Page:Hands off Mexico.djvu/51

 of all of northern Mexico. Villa had just taken Torreon. Gonzales had taken Victoria and was in the act of taking Monterrey. Obregon, in the Northwest, had just won a series of victories. Tampico was near the point of surrender. Huerta was already doomed.

There are those, indeed, who hold that the American invasion gave Huerta a new lease of life. For the first time bona fide volunteers came to Huerta's recruiting stations. A member of the Huerta cabinet repaired to the penitentiary, made a speech to the imprisoned deputies (of the Madero Congress), and set them free.

"If it is a question of supporting Huerta against a foreign invasion, then we will support Huerta," these deputies agreed.

"Had Huerta attacked the Americans we would have supported him," one of these deputies told the writer. "But when, instead of sending the volunteers toward Vera Cruz, he shipped them North, we saw through his game. Had the invasion come two months sooner, all Mexico might have combined to resist the Americans. As it was, the occupation of Vera Cruz did not hasten by a day the fall of Victoriano Huerta."

Perhaps the final proof that, in going down to Vera Cruz, Wilson was not concerned solely with ridding Mexico of Huerta, is found in the fact that the expedition lingered after he had gone. Huerta fled from Mexico July 15. The evacuation of Vera Cruz was not ordered until November 14—four months later.

Is it conceivable that Wilson did not go down to Vera Cruz either to get the flag saluted, to help the Constitutionalists, or even to hurry the fall of Huerta, but that the occupation was one maneuver in a scheme to dictate who should succeed Huerta—and under what conditions?

 

12.

WILSON AND THE BANDIT VILLA

In his Message of April 20, the President had said: "If armed conflict should unhappily come. . . we would be fighting only General Huerta."

Then why that four months? 