headed by E. L. Doheny, January 23, just before leaving, Mr. Doheny gave an interview:
"We go to Europe as representatives of five groups of American business men in Mexico, mining, agricultural, and cattle, banking and securities, petroleum and industrial. * * We merely go to ask a big question. We have hopes that the Peace Conference may see fit to answer it. * * How far may new governments go in ignoring or confiscating the vested rights of foreign inhabitants and of foreigners in the lands where the new governments are established?"
Notwithstanding this statement, the committee was allowed to sail. It was the acknowledged policy of the administration at the time not to permit any one to leave the country whose business had not been examined into by it and approved by it.
January 26, Ambassador Fletcher was reported as coming from Mexico with Mexican data for the Peace Conference. Mr. Fletcher came, but did not return to Mexico. At the end of the year, he has not yet returned.
At Paris, Senor Pani, Carranza's Minister to France, was not permitted to present his credentials; nor was he received by the Peace Conference. Instead, we were told that Senor de la Barra "represented Mexico" at the Peace Conference. De la Barra had been a member of the Diaz Government, a Cientifico, an attorney for Wall Street interests, a capitalist, and had often been mentioned as a favored American choice for President of Mexico. In August, the French Government awarded de la Barra a Medal of Public Gratitude upon the recommendation of Foreign Minister Pichon.
We do not know what Mr. Doheny had to do with this peculiar action. But we do know that there has been effected an important merger of British, Dutch, French, and American oil interests. We know that Thomas W. Lamont, a partner of J. P. Morgan & Co., while acting as a Government official at the Peace Conference, not only participated in the formation of the international banking consortium, but also in the formation of an international committee of twenty bankers "for the purpose of protecting, the holders of securities of the Mexican Republic and of the various railway lines of Mexico, and generally such other enterprises as have their field of action in Mexico"—to quote the words of the announcement issued from the New York office of J. P. Morgan & Co.
68
