Page:Hands off Mexico.djvu/16

 These undeniable circumstances place the tale of a Carranza plot to invade the United States in the category of a deliberate fabrication. The insolence story is equally groundless. As to Mexico assisting Germany in the late war, it is obvious that Mexico was not in a position to give assistance. Although since early in 1917 we have been repeatedly told that Carranza practiced an unneutrality favorable to Germany, not a particle of serious evidence has been brought forward to support the charge. We have the sworn testimony of our Ambassador to Mexico that he knows of no such evidence. (House Rules Committee Investigation, July 22, 1919.)

As to any one in any position of authority in Mexico imagining that we are afraid of them, or that they can whip us, the evidence is overwhelmingly against this view. The charge, indeed, is in flat contradiction with another charge, coming from the same source, that the Mexicans hate us. For hate is the child of fear; if the Mexicans hate us, it is because they fear us, not, because they think they can whip us. It is in contradiction with another assertion, also from the same source, that the Mexicans would welcome intervention. If they would welcome intervention, would it not be, rather, because they loved us, instead of because they hated us?

Coming down to our second group of assertions, how can it be said that rebels or bandits control a greater part of Mexico, when it is admitted (as it has to be and is admitted) that they do not control any railroad, any sea or land port, any State capital, any large city or town, in any part of the Republic, and when the Carranza Administration is in possession of all of these, and is discharging the functions of government in every State and city?

While no plebiscite has been taken to determine whether Mexicans would or would not welcome intervention, an ordinary appreciation of human nature and human history is sufficient to furnish a pretty confident answer to that question. The impulse of human kind everywhere is toward self-government, not toward subjection to others. No nation in the past has ever chosen or desired to be governed by another one. Nor has any alien people ever shown itself satisfied to be ruled by the United States. Although, after conquering the Filipinos with the sword, we imposed, at vast expense, a system of education whose