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210 prepared; and the least which can happen in these circumstances will be that, urged on by European interests, it will be inclined to intervene with arms under pretext of claims or on some other pretext which chance will not fail to provide.

"Perhaps you," says the memorial in another place, "with the excessive confidence which is the natural consequence of triumph, and occupied as you are with the immense task of bringing order out of our national chaos, cannot take due account of the conditions which hourly menace our nationality. We, however, who are living in this foreign atmosphere, with eyes and heart intent upon everything which in any manner affects our country, can easily see the ebb and flow of opinion. And it is momentarily more sceptical of us, momentarily less tolerant of our foibles, to the extent that there are already not a few who consider the Mexicans outside the circle in which Lorimer placed the civilised peoples. These even attempt to deny our country, because of its prolonged intestine struggles, the right to the immunities ascribed to free States in international law.

"Before the court of foreign opinion our moral bankruptcy is as complete as our economic. Justly or unjustly, it is a fact that we have been losing all our prestige as a people capable of self-government. Our imprudences and our excesses have caused all politicians to judge us as without honour and without patriotism, our own intemperance in judging one another perhaps contributing no little to this lamentable result."

The writers declare that there is only one way by which Carranza may forestall the destructive tendencies which are at work against Mexico, both within and without the country, and that is by complying immediately with the constitutional provisions. Now, they say, is the opportune time to call a convention and set the machinery to work for the establishment of a legal government.

The memorialists were not far wrong in their observation regarding the "effervescence," noticeable in the United