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260 that made their properties Mexican in the sense that they could not appeal to their home governments for protection. If the owners refused to comply with the law, their properties were forfeited. If they did comply with the law, the result was the same.

Against these actions by the Mexican government, the United States, Great Britain, Holland, and France protested. The American note, dated April 2, 1918, declared that the Government of the United States would not object to fair taxation nor to taking of the property of its citizens for true public use if proper compensation were made, but it could not "acquiesce in any procedure ostensibly or nominally in the form of taxation or the exercise of eminent domain, but really resulting in the confiscation of private property and arbitrary deprivation of vested rights." The proposed taxes, in themselves, were so heavy as to indicate a trend in the direction of confiscation, but the more serious question was the apparent attempt of the decree to separate ownership of the surface from ownership of the petroleum resources under the surface of the land. It was pointed out that the taking of the rights in question would be accomplished by executive action, without judicial process and apparently without any proof that the "separation of mineral rights from surface rights is a matter of public utility upon which the right of expropriation depends." The note concluded:

In the absence of the establishment of any procedure looking to the prevention of spoliation of American citizens and in the absence of any assurance, were such procedure established, that it would not uphold in defiance of international law and justice