intervention in Mexico, but previously to the war the present Administration had repeatedly invoked every so-called "American principle" against such action.
In an address at Chicago, January 31, 1916, the President declared that, by the terms of the Monroe Doctrine,
"We stand pledged to see that both the continents of America are left free to be used by their peoples as those peoples choose to use them, under a principle of national sovereignty as absolute and unchallenged as our own."
In the Message to Congress, December 7, 1915, in expounding the Pan-American Doctrine, he asserted that, "All the governments of America stand, so far as we are concerned, upon a footing of genuine equality and unquestionad independence."
In a speech at Columbus, December 10, 1915, in invoking the Virginia Bill of Rights in favor of Mexico, he said:
"I find that I am one of the few men of my acquaintance who absolutely believe every word, for example, of the Virginia Bill of Rights. Most men use them for Fourth of July purposes, and use them very handsomely, but I stand before you and tell you that I believe in them. For example, the Virginia Bill of Rights—I cite that because it was one of the first bills of rights; the others were largely modeled upon it or run along the same lines—the Virginia Bill of Rights says that when a government proves unsuitable to the life of the people under it (I am not quoting the language, but the meaning) they have a right to alter or abolish it in any way they please.
"When things were perhaps more debatable than they are now about our immediate neighbor to the south of us, I do not know how many men came to me and suggested that the Government of Mexico should be altered as we thought it ought to be altered, but being a subscriber to the Virginia Bill of Rights, I could not agree with them."
And again, seven months later, at Detroit (July 10, 1916):
"I was trying to expound in another place the other day the long way and the short way to get together. The long way is to fight. I have heard some gentlemen say they want to help Mexico, and the way they propose to help her is to overwhelm her with force. That is the long way to help Mexico as well as the wrong way. Because after the fighting you have a nation full of justified suspicion and animated by well-founded hostility and hatred. . . .
"What makes Mexico suspicious of us is that she does not believe as yet that we want to serve her. She believes we want to possess her. And she has justification for the belief in the way some of our fellow citizens have tried to exploit her privileges and possessions. For my part, I will not serve the ambitions of those gentlemen. . . . We must respect the sovereignty of Mexico. I am one of those—I have sometimes suspected that there were not many of them—who believe abso-
