The Mexican Problem (1917)/Why No Aid For Mexico?
CHAPTER V
WHY NO AID FOR MEXICO?
It is difficult to interest the people of the United States in the sufferings of the people of Mexico when our sympathies and pocketbooks are engaged in behalf of five million men in the hospitals of Europe, six million in prison camps, and seven million war cripples, a total of eighteen million daily sufferers, all making the strongest appeals through war-relief movements organized in the United States.
This is an appalling number of sick, maimed, and in prison, aggregating more than the total population of Mexico. There are forty million more headed in the same direction and behind there must be two hundred million in suffering families.
This is the only explanation I can give for the dulled and deaf ears upon which fall the appeals in the name of humanity to give sympathetic aid to the people of Mexico now adrift in political, financial, and social seas with no chart or compass and no directing voice except that of President Wilson, who declares, "They must fight it out among themselves."
GERMAN TROUBLES
Nobody in this country desires any military intervention in Mexico, and the only thing that can at the present time invite it would be the German activities. All governments and forms of government in Mexico must understand the danger in this. German dynamite would do more damage to rulers and would-be rulers in Mexico than it would to the military forces of the United States.
It is said that the new Carranza constitution, with its confiscatory measures, in effect May 1, 1917, is primarily an attack upon Spanish, British, French, and Belgian interests in Mexico and only incidentally an attack upon the interests of citizens of the United States in that country.
While the new constitution decrees that there shall be no retroactive measures it declares that all wealth beneath the surface, mineral and oil, is the property of the State.
THE NEW CONSTITUTION
There are also provisions in the new constitution dealing with the amounts of land any one individual or corporation may own. No foreign corporation may acquire land or property or water rights within fifty kilometres of the seacoast or within one hundred kilometres of the border. Any outside corporation desiring to acquire property in Mexico must under the new constitution renounce all foreign citizenship in relation to that property and agree to be subject to the constitution and laws of Mexico without right of appeal.
It will thus be seen that under the new constitution the way is open for the reigning powers in Mexico to deal with foreign interests pretty much as they please. There are unlimited powers of taxation, regulation, and of decrees concerning ownership, and the penalty for noncompliance is confiscation.
The result to British, French, Belgian, United States, and all other foreign interests must be steadily exerted "pressure," and it may be assumed that this "pressure" will be exerted far enough to produce revenues and regulations looking toward nationalization of present foreign-owned properties. WAR ALLIANCES MAY HELP IN MEXICO
But self-interests or the law of self-preservation will cause a halt when the "pressure" faces danger in the powers of resistance.
The safety for foreign interests in the present situation is the entry of the United States into the war as an ally of Great Britain. All the allies are, therefore, now joined in the protection of the British naval oil base in Mexico.
General Joffre and that calmly poised, well-balanced brain of statesmanship in Balfour, with their military and economic associates, on the soil of the United States, mean very much for Mexico. Joffre, the heart of France touching the heart of America, and Balfour, the farsighted, economic statesman, link the civilizations of two continents in a way that means not only peace for Europe, but peace for Mexico.
Balfour declared two years ago, when I was in England: "The world needs industrial Germany; that must not be crushed, but Prussian militarism must be blotted out that the true Germany may live." This will soon be the sentiment of the entire globe, and Mexico will not be neglected in the enfolding arms of a future universal peace. MEXICAN PRESSURE
How Mexico "is pressing foreign interests" is illustrated in a decree from Mexico City more than doubling all the taxes on oil. The big English company and the Oil Fields of Mexico Company, incorporated in New Jersey, but selling its oil to Lord Cowdray's concern, have each in their concessions the promise of immunity from export tax for fifty years. They and all other companies are now paying about five cents per barrel American gold as an export tax, and by national decree must from May 1, 1917, pay about eleven cents per barrel export tax, or nearly twenty per cent of the gross value of the crude oil as exported. The average price of exported oil at the coast I figure is about sixty cents per barrel. Many contracts are higher and many are lower. Many interior oil wells would be glad to sell at ten cents per barrel to anybody who would build a pipe line to them.
The decree also places an export tax of one cent a gallon on crude gasolene and of one half-cent a gallon on refined gasolene. Some of the late contracts for export, notably those of the Mexican Petroleum Company, have a proviso that the buyers under contract must pay any increased taxes. The British interests have paid their taxes under protest and will probably continue so to do. This is another claim mounting up at Mexico City and Washington, for it will be filed at both places.
THE PEACE OF CARRANZA
The claim is constantly made from Mexico City that Carranza has quieted Mexico except in mountain regions or distant places and should have financial support from the United States. Without desiring to make trouble, let me narrate some instances that refute this claim.
Riding on a flat car toward Cerro Azul in March, 1917, and within two hundred miles of the City of Mexico, the telegraph poles were noted upon which, a few days preceding, the anti-Carranzistas had hanged six Indians in reprisal for the raid of their tribe upon a village near by. The claim was that the Carranzista people had given this Indian tribe arms and enabled them to raid, pillage, and burn the village of Amatlan, the ruins of which were visible on the mountain side as we passed on the railroad a few miles away.
This apparently had been the largest native city or village between Tampico and Tuxpan. I have never been able to find any account in the papers of its destruction, but the report at the railroad station was that Amatlan contained three hundred and fifty Mexican families, nearly of all whom perished. Those who were not shot were burned in the firing of the village.
Yet on this trip I met only two soldiers and two rifles; one an anti-Carranzista guard at a railroad station, and the other a picturesque anti-Carranzista general who rode with our party through the hills after we left the railroad train. It was said that he had associated with him thousands of anti-Carranzistas.
When the government troops appear, the rebels are just plain Mexican people with no arms and no organization. When the army divides into small bodies, the plain Mexican people are suddenly in the bush with plenty of cartridges and the government soldiers are ambushed or perhaps given opportunity to change sides.
Similarly, when the soldiers surround the opposition, the anti-Carranzistas are either recruited or shot. It is astonishing how many Mexican prisoners, when the question is asked, "Carranzista or anti-Carranzista?" will respond 
"anti-Carranzista" and receive their dose of cold lead without a murmur. Those who respond "Carranzista" are handed a musket.
In the latter part of April, 1917, I received word that a personal friend of mine, the manager of one of the oil companies in Mexico, had that month had a terrible experience. He started from the coast for the City of Mexico, going first north to Monterey, as the southern railroad route was interrupted by disorder. On the main line, and nearer Mexico City than the northern boundary, the escorted train was assaulted by one hundred brigands, and thirty of the passengers and their defenders were killed. There can be no denial of my report. But I have again had the news records of this country searched only to find that no one has now any interest to gather or print such news.
Carranza is still appealing for financial help north, south, east, and west when he should ask the military cooperation of the United States.