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the laws. But the civil authorities are cowed, the people are cowed, and the victims, Mexican or American, seem to have no redress. By fiat of the executive law and civil authority have been subverted and, as far as the Mexican situation is concerned, the United States has been turned into a military dictatorship as sinister and irresponsible as that of Diaz himself.
And why has this thing been done? To maintain a chattel slavery more cruel than ever existed in our Southern states. To uphold a political tyranny a hundred times more unjust than the one against which our men of Seventy-Six revolted. If the policy of the Taft administration be permitted to continue these purposes will be attained. Already the revolution has received such a set-back that, though it win in the end, many good and brave men must die who otherwise might have lived. The purpose of this book was to inform the American people as to the facts about Mexico in order that they might be prepared to prevent American intervention against a revolution the justice of which there can be no question.
So far "Barbarous Mexico" has failed in this purpose. Will it fail in the end? Are the American people as enslaved in spirit as the Mexicans are in body? In Mexico the only protest possible is a protest of arms. In the United States there is still a degree of freedom of press and speech. Though by tricks and deceits innumerable the rulers of America succeed in evading the will of the majority, the majority yet may protest, and if the protest be long enough and loud enough, it is still capable of making those rulers tremble. Protest against the Crime of Intervention. And should it become necessary, in order to make the rulers heed, to raise that protest to a threat of revolution here, so be it; the cause will be worth while.
JOHN KENNETH TURNER.
Los Angeles, Calif., April 8, 1911.
