and protected law-breaking on the part of Mexican officials and their hirelings in this country.
For the past five years the law of our border states, as far as Mexican citizens are concerned, has been very much the law of Diaz. The border has been Mexicanized. In numerous instances our government has delegated its own special powers to agents of Mexico in the form of consuls, hired attorneys and private detectives. Mexican citizens have been denied the right of asylum and the ordinary protection of our laws. By the reign of terror thus established the United States has held in check a movement which otherwise would surely have developed sufficient strength to overthrow Diaz, abolish Mexican slavery and restore constitutional government in the country to the south of us.
Three times during the past two years, twice as Secretary of War and once as President, William Howard Taft has ordered troops to the Texas border to aid Diaz in wreaking vengeance upon his enemies. He also—at the same time as well as at other times—ordered posses of United States Marshals and squads of Secret Service operatives there for the same purpose.
The first time Taft ordered troops to the border was in June, 1908, the second time in September, 1908, the third time in July, 1909. The troops were commanded to drive back into the hands of pursuing Mexican soldiers or to capture and detain any fugitives who attempted to cross the Rio Grande and save their lives upon Texas soil.
That this action on the part of President Taft was an undue stretching of the laws it would appear from dispatches sent out from Washington, June 30, 1908. From one of these dispatches published throughout the country, July 1, 1908, I quote the following:
