Page:Mexico under Carranza.djvu/187

Rh satisfy their commander that they had stolen everything there was to take. The oil fields offer a happy hunting ground for robbers in uniform or out of it, because money is more plentiful there than elsewhere, as the petroleum industry is about the only one left in anything approximating full operation.

Probably no better statement of outrages upon the persons of Americans could be made than that contained in the letter of our Secretary of State of June 20, 1916, addressed to the "Secretary of Foreign Relations of the de facto government of Mexico." This letter was provoked by a most impudent communication addressed by C. Aguilar, Secretary of Foreign Relations of the Carranza régime, which the United States had recognized as the de facto government of Mexico, to Secretary of State Lansing, in which the writer accused our Government of bad faith in sending troops into Mexico to apprehend bandits who had invaded our country and murdered our citizens. The letter of Secretary Lansing in reply is probably one of the most remarkable documents ever framed by an officer of a responsible government in the showing that it made of tame submission to outrages upon its citizens. The only consolation for an American citizen in the whole dismal recital is found in the evident burning indignation of the Secretary of State at the existence of