AMERICA AND MEXICO

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 84, 8 April 1916, Page 16

AMERICA AND MEXICO

INTERVENTION. PROSPECTS.

"The theory- that pacification of Mexico under American intervention would be a very serious business from a military standpont is, we think, a mere bogey. It might have been so," writes the Argonaut, "during the troubles immediately following the fall of Diaz, for at that time the country was resourceful, and all of its elements were united! in sentimental devotion to.the ideal of national independence. But with process of time and progress of events, the situation is not what it was. The Mexican resource of four or five years ago is now a nonexistent quantity. Stagnation of industry, the wastes of war, paralysis of confidence—these have destroyed the once vital sentiment of Mexican nationality. The more potent men of the country are in exile. What is left of the wealth of Mexico would welcome intervention. The intelligence of the country, formerly arrayed in protest, would now join its counsels on the side of intervention. The poverty of the revolutionary masses, no matter how fanatically inspired,' would make them helpless against organised force; and in a country which knows no loyalty, apprehension and capture of the revolutionary leaders would be easy. We venture the prophecy that American armies marching from El Paso south,, and from Vera Cruz west, to Mexico City would be more welcomed than opposed. And once in possession of the capital there would follow a mere mosquito warfare in' which a few hundreds or thousands of native rurales, properly organised and directed, would speedily overcome armed opposition. The time and the condition conspire to make a situation in a military sense as in other respects favourable to intervention. But intervention must be no half-hearted affair. It must not, after the fashion of the irate householder in M'Guffy's spelling book, deal with tufts of grass. It must proceed under definite and fixed purpose, and in obviously overwhelming force."