THE WAR IN MEXICO:

THE OCCUPATION OF VERA CRUZ

With the first shot fired by a Mexican soldier from a housetop in Vera Cruz on April 21, all talk and hope of a pacific blockade came to an end. President Wilson and General Huerta having each declared that the American people and the Mexican people did not purpose war against one another, the forces under the control of the two men began hostilities. The order to our naval forces to occupy Vera Cruz was sent from Washington on April 20; its immediate occasion was the desire to intercept an enormous amount of arms and ammunition on their way to General Huerta. These munitions were on a German ship, the Ypiranga, which was expected to arrive, and actually did arrive, at the port of Vera Cruz on April 21. With our forces in control of the port and custom-house, it would be possible and in accord with international practice to prevent their delivery to Huerta, although neither ship nor arms could be seized while under the German flag.

In accordance with the orders from Washington, Admiral Fletcher, at Vera Cruz, just before noon on Tuesday of last week, landed marines and sailors from the battle-ships Utah and Florida and the transport Prairie and seized the custom-house without immediate opposition. But as the Americans took up positions and trained guns on the Plaza de la Constitucion, the central square of the town, fire was opened by the Mexicans from housetops and soon volleys were fired by the Mexican regular troops and were returned by our men, while the Prairie and the Florida shelled the Mexican position. Admiral Fletcher's first report of the engagement stated that four of our men were killed (later six were reported by name as dead) and twenty wounded, while the Mexican casualties have been loosely estimated at from one to two hundred. The Mexicans retreated and our forces occupied the important positions in the town, including the railway terminals with a

large number of cars and engines, believed to be on the point of removal. Railway communication with Mexico City, of course, at once ceased; it seemed probable that our forces would be pushed forward a few miles to seize an important bridge over a ravine, and undoubtedly the Mexicans have torn up rails and bridges beyond that point. By noon of April 22 the entire town of Vera Cruz was under American control. No noncombatants were injured in the fighting. Admiral Fletcher issued a proclamation assuming military control and assuring the people that law and order would be preserved.

Thus began actual war between the armed forces of the United States and that large part of Mexico which is under the rule of Huerta.

THE WAR IN MEXICO:
IN CONGRESS

It is very far from being true, as has been asserted, that with the first bloodshed the debate in Congress over President Wilson's request for a resolution upholding his action. became academic. On the contrary, that debate involved fundamental questions and principles, and upon those far-reaching questions we comment editorially elsewhere in this issue. The President's address, delivered in person, as is his custom, related in detail the incident at Tampico described in The Outlook last week-and as to the facts we need here only add that Mr. Wilson maintains and General Huerta denies that the American flag was flying on our boat, while Mr. Wilson maintains that General Huerta refused to render a salute and Huerta declares that he offered a salute but asked for a written agreement as to the ceremonial and the order of firing the salutes. President Wilson's request from Congress was couched in these words:

I come to ask your approval that I should use the armed forces of the United States in such ways and to such an extent as may be neces

sary to obtain from General Huerta and his adherents the fullest recognition of the rights and dignity of the United States, even amid the distressing conditions now unhappily obtaining in Mexico.

There can in what we do be no thought of aggression or of selfish aggrandizement. We seek to maintain the dignity and authority of the United States only because we wish always to keep our great influence unimpaired for the uses of liberty, both in the United States and wherever else it may be employed for the benefit of mankind.

He had already explained the wording of the request by saying of Huerta :

Only part of the country is under his control. If armed conflict should unhappily come as a result of his attitude of personal resentment toward this Government, we should be fighting only General Huerta and those who adhere to him and give him their support, and our object would be only to restore to the people of the distracted republic the opportunity to set up again their own laws and their own government.

The House of Representatives on the same day (April 20) passed, after an animated debate, by a vote of 337 to 37, a resolution stating, in effect, that the President is justified in the employment of armed forces to enforce his demands upon Huerta for affronts committed by him.

THE WAR IN MEXICO:

THE DEBATE IN THE SENATE

But it was in the Senate that the most illuminating discussion on the Mexican situation took place. A substitute for the resolution passed in the lower house was offered. It reads as follows:

Whereas, In view of the fact presented by the President of the United States in his address delivered to the Congress at the joint session on the twentieth day of April, 1914, with regard to certain affronts and indignities committed against the United States in Mexico:

Resolved, That the President is justified in the employment of the armed forces of the United States to enforce his demand for unequivocal amends for affronts and indignities committed against the United States.

Be it further resolved, That the United States disclaims any hostility to the Mexican people or any purpose to make war on them.

Senator Lodge, believing that the preamble was inadequate and incomplete, urged that it be changed so as to include all the causes that justify intervention. In the debate that followed this contention was

maintained in speeches of intense earnestness and the highest order of ability by Senator Lodge and Senator Root. We select from each address a single passage, urging our readers, however, to procure and read the entire debate, which bids fair to be one of the most memorable in American legislative history. Senator Lodge said:

We think not only that the honor of the flag should be maintained, that due atonement should be demanded and enforced from Mexico, but we think that something should be done and said about that which the flag covers. The flag covers the citizens of the United States.

They look to it as the emblem of the great Government and the great Nation to which they avow allegiance and from which they expect protection. More than 150 American citizensinnocent, helpless people-have been murdered upon Mexican soil.

I, for one, when I demand atonement for the insults to the flag at Tampico, cannot put aside those people who have perished in Mexico and whose deaths have gone unnoticed and unavenged.

I, for one, speaking only for myself as a single Senator of this body, cannot consent at this great crisis to pass by in silence the wrongs which have been done to innocent people unlawfully in another country without declaring that there is another wrong besides the insult to the flag to be atoned, a wrong which must not be and shall not be repeated. . . . I will not, without a protest at least, join in any resolution which can by any construction put the United States in the attitude of selecting one murderer and cutthroat in preference to another murderer and cutthroat.

If we intervene in Mexico, it must be for the protection of American citizens; it must be in the hope that by our intervention we shall try at least to bring back peace and order to that distracted country, for which we have no feeling but one of friendship. It must not be that we go there to take down one man and set up another.

Senator Root agreed with Senator Lodge, and laid repeated emphasis on the statement that it was folly to go before the world basing our right to intervene in Mexico on a dispute as to how and how far formal amends should be made for the Tampico incident. Senator Root said;

It is a story of violence and anarchy in Mexico. Lying behind it are hundreds of American lives sacrificed, hundreds of millions of American property destroyed, and thousands of Americans reduced to poverty to-day through the destruction of their property. Lying behind it is the condition of anarchy in Mexico which makes it impossible to secure protection for

American life and property in that country by diplomatic means.

Lying behind it is a condition of affairs in Mexico which makes that country incapable of performing its international obligations. The insult to the flag is but a part-the culmination of a long series of violations of American rights, a long series of violations of those rights which it is the duty of our country to protect. . . .

Lying back of this incident is a condition of affairs in Mexico which absolutely prevents the protection of American life and property except through respect for the American flag. . . .

The real object to be attained by the course which we are asked to approve is not gratification of personal pride. . . . It is the preservation of the power of the United States to protect its citizens under those conditions.

If we omit from the resolution that shall be passed to-night all reference to the matters that are enumerated in this substitute, we omit the real object that forms the justification for our action. Otherwise we would be everlastingly wrong.

In the end the two houses concurred in passing the Senate substitute resolution as printed above, rejecting Senator Lodge's substitute.

THE WAR IN MEXICO:

THE SITUATION IN NORTH MEXICO

So much is public interest the world over centered in the situation at Vera Cruz and Tampico that not enough attention has been given to Villa's victory over the Federal troops at San Pedro, east of Torreon, and between that place and Saltillo. At the same time insurgents moving northwest from Victoria, where there has long been a little army of Constitutionalists (the same that has twice attacked Tampico), have threatened and even attacked Monterey. It is said that the flower of the Federal army," apart from those trusted troops that guard the capital, was engaged at Torreon and San Pedro ; if this is so, the heavy loss by the Federals in both battles would bode ill for the safety of Saltillo and Monterey, and the fall of those places would put Mexico City in serious danger.

But will the Huerta-Villa war continue? There are many who think it quite conceivable that a bargain may be struck between them--say, for a conjecture, Huerta to recognize Carranza as President of North Mexico and Carranza to recognize Huerta as President of South Mexico-and that their two armies should combine to drive out the United States forces. If there is even a

possibility of this, it is no wonder that the people of our border States are protesting against the export from the United States to North Mexico of millions of dollars' worth of arms and ammunition, which in the case supposed might be used against our own armies.

Elsewhere in this issue will be found the first article from Mr. Gregory Mason, the Outlook's special correspondent in northern Mexico. It describes, in what seems to us an illuminating fashion, recent experiences with the Constitutionalists and with General Carranza in person.

FACTS AND CONDITIONS
IN MEXICO

There are, it is said, nearly a hundred thousand citizens of this country in Mexico. They have gone thither to engage in various industries-principally gold, silver, and copper mining, but also lumbering, live stock and hides, rubber, railways, oil, manufacturing, commercial, and agricultural enterprises. According to the statement of Mr. Letcher, our Consul at Chihuahua, American interests in Mexico exceed $1,050,000,000; according to other observers, the sum of our investments in Mexico reaches $1,200,000,000. This sum is several hundred million dollars greater than the investments of the Mexicans themselves in their own country. It is at least twice as great as the investments of Great Britain, the foreign Power coming next to us in material stake in that country. We also rank overwhelmingly first among the nations in trade with Mexico. Thousands of our citizens there have been reduced to a state of poverty owing to the chaos which has existed, as millions of dollars' worth of their property has been destroyed. They have repeatedly demanded some measure of protection from our Government, since they have been able to obtain none from the governments successively instituted in Mexico.

four-fifths) the inhabitants are Indians, and

these remain in almost the same condition as that which has characterized them for centuries. The late President Madero announced that he would institute reforms in the system of labor, by which the Indians have been kept in a state of peonage; in the system of landholding, by which Mexico has been parceled out among a comparatively few great proprietors in education, so that the mass of the people might have a better chance; and, finally, in elections, so that elections would no longer be shams. These four reforms were rudely frustrated by the assassination of President Madero and by the accession to power of General Huerta.

Military intervention has begun its work at Vera Cruz. The task of occupation would be the harder but for the valuable experience acquired by the army during the past fifteen years in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. Most of our officers now have some knowledge of the Spanish language, and, what is more, some understanding of the Spanish-American temperament and charac

It is the habit in too many quarters to regard both the army and the navy in their purely military functions, if we may coin a paradoxical phrase, as superfluous necessities. The prevalence of this sentiment is well illustrated by a resolution recently passed by the United States Senate. In this the Secretary of the Navy is asked to report to Congress a plan for the use of war-ships to carry mail, passengers, and freight to South American ports. In view of this resolution, we suggest that the Secretary of War be requested to report to Congress a plan for equipping our superfluous field artillery with heavy rollers instead of wheels, and of distributing it over the country to aid the Good Roads Movement. The Secretary of the Treasury might be asked to report

on a plan to make his printing-presses and designs for currency available for the manufacturers of wall-papers !

In relation to the particular desire for information expressed in this resolution of the Senate, it might be remarked that the United States Government, through its control of the Panama Railroad Company, is already in possession of steamships plying between this country and the Canal. It would seem to an unprejudiced observer who believes in the economy of using tools adapted to their purpose that the proper plan for meeting the want of transportation to South American ports-if the Government desires to attempt the solution of this problemwould be by the development of the Panama Railroad Company's fleet rather than by the remodeling of war-ships for a task for which they were never intended. Poetically speaking, it may be quite desirable to beat swords into plowshares, but as a matter of expediency, particularly where it will be necessary to beat the plowshares back into swords again whenever an emergency arises, we believe that our Government can afford to provide itself with suitable and special tools both for peace and for war.

MOBILIZING THE NAVY

An example of how perniciously such a project as is described in the previous paragraph would affect the efficiency of our navy may be seen if we can imagine the result had such a plan been in actual operation during the present mobilization of our battle-ships along the coast of Mexico. The suddenness with which the demand for ships came would have precluded all possibility of the refitting of any ship for military service within any reasonable time limit.

As it was, the mobilization of our navy for service on the Mexican coast forms one of the distinctly creditable chapters in our military history. There is every reason to believe that the army is equally well prepared to handle such munitions of war as Congress has given into its charge. Rear-Admiral Victor Blue has recounted some of the incidents of the naval mobilization:

The department in all its branches moved like well-oiled machinery, every part co-ordinating. One giant ship took on 1,800 tons of coal, provisions for 1,000 men for six weeks, huge quantities of various supplies, rounded up officers and men ashore on leave, and was tug