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foreign relations upon a basis of concord and confidence. The rest of the world must believe in the sincerity and stability of the Mexican Government before the money and credit that Mexico needs will be available for the reconstruction of the transportation system and other tasks.

The basic human element in the Mexican situation is not so intractable as ill-informed American opinion is likely to assess it. The most dependable observers assert that the Mexican peasant is by nature docile, gracious, hard-working, and essentially pacific, that he is amenable to just and kindly treatment. His reputation as a facile revolutionist, on whom a sense of loyalty sits lightly, is rooted in his desperate economic condition.

Oliver Madox Hueffer, in one of his illuminating Mexican articles appearing in "The Evening Post" of New York, reminds us that in 1914 the average income of a Mexican family of five was about seventy-five cents a week -in a land that boasts millionaires and landowners whose estates cover hundreds of square miles. In the face of such dramatic contrasts between poverty and plutocracy, Mr. Hueffer says, "obviously if you offer a peon earning a dollar a week, Mexican, a gold dollar a day, and a share of the loot, to join your revolution, he does not hesitate." Instead of damning the Mexican masses for their proneness to revolution and banditry, it might be better for us honestly to study the facts of his life in something of a but-for-God's-gracethere-go-we spirit. If Obregon can bring constructive statesmanship to bear upon the land question, make it possible for the peon to get a little land and a fair chance to make a decent living, we may see an inherently peaceable peasantry turn gladly from its desperation-driven adventures in revolution.

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pacified for a good stretch of months, if he will surround himself with capable administrators, and place his cards on the table regarding his attitude toward foreign investors, he can get the needed credit. Then he can begin the economic rehabilitation of the country that underlies all else.

Obregon must live up to the toothbrush creed quoted earlier in these paragraphs. He must tackle the problem of Mexican education in a statesmanlike way. Mexico is still a land of candle-light, not even of kerosenelamps. A writer, commenting upon this fact, says: "One may imagine that there is not much reading in the evening in these candle-lit homes, and that some of Mexico's troubles would disappear if the distinction were removed between the candle-light of so many dwellings and the electricity or gas that illuminates homes in the cities." But the education that Mexico needs is not the learning of books primarily, but effective training in the twin arts of enterprise and self-government. The race that knows how to make a living and how to govern itself is well on the way toward education.

No interest has been paid on Mexico's foreign debt of $500,000,000 since 1914. Obregon must find a way to begin payments. He must bring to his side a capable and statesmanlike sanitary expert with a national program. He must smooth out the labor situation. He must keep a weather eye on jealous generals. He must . . . but there is no end to the challenging problems he faces. It is strange that any man in Mexico would envy Obregon his position.

But the challenge is not all to Obregon. American statesmanship and the American press are alike challenged. There is no penalty too great for the Jingo or demagogue who would, either from editorial office or from legislative chamber, block or make difficult a constructive and intelligently patriotic Mexican program. We must rebuild Mexican faith in us as well as watch the border that separates the Mexicans from us. Demagogic interventionists have destroyed that faith. We can indulge in a lot of anti-British talk without serious consequences, because the English know the temptations of party politics and dis

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count much talk on that score. land has her own "bucaneers of opinion" who manipulate newspapers and can smile at our vicious cartoons and screaming head-lines. It has been said that the British Lion has had his tail re-set with a ball-and-socket joint, so that the universal sport of "twisting the lion's tail" can be accomplished without disturbing his equanimity. But with less-sophisticated Mexico the case is different.

The uneducated Mexican believes we are bent on conquest, and certain senators and editors seem bent upon strengthening that belief. We must break down this conception of the United States as a bullying hypocrite. Our Mexican policy must be shot through with justice, decency, and tact. We must, of course, insist that American interests legitimately acquired in the past be not confiscated, but we must not turn our State Department into an insurance company, guaranteeing shaky investments in Mexico, nor turn our army and navy into collection agencies for private investors.

We could not choose a psychologically worse time for intervention. From the most selfish of trade points of view, a blow at Latin American confidence in us would be bad business. Latin America has been a bit suspicious of us ever since we took Texas and California away from Mexico. We do not want to pursue a policy now that will fan that suspicion into a sort of AlsaceLorraine revanche spirit. We have made marked headway in the gaining of Latin American confidence. During the war German, French, and English firms lost their grip on Latin-American trade. Of course, it was not a question of choice. Latin America had to trade with us. Now the race for markets is again under way. If we should intervene in Mexico, all Latin America would look askance at our "new imperialism," and every European firm would have a new talking-point in the effort to recapture Latin-American trade from us.

And, then, a war with Mexico would not be the breakfast job many lightly assume it would be. It is interesting to record a conversation which Mr. Hueffer reports as having taken place between General Funston and Huerta at

the time the American force landed at Vera Cruz in 1914. The report reads:

The American General had asked General Huerta, the Mexican President, what he proposed to do about it. His idea was simple. If the gringo army sought to take his capitol, they would earn his eternal gratitude. Every Mexican, forgetting internecine quarrels, would hasten to join him in repelling the hated foreigner, and for the first time in years Mexico would be united. He did not propose to give battle to the invaders. His very much simpler purpose was to scatter his men about the country, each armed with a Mauser and sufficient ammunition. From behind trees and rocks, out of gullies and ravines, the individual Mexicans were to snipe the American forces. As soon as a Mexican could produce satisfactory proof that he had killed one gringo he was to receive a certain amount of blood money and to be allowed to go home. General Huerta calculated that towards such an end he could raise 300,000 men, and that when they had killed their one apiece of the 13,000 invaders (the number of Marines General Funston had with him) he would have quite a lot still left to go on with.

Another Boer War, and in a country much better adapted to that type of warfare! We would need several Creel bureaus of information to keep up the morale of an American army facing that sort of task.

It has been estimated that the money spent on the first six months of General Pershing's campaign on the Mexican border would have been ample to have established a good public school system and a modern hospital in every Mexican city of over four thousand inhabitants. We may grasp some idea of the cost of a real intervention in Mexico, if we remember that General Funston once seriously said that with a million men and three years in which to do the job he might conquer Mexico.

No sensible and personally disinterested American has any stomach for a Mexican war. But we may not be able to arrive at our decisions solely upon our own best judgment. We may feel that in theory a "hands-off" policy is the wisest. We may believe that in the long run democracy cannot be foisted upon a people with machine-guns. But will all

Europe back us up in such a thesis? Other nations have private investors who are working day and night, as some of ours are, to identify their personal investments with the "national honor." What if they succeed? If one or more European nations demand that we "clean up" Mexico or clear the road for them to do it, we shall have to intervene, surrender the Monroe Doctrine, or fight the European nations in question.

Is n't there statesmanship enough in the United States to devise ways and means of such prompt and pacific economic and financial aid and administrative counsel as will enable the Obregon government to bring order out of chaos, reëstablish Mexico upon a basis of justice and prosperity, and thus remove Mexico from the list of international plague-spots? That way only lies peace.

LA ZONE ROUGE

EHIND this French phrase lies B an interesting and highly suggestive story as told by M. Claude Rivière in "La France," which is a magazine published in the United States in the interest of a better understanding between the American and French peoples. In the midst of detailed records of reconstruction that only the most accomplished of writing can invest with sustained fascination, this story blossoms.

When the French authorities began the task of reconstruction in the devastated regions, they found that in certain districts the villages had been so completely demolished and the soil so blasted that redemption of village or soil seemed hopeless. Trees, houses, green herbiage, these familiar things, were all gone. Nothing remained save a "curious yellowish grass" never before seen in that part of France; only a great waste of shell-marked earth. What should be done! The Gallic sense of the dramatic came to the rescue. The French authorities planned to preserve these districts just as they were, to turn them into "protected" districts-protected from any attempt to redeem them. Districts that had been the scenes of exceptional German barbarity were to be left in their

tragic desolation as an eternal reminder and example.

The French authorities doubtless thought their plan highly dramatic, but they proved poor dramatists beside a humble French peasant who upset their calculations. M. Rivière stood one day looking off across a panorama of devastation in one of these protected districts. When he lifted his field-glass to his eye, he saw on a distant hillside a small square of vivid green. It was a small field in cultivation. M. Rivière went to the spot, and found an old peasant happily busy. busy. This peasant had ignored the new law that made this district part of La Zone Rouge, the red zone of reminder that was to keep the memory of war barbarities ever fresh. He had gone quietly back to his home place, with his own hands removed the unexploded shells from the soil, and coaxed it back to fertility. He did not have the air of one playing a part. It was the natural thing for him to do. To M. Rivière he said simply, "We have always plowed the land; we must plow again."

Again, in the shell of what was once the village of Nanteuil la Fosse, M. Rivière came upon an old woman who was living alone in the desolate wreck of her former home despite the fact that she had to walk ten miles to buy food. Nor did she have the air of one playing a part. It was the natural thing for her to do. To M. Rivière she said, "Je veux mourir dans ma maison." She wanted to die in her own house. That was all.

Editors have commented upon this as significant of the invincible spirit of reconstruction in the French people. There is perhaps a deeper significance for us in the story, for it suggests that while the official mind may be concerned with keeping green the memories of war hatreds, the minds of the common folk are more concerned with keeping fields green and getting back to normal human relations. The ugly scars of war would disappear with reasonable rapidity were it not for certain types of minds and interests that make it their business to aggravate them.

We have our own La Zone Rouge in the intellectual life of the nation. We have paid our respects to its creators before in these columns. It is unnecessary to do

it again now. It may be suggested, however, that we would do well to ponder the old peasant's words, "We have always plowed the land; we must plow again." We shall not forget the assaults made upon civilized ideals, but the future is before us, and it cannot rest upon a foundation of warmed-over hates. We must weld the world together into a confederacy of men producing again good goods and good policies. We must plow again.

T

FOR PRESIDENTS AND PREMIERS ONLY HIS is a note, offered in all humility and respect, for the private reading of presidents and premiers, men who, by the grace of God and the electorate, hold the destinies of peoples in their hands in these fateful times. It is a simple suggestion that the present heads of the governments of the world take a few hours off, from golfgames if necessary, and re-read the history of governors and governments before they plunge into the business of 1921.

It has been said that the lesson of history is that men do not learn the lesson of history. Certain it is that presidents and premiers walk blandly and blindly into the plain pitfalls of their predecessors. A conscientious reading of history might mitigate, if not cure, this tragic blindness to the past. A certain distinguished statesman, who has himself ignored some plain lessons of the past, years ago said this about history:

Its function is not one of pride merely; to make complaisant record of deeds honorably done and plans nobly executed in the past. It has also a function of guidance; to build high places whereon to plant the clear and flaming lights of experience, that they may shine alike upon the paths already traveled and upon the paths not yet attempted. The historian is also a prophet. Our memories direct us.

In a search for the wise counsel of history, all presidents and premiers might read with profit the thirty-eighth chapter of H. G. Wells's "The Outline of History" on the career of Napoleon

Bonaparte, not to learn the suicidal folly of overweening ambition, but to study the tragic failure of a statesman in a time of unrest and revaluation.

The next ten years may be not unlike the years of Napoleon's ascendancy. Statesmen now, in the United States, in England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Japan, in Russia, may repeat Napoleon's mistake. Rejecting their opportunity to hammer a new world into shape, they may become the defaulting trustees of a newer freedom that war and revolution may have made possible.

But let us hear what Mr. Wells says about the years following the French Revolution and about Napoleon's relation to that restless and potential time. The glaring timeliness of these passages will make comment unnecessary. The reader will notice how easily they might have been written of our own time. Writing of the ebbing tide of revolutionary enthusiasm, Mr. Wells says:

The ebb of this tide of Revolution in the world, this tide which had created the great Republic of America and threatened to submerge all European monarchies, was now at hand. It is as if something had thrust up from beneath the surface of human affairs, made a gigantic effort, and spent itself. It swept many obsolescent and evil things away, but many evil and unjust things remained. It solved many problems, and it left the desire for fellowship and order face to face with much vaster problems that it seemed only to have revealed. Privilege of certain types had gone, many tyrannies, much religious persecution. When these things of the ancient régime had vanished, it seemed as if they had never mattered. What did matter was that for all their votes and enfranchisement, common men were still not free and not enjoying an equal happiness; that the immense promise and air of a new world with which the Revolution had come, remained unfulfilled.

Might not this have been written about the Russian Revolution and the godlike idealism that surcharged the international conversations preceding the armistice? Now, as then, the ebb tide of idealism has turned many into cynics who doubt the validity of idealism itself. Let such read the succeeding paragraph:

Yet, after all, this wave of revolution had realized nearly everything that had been clearly thought out before it came. It was not failing now for want of impetus, but for want of finished ideas. Many things that had oppressed mankind were swept away forever. Now that they were swept away it became apparent how unprepared men were for the creative opportunities this clearance gave them. And periods of revolution are periods of action; in them men reap the

harvests of ideas that have grown during phases of interlude, and they leave the fields cleared for a new season of growth, but they cannot suddenly produce ripened new ideas to meet an unanticipated riddle.

Might not this have been written in explanation of the utter failure of certain Elder Statesmen at Paris, intellectual and moral bankrupts face to face with a creative opportunity?

With such a stage-setting, Napoleon entered the political drama of the postrevolution time a time that appears more and more like ours as we proceed with the history. Listen again to Mr. Wells:

Revolutionary idealism was paling before practical urgencies . . . the public was in that state of moral fatigue when a strong and honest man is called for, a wonderful, impossible healing man who will do everything for everybody. People, poor lazy souls, persuaded themselves that this specious young man [Napoleon] with the hard face

was the strong and honest man required.

Now surely here was opportunity such as never came to man before. Here was a position in which a man might well bow himself in fear of himself, and search his heart and serve God and man to the utmost. The old order of things was dead or dying; strange new forces drove through the world seeking form and direction; the promise of a world republic and an enduring world peace whispered in a multitude of startled minds.

Had this man had any profundity of vision, any power of creative imagination, had he been accessible to any disinterested ambition, he might have done work for mankind that would have made him the very sun of history. All Europe and America, stirred by the first promise of a new age, was waiting for him. Not France alone. France was in his hand, his instrument, to do with as he

pleased, willing for peace, but tempered for war like an exquisite sword. There lacked nothing to this great occasion but a noble imagination. And failing that, Napoleon could do no more than strut upon the crest of this great mountain of opportunity like a cockerel on a dunghill.

Surely Napoleon's opportunity for creative statesmanship was great, as the opportunity of this time is great. Napoleon might have weaned the people

from their excesses, and consolidated the gains of the Revolution. Instead, he surrendered himself soul and body to the old dynastic system. He even sought out a matrimonial alliance with the old order. Failing in his attempted winning of a Russian princess, he married the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria. So, as Mr. Wells happily phrases it, this man who might have been the "maker of a new world" was at last content to be the "son-in-law of the old." In a time that called for a man of vision, Napoleon proved only a man of visions, and insane visions at that.

There is another passage in the thirtysixth chapter of this history that statesmen could profitably read in connection with the passages just quoted. Mr. Wells has been discussing the way in which the "Great Powers" succeeded the "Grand Monarchs" as the dominant factors in world politics. He has trenchantly described this latter-day glorification of the "Powers" as a sort of state mythology, a reversion to that primitive personification of the nation noticeable in the Old Testament. But Mr. Wells is concerned with the deep and determining undercurrents of history, and attempts always to distinguish undercurrents from eddies. This present deification of the state, he contends, is merely an eddy of faltering faith on the surface of an irresistible current leading to the moral and intellectual reunion of mankind. Of this he writes with his accustomed passionate conviction.

For a time men have relapsed upon these national or imperial gods of theirs; it is but for a time. The idea of the world state, the universal kingdom of righteousness of which every living soul shall be a citizen, was already in the world two thousand years ago, never more to leave it. Men know that it is

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