Page:The Mexican Problem (1917).djvu/54

16 It is the problem of one civilization and one order, one rule and procedure, in contact with another civilization, another order, procedure and morality.

This is the problem belting the world. It is the problem of China, it is the problem in Egypt, it is the whole of the southern-eastern question. It is the issue that blazes in northern Europe.

Here the issue is complicated because the oncoming order finds not only one but two civilizations already in the field and more or less in conflict for four hundred years.

Governments in Europe are breaking up. Governments in Mexico are one after another breaking down; but the breakdown in Mexico has no more relation in its causes to the United States than has the European war, as the facts when ultimately presented before the American people must clearly demonstrate.

But it was not with any purpose to theorize on the Mexican problem that the writer took a trip across the country and the Gulf to Tampico and studied the resources of Mexico in the Tampico-Tuxpan oil field to get the facts of the existing