any clash between Mexican and American forces. Our soldiers and civilians in border towns were killed by bullets from contesting factions in Mexico but our armed forces were forbidden to return the shots. Eighteen American citizens were killed in El Paso, about a score of soldiers and civilians at Naco, and numbers at other points.
No Mexican can understand or appreciate the sort of forbearance with which our Government under both Republican and Democratic administrations has treated the invasion of the rights of our citizens on the border. Instead of interpreting it as an exercise of patience and consideration for the Mexican people, they have regarded it as a manifestation of cowardice and it has merely encouraged them to further invasions of our rights. Shortly after the killing of our soldiers at Carrizal and because it was not followed by the punishment of those who were guilty of that crime, a prominent paper in an interior Mexican city published an article in which it was said that the experience at Carrizal showed how easily a Mexican army could march through American territory to Washington, and dwelt with some gusto upon the wealth of loot that would reward such an expedition.
As a result of the course which our Government had adopted for some time after it recognized the Carranza regime as the de facto government of
