what has happened in their cases may be cited as an illustration of the sorts of wrongs that many; foreigners have had to endure.
The list is too long to be recounted at length. Its details are often of too refined a brutality to allow public discussion. They are eloquent testimony that a government that was unable to stop the mounting total of crimes within its territory for practically a decade, let a large part of its people get out of hand and was apparently unable to reduce them to control. The details of what happened in the country are portrayed in letters, telegrams, memorials, and records of personal experience, speeches presented in Congress and testimony before Congressional committees. The record is revolting. As reported to the Congress of the United States, it includes robbery, extortion, holding for ransom, plunder, burning of property without cause, murder by various means, including throat-cutting, disemboweling, beheading, and mutilation. It includes forcing severely wounded women to cook for soldiers, and outrage of wives and children in the presence of wounded or bound husbands and parents.[1]
Nor is it to be supposed that the wrongs against for-
- ↑ See, for speeches detailing wrongs of the sorts cited. Congressional Record, vol. 51, part 4, p. 3743, February 21, 1914, and part 5, p. 4512, March 9, 1914. Detailed testimony concerning conditions in Mexico as they affect the rights of foreigners is published in Investigation of Mexican Affairs, Hearing before a Sub-committee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 66th Congress, 1st Session, pursuant to S. Res. 106, parts 1-3, pp. 1-677. The violation of personal rights is discussed, especially at pages 370-402.
