Page:Hands off Mexico.djvu/24

 interventionist lies and one of the most easily provable as such, as will be demonstrated in due course. The present Mexican Government is certainly far more acceptable to the Mexican people than any government foreigners might set up. Having overthrown the present government, therefore, and having set up our "stable government," what would become of the latter the moment we attempted to withdraw? It would either fall or it would find a revolution on its hands. It would prove to be unstable. We could insure its stability only by remaining and supporting it with arms.

Once it is admitted that the present government and its policies would be preferred to the substitute that we would attempt to impose, or that any considerable fraction of the Mexican people would for any reason resent our interference, it must also be admitted that nothing short of a protracted military occupation, accompanied by ruthless warfare against the party now dominant, and against all other nationalistic or patriotic elements, would be required before we would be able to assert the authority that we would have to assert in order to carry out any program of "rehabilitation" that is advocated.

The idea that we could "set up a stable government" in Mexico and then withdraw is a delusion. The idea that we could remain and establish a regime that would benefit the Mexican people is equally a delusion. It is hardly beneficial to a country to kill thousands of its most intelligent and progressive citizens, which would certainly be done.

Nor is there any reason to believe that the government we would impose would be any more honest, democratic, or in any way more beneficent than the government that we would overthrow.

The governments that we set up in Haiti and Santo Domingo are military despotisms. There is no freedom of speech or of the press, no political liberty of any kind.

In Nicaragua, which we have absolutely controlled since 1912, conditions are quite as bad. We essayed to set up a "stable government" in this "sister Republic." The only way we have found to keep it "stable" is to keep the population forever under our guns. Under our beneficent rule the Nicaraguans have no freedom of expression, no political liberty of any sort. The