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is laid upon us perhaps more than upon any other nation in the world. We set this nation up, at any rate we professed to set it up, to vindicate the rights of men. We did not name any differences between one race and another. We did not set up any barriers against any particular people. We opened our gates to all the world and said: 'Let all men who wish to be free come to us and they will be welcome.' We said: "This independence of ours is not a selfish thing for our own exclusive private use. It is for everybody for whom we can find the means of extending it.'

"We cannot with that oath taken in our youth, we cannot with that great ideal set before us when we were a young people and numbered only a scant 3,000,000, take upon ourselves, now that we are 100,000,000 strong, any other conception of duty than we then entertained.

"If American enterprise in foreign countries, particularly in those foreign countries which are not strong enough to resist us, takes the shape of imposing upon and exploiting the mass of the people of that country, it ought to be checked and not encouraged. I am willing to get anything for an American that money and enterprise can obtain except the suppression of the rights of

other men. I will not help any man buy a power which he ought not to exercise over his fellowbeings.'

Thus, after sixteen months, President Wilson's foreign policy as pertaining to Central and South America was clearly before the people, and briefly stated it is as follows:

1. To treat the Latin-American States as friends and as equals.

2. To respect and encourage constitutional government in the Americas.

3. To acquire no new territory by conquest.

4. To give no aid to American business operating in foreign countries in a way that would be illegal at home.

5. To give no aid or encouragement to revolutionists who seek to seize the reins of government for their own advantage.

President Wilson adhered to this policy until the European war broke on the world, and then events shaped themselves so rapidly that a New Pan-Americanism with its roots in these policies grew rapidly. An understanding of those policies is necessary to a sympathetic attitude toward the President's Mexican policy which is an outgrowth of this larger Pan-American policy.

CHAPTER X

THE NEW AMERICAN POLICY APPLIED TO

MEXICO

The revolution in Mexico gave the most unfavorable opportunity for the application of an idealistic policy, since belligerents do not exalt the Golden Rule above the sword. However, there is a certain kinship and bond of sympathy among all the Latin-American states, and the new Pan-American policy was to include Mexico as well as the others. Therefore, its application under such unusual circumstance makes an interesting chapter in American history.

Mexico, a mediaeval nation ruled by an absolute monarch, called President, after the custom of the Western Hemisphere, existed side by side with the United States, a modern nation that had prospered under constitutional government. Such were the conditions in 1910 when President Diaz felt his power crumbling away over smouldering fires due to uncivilized outrages committed against liberty in the name of liberty.

The people of Mexico had suffered most from two great evils. First, a few landholders owned in vast estates, the greater part of the land of Mexico, and held a large part of the population in a state little better than

that of slavery. A kind of feudalism existed in which state the non-landowning class was little superior to the serfs and villains of the Middle Ages. Second, the national resources of the country were exploited by foreigners, who had bought privileges and monopolies of one kind and another from the President and who expected their native country to protect them in the enjoyment of their purchased rights.

In 1910 Francisco Madero, leader of a great reform movement to restore representative government and free the masses from a state of slavery, became a candidate for the Presidency against Porfirio Diaz. To become a vigorous candidate against the Absolute was considered in itself an act of treason, and Madero was thrown into jail. However, the secret longings of the people for a change (they did not know what liberty was), for relief from conditions that would have been intolerable in a free country, gave the reform movement an enthusiasm which very naturally broke into an insurrection and later into a revolution. Madero in the meantime was liberated. By May, 1911, the storm had become so threatening that President Diaz abdicated and fled to Europe. Madero was the man of the hour, and in October following he was elected President with little opposition.

But the calamities and the unremedied wrongs of one long rule could not be remedied by the abdication of one man. A revolution had begun that was to shiver the

nation from the Presidency to the lot of the stolid peon in remote and forgotten districts. Moreover, Madero was not a wise president, and the military chiefs, resembling the feudal barons of the Middle Ages, began a reign of terror that was to break up the nation into groups of bandits, each of which was struggling for supreme power, while the masses were robbed and starved, outraged and even massacred, in the name of liberty.

Madero's administration was short. In October, 1912, Feliz Diaz, nephew of the ex-President, organized a revolution, was captured and thrown into prison. Later he escaped and appeared at the capital with a large army. In February, 1913, General Victoriano Huerta, Commander in Chief of the Madero forces, deserted his leader, led his army into the capital, forced Madero to resign, threw him into prison, and a few days later permitted him, with a few of his loyal supporters, to be assassinated. Then Huerta was proclaimed President by his army, and the first hope of a constitutional government for Mexico was destroyed. Such were the conditions prevailing in Mexico on March 4, 1913, when Woodrow Wilson became President of the United States.

The revolution had been in progress more than two years when President Wilson was inaugurated. Like his predecessor in office, however, he was determined to keep hands off if possible and let the contending forces fight it out alone. Therefore, his first act was one looking to neutrality. Two days after his first pronouncement he

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