headed by J. P. Morgan & Co., the National City Bank, Standard Oil, the Mexican Petroleum Company, the Intercontinental Rubber Company; and the Phelps-Dodge, Greene-Cannanea, and other components of the Morgan-Ryan-Guggenheim Copper Trust. These are also the richest corporations having a stake in Mexico.
Every member of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico presumably approves of its work and shares responsibility for it. Although this organization has stated, on occasion, that it does not seek intervention, an examination of its literature proves this to be an equivocation. It asks for "protection" of a sort that the existing Mexican Government has never been willing to grant. In asking for "protection" of the American Government and the American people, it implies that it does not expect to procure such "protection" from the Mexican Government, except through the application of external force, or the threat of force. Intervention, as defined in international law, is interference by one government in the affairs of another, either by the use of force or the threat of force; it is effective intervention exactly to the extent to which the affairs of the invaded or threatened nation are influenced or controlled by such invasion or threats. The Bulletin of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico itself prints open appeals for the use of force in Mexico, and editorially expresses approval of such appeals. This organization, and the Association of Oil Producers of Mexico, a sub-division of it, between them, admit refusal of their members to comply with Mexican laws, boast of defiance of the authority of the Mexican Government, admit the support of an insurgent army upon Mexican soil as a means to defying such authority.
The hostile situation between members of these organizations and the Mexican Government, as portrayed by the press matter of the former, is one that obviously cannot long be maintained. Either the oil operators will control the Mexican Government, or the Mexican Government will control the oil
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