Nelson Evening Mail THURSDAY, MAY 21, 1914. MEXICO V. CIVILISATION.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVIII, Issue XLVIII, 21 May 1914, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail THURSDAY, MAY 21, 1914. MEXICO V. CIVILISATION.

THE more carefully one reads the cablegrams regarding, the disturbance in Mexico, the more one begins to realise how thin is the veneer of civilisation. It is not with the prospect of creating anything more than a purely local opinion that we make reference to the subject; but there is a point of view from which, we think, the trouble in Mexico should be considered. One of these days, if all goes well, it will "be considered from that point of view, and then there will be a brief trouble, followed by a period of political and civic decency and safety. The point to be emphasised is this :" Well into the twentieth century and the Christian era, in a country only a few days' sail from one of the most progressive nations the world has ever seen since Rome put her fiinger-prints en the then known universe, there is proceeding a struggle between two contending villains —one js called Huerta, the other "Villa. ' Both areaspirants for the political control of Mexico, each represents a certain phase of- Mexican political thought—and both are so absolutely unspeakable in the way in which they carry on their warfare that common decency demands almost entire suppression of the facts. When we learn that wholesale murder of men, combatants and non-combatants, is the most reasonable excess that is indulged in, one gets a vague but awful conception of what happens in other directions. * * *

No possible good can ever be achieved by indiscriminate slaughter, which must inevitably reflect and react on the nation as a whole, both in a physical and a moral sense. Internecine quarrels are always-"provocative of a display of the deadliest passions—the American . Civil War fully demonstrated the fact—but in the case of Mexico civilised people are looking on at a war,, between two sections of a nation which lias lost all sense of martial decency, and has reverted to the savagery which characterised their Indian ancestors, whom Cortez so ruthlessly handled when he hoisted tho flag of Spain on the shores of- the Mexican Sea* and with his mail-clad warriors founded a hard-won kingdom on a sea of blood. It is a singular and significant fact that through the centuries that have intervened, Mexico, founded by conquest as an appanage of a once great nation, whose blood permeates the greater part of the population, has enjoyed few moments of peace, that it has lived in a welter of bloodshed and revolution, that its industries, founded by the more cold-, blooded nations and their industrial representatives, have enjoyed at the best a most precarious existence, and that at the present moment no "foreigner" can ' regard himself as safe from insult, or even assassination. And America sits on the the disorderly and murderous household, and can do nothing. Why ? Because, first, of her Monroe Doctrine, which declares that she shall take no concern about the affairs of any nation or community outside her own boundaries; and, secondly, because the nations are so jealous of one another that they resent the bare suggestion that any or one should even establish a "sphere of influence" which might possibly disturb what is known as the "balance of power." * * *

It socms so pitifully absurd, such a grotesque comment on our twentieth century civilisation. If civilisation was spelt with a capital C it would take Mexico and the Mexicans by the back of the neck, appoint a Board of Control composed of representatives of the Great Powers, take entire charge of the country, imprison, or deport, or otherwise render useless the bloodthirsty fiends who are Jcrimsoning ithat ,'ma/gruficent country with the blood of innocent or

misguided enthusiasts; impress on them the fact that the age of slaughter and rapine, and violation as between contending political aspirants and parties has gone for good; that the rest of the civilised world has no time for a people which, is unable to adjust its differences decently _; and that if there is to be war it must be conducted on reasonable lines. Also, the Powers might give Mexico to understand that they forbid internecine conflicts; that Mexico, with its oil wells and silver mines, and vast industrial output in many other directions, shall not Be converted into a cockpit merely because one ambitious "General" is jealous of the pretensions of a rival aspirant for Presidential honours—that, in the eyes of the civilised countries, such a pretension does not contribute a "casus belli," and that if they want to quarrel they can do it much more cheaply and' expeditiously at the ballot box. In these latter days of civilisation there is no place in the nations for Mexico, or the warring Balkans, or any of the similar absurdities which present themselves through the cablegrams to every intelligent reader of a daily paper. We have not the slightest idea that anything that may be written at this end of the world may serve to bring about a happier state of affairs in that part of the universe, which was old centuries before New Zealand was discovered. But we do suggest that if the Powers have any real interest in preserving peace (which, of course, they have), they would gain and merit the praise and commendation of succeeding ages if they combined to coerce into decency those nations which are lagging so far behind in the career of progress, of which the Twentieth Century has so much cause to be proud.