CARRANZA

HE conference of the LatinAmerican Powers and the United States have recognized Carranza as the head of the Provisional Government of Mexico. The United States has put an embargo on arms against all other factions. We have committed ourselves, then, to Carranza's success.

His first task is to defeat and disperse all other armed forces in the Republic. In this task he has two advantages that he has not hitherto had: the recognition of foreign countries, besides giving him an advantage in arms, is likely also to give him an advantage in men and officers, for the rank and file of Mexican soldiers are chiefly actuated by gain, and there is little profit to be made unless one is on the winning side.

But these very men who are the First Chief's greatest help in the field are likely to be his greatest hindrance in government. They want office (as has been the custom of the country) for the opportunity office gives to get rich. And their hold upon the army makes them doubly difficult to dispense with.

In his career so far Carranza has shown two qualities which may help him in his great task of pacification and reconstruction-honesty and stubbornness. Unlike many of his followers he is not in the revolution for what can be got out of it, though his vanity sometimes makes him seem purely a self-seeker. He has stubbornly maintained his authority as First Chief of the Constitutionalist Party both against the other Mexican factions and in his dealings with the United States.

But beyond stubbornness and honesty of purpose he has shown few qualities to inspire confidence in his ability to rejuvenate Mexico. He has not himself shown either great military or administrative power. Nor has he gathered about him at particularly able group of men.

Yet Carranza is the only leader of any of the surviving factions who has character and education enough to make an attempt to form a government. His stubborn refusal to allow a leader to be chosen who did not represent any of the fighting fac

tions at last won him the opportunity he has been striving for.

If he succeeds with the help of foreign recognition, Mexico will resume its progress with the great advantage of having worked out its salvation without outside intervention. The United States will also have the great advantage of not having intervened. and, therefore, of not having reawakened the fears of our neighbors who have sometimes suspected us of wanting to use their misfortunes as a pretext to acquire territory. And any fair-minded foreigner should give us much credit, for we have had an elastic patience, and we have suffered much.

Despite our losses there is in this country an ardent hope that Carranza will succeed, and there is every disposition to help him. If he could accept the disinterestedness of the United States as it is, he could not only count on the help of formal recognition but also on the disinterested help of private agencies in relief work, in education, and in medicine. He could turn toward Mexico such agencies as have done incalculable good in Egypt, Turkey, China, Belgium, Servia, and in many other countries of the world.

II

General Carranza's plan of reconstruction, as outlined in an interview in the New York Sun, is more concrete, practical, and moderate than any previous programme that has appeared from that country. It deals straightforwardly with immediate questions without the usual indulgence in grandiloquent generalities.

The most important item in his programme is his agrarian policy. He intends to sell the land now in the Government's hands, or that shall come into its hands, in small lots to the peons, presumably at nominal prices. The Government will unquestionably acquire much land, because the plan is to take over the great estates unless they pay the back taxes which the Constitutionalists believe the estates have evaded.

"We wish foreign capital," the First Chief is quoted as saying, "but we will give not one special privilege, not one."

If that rule is adhered to, it will not only

save Mexico a vast amount of trouble but the United States as well, for one of the most dangerous elements in the Mexican situation has been the special privileges of various large foreign corporations.

The Sun's interviewer suggested that there was a feeling that the First Chief resorted to capital punishment too freely

"Ah," he said vehemently, "political crimes, you say. The military chief who burns towns is not committing a political crime. The traitors who murdered Madero in cold blood were not guilty of political crimes. The men who blow up trains and slay, not soldiers, but civilians, women and children, they commit no political crimes. Those men are murderers, their crime, plain murder. Their blood deeds are notorious and I placed them beyond the pale of the law. If captured, every one is subject to execution."

"Does that include Villa and his chiefs?"

"It includes no one especially, but all who are responsible for the men who served fairly as soldiers, even as officers, and were not responsible for these heinous crimes, there is amnesty, and many have already come in."

These views constitute at least a concrete and definite policy. They are consistent with the ideals which started the revolution against Diaz.

In his effort to put such a programme into execution fairly Carranza will have the best wishes of the United States governmentally and otherwise; and if he wants. it he can unquestionably count upon American coöperation.

President Wilson voiced the feeling of the United States when, in his Manhattan Club speech, he said:

Our ambition .. all the world has knowledge of. It is not only to be free and prosperous ourselves, but also to be the friend and thoughtful partisan of those who are free or who desire freedom the world over. If we have had aggressive purposes and covetous ambitions, they were the fruit of our thoughtless youth as a nation and we have put them aside. We shall, I confidently believe, never again take another foot of territory by conquest. We shall never in any circumstances seek to make an independent people subject to our dominion; because we believe, we passionately believe, in the right of every people to choose their own allegiance and be free of masters altogether.

T

AFTER THE WAR?

HE end of war and a means to bring about permanent peace! It is perhaps the question which most touches the minds of those people who look forward hopefully to the progress of civilization.

In the United States and in England there is a well organized movement to promote an agreement between all the great nations to apply their economic, military, and naval pressure against any Such an agreecountry that begins a war.

ment implies a kind of world congress—a congress which would have no military forces of its own but which would call upon the forces of its constituent members.

This is certainly the most practical suggestion that has yet come forth from the well-nigh universal desire for an added safeguard against war. But this agency, even if it is established, will not end wars. There is no way in which to insure that the member nations will live up to their obligations to the league. A nation that can defy as many neighbors as successfully as Germany has (or as an efficient Russia could) might be able to defy the league equally successfully. A spread of democracy might reduce the chances of one nation setting out to conquer the world, but the spread of democracy is slow.

Moreover, a league that has no military forces of its own but which relies on the forces of its members will not be efficient in war.

in war. The Continental Congress was just such a league of states, and it was superseded by our present Government chiefly because of its inefficiency, which grew out of its inability to force the different states to fulfil their obligations.

Yet the Continental Congress, with all its deficiencies, was better than the chaos which preceded it, and it led to better things after its demise. Similarly, a league to enforce peace would bring into a war against the aggressor many states that under present conditions remain neutral and would, therefore, make the risk of beginning a war even greater than it is now.

Such a league would affect the United States in some ways more than any other

nation. So far in our history we have assumed tremendous responsibilities in the Western Hemisphere and taken as little as possible elsewhere. If we live up to the responsibilities we have assumed, we shall be amply fulfilling our duties in the world. Yet if we do this and nothing more we cannot have a full membership in a league to enforce peace, for our tradition is against meddling in European matters for any reason. Moreover, if there were a league to enforce peace, with the whole world as its province, it could hardly accord us the peculiar rights in the Western Hemisphere which the Monroe Doctrine asserts. If this plan for an international congress should mature the United States would be faced with one of the great decisions of its history. It is time that all Americans took a keener interest in our foreign relations, for it is not safe for a country with as little public interest as we have had in the past to ask a Government to formulate a foreign policy—particularly in times like these. Our examination in foreign relations is already under way.

THE DIRTY LINEN OF DEM

OCRACIES

HE dirty linen of democracies is always washed in public and in times of stress particularly it is hung out in full view and attention is assiduously called to it.

In England one cabinet crisis follows another. The bungling of the attack on the Dardanelles is hawked abroad. Kitchener's ability is belittled by one party and exalted by another. The early failure to provide high explosives is known to every one. The failure of the Allied diplomacy in the Balkans is heralded over the world by the British press. On every street corner and in every club in London the war is fought over by unsparing critics. In France, too, cabinet crises appear periodically. There, too, every move by those in authority is criticised with brutal frankness. It is the way with democracies. It was particularly true of us in the Civil War.

It is just the opposite in autocracies. There is no such criticism in Germany. If a British army had started into Ger

many as the Germans started into France and the public had believed, as the German public believed, that in a few weeks the enemy's army would be destroyed and his capital captured, and these things had not come to pass, there would have been a burst of criticism that would not have been stopped even by the splendor of what was achieved.

If the French had such a fleet as the Germans have, bottled up in their harbors, with their commerce killed and their submarine attack frustrated, there would be a cabinet crisis and the Minister of Marine would probably resign.

This might not do the navy any good but would keep up the spirits of the people, for with each change they look forward to the future with renewed hope. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong. When they are wrong they try again. It is not, perhaps, a model system for getting things done, but people are very wrong who believe that the blatant display of the dirty linen of democracies spells discouragement. Democracies are very hard to discourage, for they have an infinite number of remedies.

Autocracies, on the other hand, which tell their subjects what they shall think as well as what they shall do, can count upon such a marvelous unanimity as the Germans have so far shown as long as all goes well. But if events shake the people's faith and they cannot think what they are told to think, they are left at sea with no recourse to turn to.

Yet despite constant and heavy losses, the ruin of her trade, and high prices for food, the German Government can still show successes to hold the public confidence. The German papers may ask why the Allies do not ask for peace after so many German victories, and Maximilian Harden may complain of British stubbornness in not acknowledging defeat, but this is not immediately significant in the face of the record of the German armies. Everywhere but at sea Germany has been successful. Belgium, Poland, Servia-the German armies have conquered three kingdoms and taken a part of France. They convinced Bulgaria of their ultimate triumph, opened a way to Constantinople, and so