Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/240

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204
Mexico of the Mexicans

with agents of all types, representing the plundering interests. The city itself is a vigorous frontier town of reasonable wholesomeness. Cientificos, Clericos, concessionaires, and vultures of every kind are now there awaiting the word to pounce upon Mexico. Should the United States troops be withdrawn/' Dr. Jordan said, " there would be little danger of a lapse into the internal strife of the last few years in Mexico. Revolutions cannot turn backward/' he concluded.

Professor Roscoe R. Hill, of the University of Mexico, when lecturing on inter-American relations at the University of California during the 1916 summer session, said that three things were at the basis of the present crisis: "The concession of Porfirio Diaz to American and other outside interests; the land and labour problem, with monopoly on the one hand and the abasement of the lower classes on the other hand, and lastly, the failure of Diaz to educate the people. Diaz gave Mexico thirty years of peace, and this did much for business; but, as regards the conditions of the peons, he left them as he found them. Madero was a reformer and an idealist, Huerta a reactionary, and Carranza is attempting to carry out Madero's policy."

Dr. Hill urged an organised study of Mexico and South American countries: "Travel, the exchange of students and professors, scientific conferences, and better views will," he said, "bring about better understanding and feeling. To understand a people is to sympathise with it. The Mexicans are essentially no more barbarous than we are."

Reviewing something of the history of Mexico as this has affected the present situation, in an address before the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, Dr. Hill said—

"Naturally the present condition is not the result of a day. Its explanation must be sought not only in the movement that led to the overthrow of Diaz, not only in the Diaz regime itself, but as far back as the Spanish colonial period. During the colonial epoch, the Spaniard maintained a policy of