A VAIN APPEAL

On March 6 last there was distributed among Americans in Mexico City a circular signed by the Brazilian Minister to Mexico stating that he was instructed by Secretary Bryan "to remind them of the President's advice to Americans to leave Mexico until conditions become settled." Thereupon a meeting of Americans citizens was held, a committee appointed, and a full statement was sent to Mr. Bryan by cablegram showing the terror and demoralization in Mexico City and the impossibility of following the advice to flee, and asking that the message be given to the press as the only way of getting the facts before friends and relatives. Mr. Bryan refused to do this; but recently the cablegram and later ones have been printed in the New York "Herald." The correspondence forms an instructive corollary to Mr. Caspar Whitney's article on "The Plight of Americans" elsewhere in this issue of The Outlook.

Our American fellow-citizens in these appeals, among other things, declared :

Thousands of Americans and other foreigners scattered throughout the country find it quite impossible to leave their all or to abandon positions of trust in charge of business or property of owners in the United States and elsewhere. Duty compels them to remain.

Mexican people, unarmed and generally passive, are victims of violent deeds committed under the guise of revolution, and are praying for an end to the reign of disorder, bloodshed, rapine, and destruction into which the Madero revolution has degenerated.

The foreigners of

The Mexican political situation is more chaotic and helpless than ever. other nationalities, our neighbors and friends, are now asking what course is open for them if I conditions are such as to render it necessary for Americans to leave, and they look to Amer

icans for counsel.

We are

The reply received from Mr. Bryan was a brief expression of sympathy, another reiteration of advice to leave Mexico, and a statement that Carranza joined in this advice, but had promised to do what he could to protect life and property. The committee of Americans, in a second message of remonstrance and appeal, included as an ironic comment on Carranza's promises the following list. of things" done or decreed" by Carranza after he gained control of Mexico City :

engaged in lawful and useful occupations. We respectfully ask from our Government effective guaranties of those rights and

no more.

would be to repeat the late sad experience of If the foreigners should leave en masse, it the Belgians. With many it means to leave behind the savings and other interests of a lifetime and to arrive in the United States or Europe virtually

friends....

as charges upon public or

The arbitrary taking from Mexicans and foreigners of property, including houses, horses, automobiles, carriages, furniture, money, and crops; the issuing of decrees so in contravention of right, fairness, and justice as to be almost incredible; the deliberate, persistent, and ill-concealed attempt to starve a city of 500,000 inhabitants, depriving them of water, fuel, and transportation; the shipping of defenseless women in locked cattle cars to Vera Cruz; the carrying away of the controllers of electric street cars, thus paralyzing transit; the closing of the courts and schools; the holding of priests for ransom; the arrest and detention of three hundred business men who had assembled at the request of the general in charge of the city; the persecution of Spaniards; the suppression of the mails and the violation of sealed correspondence, both foreign and domestic; the removal of public archives and the stripping of public buildings; the open invitation to riot and loot; the sacking of churches and desecration of images; the killing of men and the outraging of women, are events too recent and well known to permit of their being overlooked in forming judgment. The wantonness of such acts renders it impossible to accept the professions of these factionists or their counsels as to the course to be pursued by foreigners.

The great majority of the fifteen millions of

Finally the committee adds: "Mexico is drifting toward total destruction, from which

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