel for the Powers in their dealings with this country, that it deserves repetition in detail. Nowhere is it better told than in that absorbing bool "The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page," American Ambassador in London during the year before and those of the Great War: and there assuredly it ought to be read in extense, together with all the other excellent things the book contains. But for those who may not be able to get the Letters and for the special lesson they contain for the present crisis, here are some telling quotations.
"The last days of February, 1913,'' we read ''witnessed one of those sanguinary scenes in Mexico which for generations had accompanied changes in the government of that distracted country."' Madero was violently overthrown and Huerta reigned in his stead. There was nothing new in this sort of thing, but Washington and especially President Wilson were weary of The two facts that outstood all others were that Mexico, in her existing condition of popular ignorance, could not govern herself, and that the twentieth century could not accept indefinitely a contrition of disorder and bloodshed that had apparently satisfied the nineteenth.
Steps were taken to sound the British Government and the answer came back that Great Britain. would not recognize Huerta. Washington' immediately informed London that it was taking the same attitude and its dismay may be imagined on learning three weeks ater that the British Foreign Office was, nevertheless, about to recognize the Huerta regime. Not only this but the Minister sent to Mexico was Sir Lionel
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.