TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES. THE correspondents at Washington all tell us that the situation in Mexico is regarded with great anxiety by the Administration and, indeed, by all responsible persons in the capital. We are not surprised. The nearer the prospect of intervention, the less it will be liked by those who understand the nature of the problem. When the trouble first became acute the American newspapers talked light-heartedly about intervention and the possibility of the United States troops having to cross the frontier to restore order and protect life and property in the Republic to the South. The President and the Cabinet must be held to some extent to have shared in this light-heartedness, considering the manner in which they mobilised the whole available military force of the Union and sent a large fleet into Mexican waters. With the Regular Army of the United States, except those portions which are abroad in the Philippines, in Hawaii, and in Cuba, and those which are imperatively required for garrison duties throughout the vast area of the States, placed on the Mexican frontier, the politicians are, however, beginning to realise the tremen- dous consequences involved in anything in the shape of armed intervention. Mr. Taft is evidently fully aware of the precipice upon the edge of which he stands, for he has given the strictest orders that officers are not to be allowed to cross the frontier under any pretext. If such a step is taken it will be with a full understanding of the dangers ahead, and only after it has been sanctioned by Congress.
We have little doubt that the able and experienced soldiers who advise the President and his Cabinet have made them understand that it would be abso- lutely impossible to accomplish anything in the way of a military occupation of Mexico, pending the restoration of order, with the military force now at the disposal of the United States and stationed on the frontier. So vast is the area of Mexico and so difficult are its roadless mountains and tablelands that 25,000 men, if there are 25,000 men in Texas, would be absolutely lost in it. It is clear, to begin with, that no such numbers would be avail- able for the work of entering Mexico to restore order. If troops are wanted to guard the frontier as it is, they would be wanted still more if the United States troops were to cross the border and were to meet with that resistance with which it is perfectly certain they would meet. Remember that foreigners who come to interfere with Mexican independence would, as the French found, prove by no means popular either with the existing Govern- ment or with the rebels. Whether the Americans intervened to help the existing Government, or, again, to assist the rebels, they would very soon encounter a combination of both forces. The Mexicans would lay aside their internal differences in order to claim that first right of South American Republics—the right to manage their own insurrections in their own way. Inter- vention would set the whole of Mexico in a blaze. This fact means the guarding of the American frontier as the first act in any scheme of military action. If not, the Mexicans would very soon recognise their opportunity, and engage in raids into the United States along the line which stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific. But that frontier is some fifteen hundred miles long. If the United States troops were only to guard the points where the railways enter Mexico, and the chief roads and river passages, we may feel pretty sure that not more than ten thousand troops would be available for an expeditionary force. But such a force would be used up before it had advanced a couple of hundred miles into the country, owing to the necessity of keeping open its lines of communication, and of forming a strong base at the point of departure. The resistance would not be by an organised force which could be met, and possibly destroyed, in a pitched battle, but by mounted guerillas scattered over a wide area.
No doubt we shall be told that if the United States deter- mined upon armed intervention to restore order they would not be so foolish as to use the troops now on the frontier, or to attempt to penetrate into the country from Douglas. What they would do would be to assemble an expeditionary force at Galveston or some other suitable port, and transport their troops, as they did in the war of 1847, to -Vera Cruz. Moving thence they would take possession of the capital and hold it till a government competent to keep order throughout the Republic had been established. Clearly this would ;Jae the only sound plan in the circumstances, and clearly also the existence of the railway would now make things easier for an expeditionary force than they were in the days of the old Mexican war or of the French occupa- tion. But though the initial difficulties might be less, we auestion whether, in the end, the spread of railways and other means of communication in Mexico would improve matters for the invader. The railways could be used to bring up the forces resisting American intervention as easily as they could be used to facilitate that intervention. In any case, and even if getting into Mexico proved easy, the problem of getting out of it would remain one of extraordinary difficulty. The trouble about getting out of a country which has once been subjected to military occupation is due, of course, to the fact that the occupying army is obliged by the necessity of the case to make as many friends as it can in order to secure its position. But the friends thus made are regarded as traitors by those who resist the occupation. Therefore, pledges of non- desertion have to be given to their friends by the foreign force. It is the existence of those pledges that renders evacuation so troublesome a process.
We have sketched very briefly some of the difficulties with which the policy of intervention to restore order is surrounded. We do not, however, mean to say that these difficulties are insurmountable for a country so populous and so wealthy as the United States. America, will be able to overcome them just as we ultimately overcame our difficulties in South Africa. A comparison on this point may however be useful. The Transvaal, the Free State, and the disaffected part of Cape Colony may be said to occupy an area about half that of Mexico, and to present a geo- graphical configuration not altogether dissimilar. On the other hand, the population of Mexico is something like fifteen millions, while the hostile population in South Africa was considerably under a million. Again, we started with very much larger military resources than those commanded by the United States and had a very considerable part of the local population very strongly on our side. Indeed, our immediate available resources may be roughly estimated as ten times as great as those of the United States. Yet it took us over two years to complete the military task, and towards the end of the war we had nearly 400,000 men under arms. If these numbers were necessary to cope with a population of under a million, occupying an area only half as big as Mexico, how many men would be required by the United States to deal with a population of fourteen millions? The. Mexican population, remember, fights like the Boers, on hardy horses capable of making very long marches and of picking up a living where the ordinary cavalry horse can see nothing but sand and stone.
No American readers of the Spectator will, we feel sure, imagine that we have set forth the possibility of these un- pleasant results of intervention from any unfriendly feeling towards the United States.. On the contrary, it is because of the warmth and depth of our feeling towards the other half of the English-speaking race that we have thought it right to face and state the facts. We do not want to see America involved in big troubles, even though we may be quite sure that, in the end, America will be able to pull herself out of them. All we want to do is to make the American people understand that it is impossible to maintain the Monroe doctrine and all the gigantic possibilities involved, both as regards the maintenance of law and order in the South American Republics and also as regards saying " Hands off ! " to Europe, without adequate naval and military preparation. A very powerful Navy may be able to do the work of saying " Hands off !" to Europe, but the duty of seeing that law and order are maintained in the South American Republics must very largely depend upon an adequate military force. We say without hesitation that America at present does not possess that force. If she is wise she will either make pro- vision for it, or else determine to abandon the Monroe doc- trine. To will the end without willing the means is nothing short of madness. For ourselves,'we say plainly that we trust the Americans will not abandon the Monroe doctrine. To maintain it to the full would certainly be our advice were we American citizens-. As outsiders, however, who are sincere well-wishers of the Union, we can only point out the imminent danger of insisting on the Monroe doctrine without having the means to make that doctrine good.
Previous page
