AMERICA AND MEXICO.
[To Inn EDITOR OF THE "SPZCTATOR."3 SIR,—Your interesting and timely article on the Mexican Imbroglio should be widely studied. It is difficult to see how the United States can indefinitely postpone the virtual annexation of Mexico. They will be, nay they are being, driven into it by the inexorable force of circumstances, just as we were driven by the elemental instinct of self-preservation to make the independent Dutch States of South Africa an integral portion of the British Empire. Perhaps the most compelling reason for -United States control of Mexico is the
necessity which exists for the military security of the Panama Canal. How can the United States possibly tolerate the existence, between their own territory and the canal, of a strong independent republic capable of making alliances with foreign nations or of leasing to them portions of its seaboard on either ocean ? Such a power would be a perpetual menace, and it must either be broken up or incorporated bodily into the United States. It is equally uncertain whether the lesser Republics of Central America will long be able to survive the opening of the great waterway upon which their northern neighbour has lavished such untold energy and treasure. United States occupation as far southward as the Panama Canal may be regarded as inevitable. A political question of considerable interest would at once supervene. New States would mean new representatives in Congress, and the Northern Republic would be faced with a possible electoral predomin- ance of the darker races. Even if the tropical regions were treated as Cuba there would, as you say, be no way of ultimately avoiding the incorporation of Northern Mexico as an integral portion of the United States, and a consequent shifting of the political centre of gravity. What, we may ask, can the United States do to counteract that increase of the southern vote which seems so imminent and unavoidable ?— Finsbury Circus, E.C.
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