With this system officially and legally tolerated, and a public absorbing with avidity the extravagant statements made, it cannot be expected that men of code and of the better element will subject themselves to the yellow rays, which become the penalty of association with politics. Consequently, the admitted popular opinion that most politicians enter politics for no other reason than for the betterment of their material condition of life, may be assumed to be nearly correct.

Unfortunately, in "America" patriotism has become subordinate in ratio to profit or patronage according to the skin thickness of the individual politician, who can always create noisy appreciation from the electorate by the voicing of it in the oratorical waving of the flag. The true extent of his real patriotism is an x quantity as it also is with a great many of his adherents, whose patriotic instincts extend more to Hibernianism or the Teutonic beer than to the flag representing the forty-eight sovereignties of local divergent interests.

VII. Misunderstandings exist in Mexico as a result of the Huerta bungle. All the Powers recognized Huerta's Government except the United States of America, and naturally expected that the United States would intervene to protect foreign lives and property, since the United States might consider it an unfriendly act should foreign powers individually or in concert forcibly attempt to do so. The United States Government did not recognize Huerta's presidency nor did it protect "American" lives or property during the years of anarchistic terror on the United States frontier and south of it. At least one or the other of these alternatives should have been early effected, especially so since the non-recognition of General Huerta by the United States assisted in maturing the existing Mexican conditions. The pacific attitude

adopted was not in accord with the alleged military and naval strength of the country in the face of atrocities to United States men and women, and caused serious loss of prestige to the United States throughout Latin America.

VIII. Japan looks askance at the attempt of the United States for Pacific expansion. Japan resents the Californian attitude, and the powerlessness of the Federal Government to control it, develops the question of States rights. Japan resents Magdalena Bay and the fortification of the Hawaiian Islands and is preparing for the issue, which must come to determine the supremacy of the Pacific, in a manner pregnant with determination, skill of strategy and forethought which is as patent to-day to the students of the situation as it will be surprising, startling and successful in its execution.

IX. England, by virtue of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, won for herself a diplomatic victory which may have its effect on internal affairs in the near future, and on external affairs for a long period. But England in reality may not be quite so satisfied as the attitude of its foreign office indicates, over the ostensibly indifferent attitude of the United States on Mexican and Panama questions. The same applies in this particular to Germany and Spain.

X.

Colombia was recently dismembered by the assistance of a previous United States administration.

*The assistance lent by the United States to the Panama revolutionists and the almost instant recognition of that republic by the United States when it seceded from Colombian rule, would have been considered an act of war under the Monroe Doctrine, had England, for in

*See Mr. Clark's admission of this in his speech before Congress, March 5, 1914.

stance, employed such methods in this connection. Yet in the minds of most people the Monroe Doctrine has been construed to effect the protection of all Latin America from aggression or acquisition. The United States, by virtue of Mr. Olney's interpretation of it, constituted itself the sole dictator of Latin America, even though Latin America did not wish to be so dictated to or "protected," and at heart resents the intrusion. Colombia was a victim of this doctrine. It was not a European power that established formidable fortifications on the Canal Zone of Panama, but the very protector who assisted in filching it and after a lapse of eight years proposes to hand to the Colombian Government $25,000,000 as an indemnity or bid for friendship, and the Colombian Government will accept them for no other reason than that the payment of the sum complies with terms asked for the canal concession.

On May 6, 1914, Mr. Roosevelt expressed his attitude as follows:

"Colombia agreed to let us build the canal on payment of $10,000,000. Later she tried to blackmail the United States when she thought France would give $25,000,000. Panama rose in revolt, insisting that the American agreement should stand.

"Not one dollar can be paid Colombia with propriety or morally, and it would be an act of infamy to pay even a dollar to a nation which in crooked greed tried desperate blackmail.

"To besmirch the good name of America by such payment would be an act unworthy any honorable man in the great office of President. To yield the Panama tolls rights would be equally dishonorable."

If this is Ex-President Roosevelt's opinion, it would appear that he forgets that at the time Colombia asked

$25,000,000 for the Panama Canal concession, the State of Panama with its 31,000 square miles of territory formed an integral part of the Republic of Colombia, and this being the case, Colombia had the right to ask whatever it pleased for the right to construct a canal through its territory. Colombia's demand, under these circumstances, could scarcely be termed "blackmail."

The State of Panama was assisted to secede from Colombia and received $10,000,000 from the United States. Mr. Wilson now proposes to set this right with Colombia, and his just attitude naturally makes Mr. Roosevelt's ready recognition of the Republic of Panama, plus $10,000,000, look a trifle awkward.

The $25,000,000 this administration proposes to pay to the Republic of Colombia is not a very great sum for the loss of one of its nine states, more especially as Columbia never received dollar from the United States for the canal concession although Colombia's rights were recognized by France and received a substantial sum from M. de Lesseps.

CHAPTER V.

The parallel conditions of unrest in Panama in 1903 and in Mexico in 1913-14 are obvious. Mr. Roosevelt claims the 1903 situation justified intervention because of President San Clamente's death in prison and Maroquin's usurpation of the Presidency coupled by fifty-three instances of riot and revolution, coupled with the threatened interruption of traffic across the isthmus over the Inter-Oceanic Railway. If intervention and subsequent occupation was justified from these causes how much greater are the causes for firm intervention in Mexico where United States citizens have been murdered and United States women raped. The commercial side of the question as between Panama and Mexico bears little relation in magnitude as the Mexican situation involves hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to United States citizens and so many hundreds of millions additional to foreign investors. Therefore, if President Roosevelt's action was just in the case of Panama how much more so would President Wilson's firm intervention be in the case of Mexico where conditions are worse than any condition that ever existed in Colombia or even Bulgaria.

The American public knows very little of the intensely bitter feeling that existed in Colombia at the time the HayHerran Treaty passed the House and Senate at Washington. When this news arrived in Colombia acts of violence were committed against Americans throughout the Colombian Republic. Among the prominent persons attacked were Capt. T. T. Lovelace, the American commander