THE ISSUES IN MEXICO.
ANEW factor has appeared in the Mexican affair, which may either ease President Wilson's difficulties or appreciably add to them. We vlo not pretend to be optimistic. On Sunday last Argentina, Brazil, and Chile offered to mediate between the United States and Mexico, and Mr. Wilson gratefully accepted the offer. On Monday General Huerta informed the United States that he also accepted the offer. There is nothing surprising in this. Neither the United States nor General Huerta could well have done otherwise. Mr. Wilson would have placed him- self in a vulnerable relation to the Republics of South America if he had snubbed them ; and he is glad, moreover, to catch at any straw. As for General Huerta, be had a variety of reasons for agreeing to the proposal, and could not easily have found one for refusing it. He must feel, for example, that every diplomatic movement to which be is made . a party is another step towards the practical recognition of his authority. Again, such sympathy from the outside as he enjoys depends upon the correctness of his conduct ; and as he knows this very well, he is not likely to spoil the contrast, so favourable to himself so far, between his own reasonableness and the barbarous behaviour of the Constitutional leaders with whom Mr. Wilson has tried to form an unhappy alliance. Again, he is no doubt glad to have time to improve his defences. Yet again, he is diplomatically wise to associate himself with the South American Re- publics, who notoriously share the suspicion and dislike with which he regards the latest developments of the Monroe Doctrine.
The number of reasons which General Huerta could name for consenting in principle to the idea of mediation is a measure of the difficulties which mediation may unfold for Mr. Wilson. To begin with, if any kind of formal agreement between General Huerta and the 'United States were effected at the instance of what is conveniently called the A.B.C. group, Mr. Wilson would have substantially abandoned his policy, the whole point of which, so far as we have been able to understand it, is that " Huerta must go." But if Mr. Wilson insists on the " elimination " of General Huerta as a condition of mediation, it can hardly be expected that General Huerta will proceed with the business. No one abolishes himself—unless, of course, be commits suicide, which, even in a political sense, General Huerta does not apparently in the least wish to do. In fine, the only obvious line of success in these proposed negotiations is a line which Mr. Wilson has absolutely barred. And then behind the immediate services of the A.B.C. group lies all the uneasy feeling, which we have already mentioned, of the South American Republics about the Monroe Doctrine. Of course they want to get rid of the nightmare that the United States has the desire or the ability to establish an hegemony of South America. Here is surely an opportunity for testing the meaning or the resolution, as the case may be, of the United States. The South American Republics want safety and prestige. They may get some sort of guarantee of immunity from interference if they angle for it cleverly during the negotiations. In any case, they will lose nothing in prestige by having put their good offices at the disposal of the United States, and they will gain a great deal if they should happily acquire the credit of having pulled the United States out of a mess. With such an achieve- ment to their credit they might go on to offer their services to remove the grievances of Colombia against the United States. It would be diffioult for Mr. Wilson to rely upon uone of his well-known principles as an excuse for sing such a further offer. Some arrangement, very inconvenient, or even damaging, to the United States might be projected, and Mr. Wilson would be able to repudiate it only at the cost of embroiling his relations with the Latin Republics. For let us be quite sure of this, that ulti- mately, and very naturally, what the Southern Republics desire is not to glorify the United States, but to add to their own importance, security, and prosperity. An attempt to create a kind of Concert of the Western World, in which theoretically States of like authority would consult together to promote the interests and ensure the safety of North and South America as against the rest of the world, would be an extremely embarrassing scheme for. Mr. Wilson. He is conscious now of a moral right to superintend
the Republics but if the Republics came in as his helpers and counsellors that moral right would be disputed at every meeting. He would find that he was dealing with people who pretended to an equality with the United States, and by no means deferred to her as a dangerous and uncertain quantity existing in severe isolation from themselves. Such are some of the possibilities that are implied in. the South American offer of mediation. It is useless to do more now than indicate them, because as we write it is not known what the terms of mediation are. The representatives of the A.B.C. States must, of course, express the feeling of the people behind them, and, if we may judge from demonstrations in Uruguay, the feeling in South America is hotly in favour of Mexico, as the victim of the United States.
The new phase of the Mexican crisis has done nothing to change the essential fact that the ostensible dispute between Mr. Wilson and General Huerta as to the form a salute shall take really covers a vastly wider dispute. There is a conflict of will between the two countries. Mr. Wilson wants to dictate to Mexico, and Mexico refuses dictation. We wish that we could see any sign that Mr. Wilson recognizes the cul-de-sac character of his policy. He harps on the removal of General Huerta, whom he isolates from the rest of the Mexican people. But if he should succeed in manoeuvring General Huerta out of his office, what then ? Mr. Wilson has persisted in his courtship of the Constitutionalists, and it is hoped that if the war should continue they will remain neutral. But the downfall of General Huerta would make way for the rise of either General Carmnza or General Villa—probably the latter, as he is evidently the stronger personality. What an appalling prospect! After the shedding of much blood and thespread of ruin through all the richest parts of Mexico, the affairs of the country would be in the hands of a proved murderer, looter, and torturer ! Look at the matter 'now we may, we cannot help hoping that Mr. Wilson will definitely renounce the pursuit of phantoms, and grasp the fact that he must either eat all his words and let Mexico govern herself in her own way, or else conduct the war systematically with a view to the occupation of the whole country. Day after day the logic of circumstances forces Mr. Wilson to some new surrender of his original intentions Vera Cruz, although occupied by marines, was to be left in the charge of a Mexican municipality. But that has proved impossible; an American Governor has been appointed, the American flag has been hoisted, and troops have been added to the marines, so that there are now some ten thousand men in possession of the port. The reports of the killing of Americans in Mexico City and the destruction of American property have happily turned out to be untrue. Undoubtedly many Americans were left in the interior in positions of peril and in much anxiety. A feature of the work has been the help rendered to those persons by British diplomatists and by expeditionary parties of unarmed British sailors. English- men and Americans may air their jealousies freely when no great harm is done by the pastime, but when trouble is in the wind they always stand by one another. Their instincts will even cause them to ignore when necessary all technicalities which hamper their community of purpose and interest. The American naval officer who, when his country was at peace with China, lent the aid of his boats in order to assist hard-pressed Englishmen, remarking that blood was thicker than water, is the type of our kinship. Every Englishman wants to see the United States safely and honourably delivered from this Mexican tangle. What we say in criticism is criticism of method, not of aim. If Mr. Wilson would make up his mind to conquer and administer Mexico, for a time at all events, we should rejoice in his undertaking, for the simple reason that we prefer civilization to barbarism, and believe that the United States is competent for the task.
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