Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/290

272 to "'49" or discuss it as a year, the events of which are a source of national grief and a warning of what may again be expected. The agents of Germany in the World War thought the feeling still of sufficient potency to justify holding out before Mexico the possibility of a revanche. It may be doubted whether this sentiment runs as deeply as some would have us believe. Mexico does remember that the United States was her enemy in the middle of the nineteenth century, more keenly than she remembers the service rendered her by the same nation some two decades later, but she would not do so if there were not other elements contributing to her regret for losing the little-settled and less-governed wilderness that she lost in her war with the United States.

The underlying causes of Mexican-American distrust fall into three overlapping groups—human, physical, and governmental. Of the first the most important is the contrast of race. The attitude of the people of the United States toward the less-developed races has never been a friendly one. It has lacked the tolerance which the British have developed for the peoples with whom they have come into contact.

The problem has been more difficult in America, because it has been a closer one. Except in the Philippines, the less-developed peoples with whom the United States has had to deal have been within its body politic or upon its edges. There has not been any clear-cut class distinction, recognized by both sides, such as has established the relation of "superior" and "inferior" in most of the cases where Anglo-Saxon populations have come into contact with non-Europeans outside of