"NOBODY SEEMS TO LOVE US, DO THEY, MISTER HUERTA?" "NOPE, NOBODY!" -Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer Then she adds 70 more annuities of $250,000 each, for the Salgar-Wyse concession, making a grand total of $49,946,000, and even then she would be entitled to nurse a grievance, we are told, because we will have paid her nothing at. all "for the loss of her territory or the untold injury inflicted upon her commerce by the loss of the Isthmus of Panama." She will compromize on $25,000,000, an "apology," and special privileges on the canal and the Panama railway. "It is a rather difficult matter to see," says the Seattle Post-Intelligencer naïvely, "what we are going to get for this $25,000,000. These additional millions do not seem to have any definite connection with value received. Why should not Great Britain, Germany, France and Spain chip in to help pay this, sum to Colombia?" The Indianapolis News tells what we get for our money: The treaty will, if ratified, "set this government right with Colombia and the whole of South America and with its own conscience." THERE What Is Colombia Entitled to Receive From Us? HERE seem to be very few papers that agree with the News that we should ratify the Colombia treaty just as it stands. Many of them object to what the Hearst papers call the "abject apology," and others object to the large sum to be paid. There are some willing to agree to one of these, some willing to agree to the other, but very few that are willing to agree to both. The Baltimore Sun is of the view that the payment of the money is a good business proposition because of the better feeling it will establish in other American nations. "The people of South America," it says, "will judge us more by a single act like this than by a thousand honeyed phrases of good-will." The N. Y. Journal of Commerce thinks that every decent American ought to be willing to have this country express regret for what happened, as well as to pay some sort of "a solatium" to Colombia. The Philadelphia Bulletin believes that a wrong was done Colombia and an amende honorable, in form as well as substance, should be made. The N. Y. Evening Post asserts that our government has all along admitted that some money payment should be made to reimburse Colombia for Panama's fair share of the Colombia national debt, and to satisfy her moral claim upon at east a portion of the money paid for the canal charter. Secretaries Hay, Root and Knox, it says, all took this view. But the opinion is very emphatically expressed by other journals, especially the Bull Moose journals, that Colombia is not entitled to a single cent from us. The Chicago Tribune, for instance, has this to say on the subject: "The Panama strip was a yellow-fever swamp inhabited by rebels, mosquitoes, and beach combers. The United States took this pestilential land, cleaned it, incised it, and made it a great highway of the world running past the gate of Colombia. "In proportion to population and trade, Colombia will receive more benefits from the big cut than any other country; and Colombia's only contribution to, the marriage of the oceans was to forbid the banns. "If money is to pass between the United States and Colombia because of the canal, the money should pass from Colombia to the United States." Our Share in the Secession of Panama. President F COURSE the equity in Colombia's claim lies in the degree of responsibility which rightly lies upon us for the secession of Panama. The Hay-Herran treaty had been refused ratification by the Senate of Colombia, on the ground that the constitution of that country forbade the cession of sovereign rights. There was a suspicion that Colombia was playing for time, expecting the French concession to lapse in less than a year, and to be able then to receive not only her own. share of the sum we were willing to pay for the canal rights but the share of the Frenchmen as well. Colombia demanded modification in the treaty. Roosevelt declared that no modifications of any kind would be made at that stage of the game, and said that if the treaty was not made law, our Congress would at its next session "adopt measures which every friend of Colombia would regret," the implication being that we would turn to the Nicaragua course. Thereupon Panama seceded, a sum of $300,000, it is claimed, being forwarded from some source in New York to finance the secession. Two days before the revolt was proclaimed, our secretary of the navy ordered ships to the Atlantic and Pacific ends of the Panama railroad, which was operated under special treaty guarantees, and on November 2, 1903, about twenty-four hours before the revolt actually started, this order was sent to the commanders of our warships: "Maintain free and uninterrupted transit. If interruption is threatened by armed force occupy the line of the railroad. Prevent landing of any armed force with any hostile intent, either Government or insurgent, at any point within fifty miles of Panama. Government force reported approaching the Isthmus in vessels. Prevent their landing if in your judgment the landing would precipitate a conflict." The carrying out of these instructions, it is claimed, rendered it impossible for Colombian troops to put down the revolt at once. Three days later, on November 6, the revolutionaries were recognized by our government as "the responsible government of the territory." A New Issue on Which Roosevelt [F THE treaty which Secretary Bryan has negotiated is ever approved by our Senate, there are going to be some surprised editors in the newspaper offices of the country. The N. Y. Times does not like the way in which Colombia was outwitted, and it thinks some indemnity should be paid; but the sum mentioned is "pre WHAT PRESIDENT WILSON WISHES TO DO TO MEXICO posterously large" and a formal apology is "certainly uncalled for." Secretary Bryan, according to the Boston Transcript (Rep.), has revealed a surprising indifference to the rights and dignity of the United States, and can have had but one purpose in seeking to humble this country, and that must have been to "smirch the Roosevelt administration." Colombia, in the judment of the Chicago Evening Post, merely overreached herself, and we owe her neither apology nor cash. The Washington Post calls attention to the fact that both Secretary A new dance pcpular at army posts is wig-wagged thus: One step forward; hesitate; sidestep. It is known as the "Woodrow Wilson Rag." I fear me these military men are cynics.-N. Y. Telegraph. "Professor Taft says he owes the fact that he is what he is to the spankings he received from his father." Doesn't give the voters of 1912 any credit.-Toledo Blade. 7 Hay and Secretary Root made positive and final denial that we had taken any collusive part "in fomenting or inciting the uprising on the Isthmus of Panama." The Detroit Free Press thinks that we are no more bound to pay anything to Colombia than to Spain for helping to free Cuba. If, says the Democratic Evening Post of Louisville, there is any issue on which Mr. Roosevelt can be elected President of the United States in 1916, it will be the issues that are presented in the Colombian treaty. New Mexican president must be in favor of both Federals and Constitutionalists, and yet not be in open revolt against either party. If there is such a man, he is too good a diplomat for Mexico.-Wall Street Journal. Judging from the number of times he has been reported on his "last legs," Victoriano must be built like a centipede.-Washington Post. PRESIDENT WILSON'S MEXICAN POLICY AND ITS RECENT STARTLING DEVELOPMENT DURING these months of "watchful waiting," President Wilson's Mexican policy has been far from standing still. It has expanded in a way that has startled many and terrified some. In his Mobile speech he set forth his policy as the recognition of such governments only, in South and Central America, as were established by constitutional methods. In his address to Congress on April 20, he declared our only object in Mexico to be "to restore to the people of the distracted republic the opportunity to set up again their own laws and their own government," disclaiming the desire "to control in any degree the affairs of our sister republic." He asked approval of Congress for the use of armed forces to obtain "the fullest recognition of the rights and dignity of the United States." In response Congress approved such use to enforce the demand "for unequivocal amends for affronts and indignities committed against the United States in Mexico.". Up to the time of the occupation of Vera Cruz, that was the length and breadth of the President's policy, as laid down in his public utterances, tho he had gone a step further in an ultimatum to Huerta long before when he declared that Mexico must not only elect a president by a constitutional election but must elect some one else than Huerta. When the President delivered the address at the funeral services of the marines killed at Vera Cruz, he said: "We have gone down to Mexico to serve mankind if we can find out the way," and then added: "A war of aggression is not a war in which it is a proud thing to die; but a war of service is a thing in which it is a proud thing to die." This, if taken literally instead of rhetorically, furnishes an elastic program. A "war of service" may mean almost anything. The President. proceeded a little later to open up his mind more fully on this subject. President Wilson Outlines condition of disorder." He added: "They want orderthe old order; but I say to you that the old order is dead. It is my part, as I see it, to aid in composing those differences so far as I may be able, that the new order, which will have its foundations in human liberty and human rights, shall prevail." As he proceeded, the President became more and more specific. "The function of being a policeman," he said, "has not appealed to me, nor does it appeal to our people. Our duty is higher than that. If we are to go in there, restore order and immediately get out, and invite a repetition of conflict similar to that which is in progress now, we had better have remained out." We shall not only help the Mexican people to restore order and reorganize a constitutional government, according to the President, but we shall continue "until we have satisfactory knowl IN a conversation with Samuel G. Blythe, reported in the Saturday Evening Post and widely commented. on since, President Wilson lays down a Mexican policy that goes far beyond his original outlines. Every movement for liberty, he says, has come from underneath, from the people. In the struggle in Mexico, every demand for order has meant order for the benefit of the old-time régime, "for the aristocrats, for the vested interests, for the men who are responsible for this very "HOW DO YOU THINK MY 'MAKING OF A MAN' WOULD GO IN MEXICO CITY?" -Cesare in N. Y. Sun edge... that the way is open for the peaceful reorganization of that harassed country." We shall watch them narrowly, leaving them to work out their own destiny, but "insisting that they shall take help when help is needed." He elaborated this idea, as follows: "It is not my intention, having begun this enterprize, to, turn back-unless I am forced to do so-until I have assurances that the great and crying wrongs the people have endured are in process of satisfactory adjustment. Of course it would not do for us to insist on an exact procedure for the partition of the land, for example, for that would set us up in the position of dictators, which we are not and never shall be; but it is not our intention to cease in our friendly offices until we are assured that all these matters are on their way to successful settlement." THE The Land Question the Dominant HE dominant issue in Mexico, as Americans are rapidly coming to view it, is the land question. Henry George, if he were still living, would gloat over the recognition that question is receiving as the center and source of Mexico's difficulties. John Reed, who has been trailing the Constitutionalist army, writes in the Metropolitan as follows on this subject: "It is common to speak of the Madero revolution, the Orozco revolution, the Zapata revolution, and the Carranza revolution. As a matter of fact, there is and has been only one revolution in Mexico. It is a fight primarily for land. The peons followed any man who proposed any remedy for the reform of existing conditions, no matter how inadequate. Madero's plan, written in prison at San Luis Potosi, raised a nation in arms because it emphasized the distribution of land." Zapata, we are told by Mr. Reed, is not and never has been in accord with Carranza, because the latter has carefully avoided the land question. The relations between Carranza and Villa are strained for the same reason. In the state of Chihuahua Villa gave to each adult male citizen 621⁄2 acres of land to be inalienable for a period of ten years. That is one of the reasons, according to the Washington correspondent of the N. Y. Times, why Villa stands so high in Washington and why Carranza is distrusted. For the program which Washington has in mind, according to the Washington correspondent of the N. Y. Sun, "contemplates a radical reorganization of the present system of landholding in Mexico." The Springfield Republican calls attention to the fact that one private estate in Mexico is as large as the state of Connecticut, and there are others on a similar scale. The present plight of Mexico, in the judgment of Charles R. Flint, who has done business with that country on a large scale for many years, is the result of a greed for land, wealth and power on the part of the governing classes. "They wanted too much," he says; "they didn't know when to stop." Peace, he holds, can come only with a rearrangement of the whole scheme of land-tenure. "Most Alarming Pronouncement Ever Made by an American business is it of ours what may be the size of landed estates in any other country?" Suppose, it goes on to say, we object in the near future to the size of the land-grants to railways in Canada. Will it be our duty to inform the Canadian government that they must stop that sort of thing? Or, remarks the Philadelphia Ledger, suppose England had insisted after our civil war that the large plantations of the South should be divided up among emancipated slaves and had sent over her fleet and army to see that it be done. The Ledger regards the President's statement of his purposes as "the most alarming pronouncement ever made by an American President." It says: "He proposes to take the land from those who have come into possession of it lawfully and legally, and to divide it up among the unlanded masses. Were he to attempt in this country what he plans and demands for another country, in the internal affairs of which he is an intruder, his impeachment or revolution would immediately follow. "When men who have disfranchized the negro deliberately propose to enfranchize the peon who is immeasurably less fitted for the ballot than the American colored man, to turn over to him a nation, to confiscate and distribute to him the lands, they are without standing in argument, and the sincerity of their political policies at home cannot exist unless they are insincere in their program for Mexico." The N. Y. Sun is almost equally emphatic. Will the common sense of this country, it asks, be willing to upset in Mexico conditions which it is bound to perpetuate in this country? It continues: "Will the citizens of this great nation cheerfully give blood and lives that the forces ordinarily employed on the north of the Rio Grande to protect property rights shall be used on the south to destroy them? Land in Mexico, our Washington informants solemnly inform us, is inequitably divided. Is it equitably divided anywhere? If the peace of Mexico is dependent upon expropriation, do the Tannenbaums, Bouck Whites and Becky Edelsons of our own backyard see any other solution for the injustice and unfairness of present conditions than the division of property or the expropriation by the State of all property?" Is It Any Business of Ours What Mexico's Land System Is? AS NO plan for the redistribution of land in Mexico has up to this time been advanced for discussion, and as President Wilson has, indeed, disowned any intention of trying to dictate any such plan, the discussion on the subject is a little blind. It is evident that much. depends on the plan itself and upon the way in which it is imposed upon Mexico-whether by force or per suasion. The San Francisco Chronicle calls attention to the fact that the Mexican government itself is a very large land-owner, and can do something in the way of redistribution without confiscation of private property. Then an absolutely just system of taxation would of itself be sufficient to enforce a large measure of subdivision. According to a statement printed and circulated by the agents of the Constitutionalists in this country, the present system of land-consolidation in Mexico was caused by the unjust rates of taxation WHILE there is little or no dissent from this diag- imposed by the Diaz government, by which the large of Mexico's complaint, there is strenuous objection to Uncle Sam's taking upon himself the cure of the disease. "Will our neighbors kindly answer this simple question," pleads the Hartford Courant: "What estates pay but ten per cent. of the taxes and the small land-owners pay ninety per cent. This system of taxation forced the small owners to give up their lands and out of it have come the present woes of Mexico. ROMAN CATHOLIC THREAT TO BOYCOTT THE SAN FRANCISCO FAIR The abolition of the system, such is the conclusion we are expected to draw, would restore the land to the peons and end the woes that have led to the series of revolutions. As for the general purpose of President Wilson to see that some settlement of this question be obtained, he is not without defenders. The N. Y. World, for instance, referring to the system of peonage and land-monopoly, has this to say: "Not since the United States government under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln destroyed human slavery has it undertaken a nobler mission than the emancipation of the Mexican masses from a tyranny that is little better than slavery." And the Springfield Republican,. in reply to the question, What business is it of ours what Mexico's land-system is like? says the question should read, "What business is it of ours how frequent or how easy is revolution in a neighboring state?" This question, it thinks, answers itself. President Wilson, it reminds us, is not attempting to pacify Mexico or to reform its land-system by force. The Mediation Conference Expands Its Scope. IN THE meantime the situation not only in Mexico but in the United States as well is dependent in large measure on the success of the Mediation Conference in Niagara Falls. If it fails to meet the situation, it is evident that the President's Mexican policy will be a point of attack-perhaps the main point of By the time mediation has accomplished anything many of the soldier boys will have grown too old for military service. Toledo Blade. 9 attack in the coming congressional campaign. The sessions of the conference during the past month have been attended by all sorts of guesses day by day. The one important development that seems to be definitely determined so far is the conclusion of the conference to take up matters entirely beyond the scope first outlined. The immediate issue between the United States and Huerta no longer constitutes the main subject of consideration. Mexico's internal conditions as well as her foreign relations are to be considered, in spite of the protest made at first by Carranza. This, it is evident, gives to the conference an importance far beyond that first attaching to it. "The question now," as the Indianapolis News observes, "is not one of saluting the American flag, or intervention, or of recognizing either Huerta or the Constitutionalists, but of bringing permanent peace to Mexico under a settled government established by the people themselves. And, in addition, this great end is to be brought about with the help of three great American powers whose interests are, as are ours, wholly American." If the conference succeeds on this larger plan, the President's victory, says the News, will be one of world-wide importance. By the middle of last month, however, the outlook for the conference had become very uncertain, and every day was bringing rumors of an impending break between Huerta's delegates and the delegates of the United States, on the choice of a provisional president. The search of myth literature has begun in educational circles. A beginning will be made with the Baltimore platform.-Los Angeles Times. THE SHADOW OF ROMAN ANTI-CLERICALISM OVER ROMAN dailies of the anticlerical type follow with interest the rise and progress of the Roman Catholic campaign in this country against Italy's commissioner to our Panama world's fair. Nothing is less likely to the Rome Tribuna than a request for the resignation of Signor Ernesto Nathan, one of the most famous of living Romans. Whenever visitors arrive in the eternal city, observes the London Post, they ask about three persons-the Pope, the King and Signor Nathan. The Jew became a figure of international renown when he was chosen Mayor of Rome. When, several years ago, the anticlericals obtained for the first time since 1870 a majority in the town council they were greatly embarrassed. Their ranks were practically destitute of men experienced in municipal administration. Don Scipio Borghese, a great noble of radical views, refused the civic chair. Commendatore Vanni, the leader of the anticlerical combination of monarchical democrats, republicans and socialists, followed that example. There remained no one more eligible to the factions in power than Ernesto Nathan. As a Jew and as a former master of Freemasons, he was, however, peculiarly odious to the Vatican. He was famed for his success in business and for his scrupulous honesty. Signor Nathan in a Controversy BEFORE Signor Nathan had been long in the civic chair of Rome, his utterances in public were a source of agitation to the Vatican. The Pope, in reply to one anticlerical speech delivered by the Mayor of Rome on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the fall of the temporal power of the papacy, addressed a letter to an exalted ecclesiastic saying he wished to express his profound sorrow. The Pope said that Signor Nathan, as a public official, was not satisfied with solemnly recalling the anniversary of the day on which the sacred rights of pontifical sovereignty were trampled upon, but also dared to offend the doctrines of the Roman Catholic faith, the Vicar of Christ and the church itself. "Signor Nathan," the Pope added, "aimed directly at our spiritual jurisdiction, denouncing with impunity and to public contempt the acts of our apostolic ministry." The letter further denounced as blasphemous the words used or alleged to have been used by Signor Nathan against the divine essence of the Church and against the veracity of its dogmas and the authority of its councils, offending the religious feeling of the faithful. Against this "accumulation of impieties" the Pope protested, calling the attention of the whole world to the constant and ever growing offenses against religion which, His Holiness complained, are perpetrated in the very see of the Roman Pontiff. How Signor Nathan Further LITTLE time was lost by Signor Nathan in replying to the Pope's rebuke. The Pope, declared the Mayor of Rome, by sending from the Vatican thunders against him who sits at the capitol renders still more evident the theme of the Mayor's speech-the contrast THE JEW ON WHOSE ACCOUNT ROMAN CATHOLICS THREATEN A PANAMA FAIR BOYCOTT Ernesto Nathan, while mayor of Rome, involved himself in a controversy with the Vatican which has been transferred to this country because of his selection to represent Italy in San Francisco. between the Rome of the past and the Rome of the present. "I am not the author," proceeded Signor Nathan, "of a plan to banish from schools and seminaries the whole of the daily press, nor have I imagined condemnations of Christian democracy, the modernists and Sillonists and all those who are anxiously seeking the faith which reconciles the intellect and the heart, tradition and evolution, science and religion." Signor Nathan asserted furthermore that he had not failed in respect for other people's beliefs or lacked regard for the Pontiff as a man called to the highest office who "within the limits of his heart and intellect sacrifices his whole being for love of good according to the dictates of his conscience." Signor Nathan went on to say that as the supreme Pontiff from the height of the chair of St. Peter has a duty to tell the truth as it seems to him, so also the Mayor of Rome, in view of the breach which ended the temporal power, has an equal duty before his fellow citizens to delineate the new political and civil era. The offense taken by the Pope did not arise from the words of Signor Nathan, according to the latter, but from facts which are advancing inevitably-the dawning day of a new Italy. Facts guiding the peoples of the earth are ruled by laws governing the universe, above pontiff and mayor alike. "If I have offended against religion," concluded the Mayor, "my tranquil conscience without any intermediary will answer before God." Such was the course of a typical incident in the feud between Nathan and the Vatican. Ten to one that the Colonel's river is the paramount plank in the next Progressive platform.-N. Y. World. Nathan as Mayor of Rome Shocks the Cultured. ART and archaeology were objects of a contempt to Signor Nathan which he made no effort to conceal while Mayor of Rome. He looked at all questions, according to the Tribuna, from a purely utilitarian point of view. He referred to eminent sculptors who criticized his scheme as "the usual artists." He provoked a pandemonium among the scholars and aesthetes with his plan to join the three capitoline palaces. "Michael Angelo," said Signor Nathan in reply, "altered other people's buildings. Why should I not alter his?" The period of office of Signor Nathan, in addition to being a quarrel with the Vatican, became as well a long dispute with the artists. He said to a reporter once: "I will not embalm Rome." In a word, as the London Post remarks, he had all the qualities requisite in a mayor of New York or London. Rome required somewhat different ideals. He was an object of constant mockery to the Rome Travase which cartooned him as accompanied by an interpreter bearing an English-Italian phrase book. His most extraordinary utterance, perhaps, was an attack upon the Oecumenical Council of 1870, this speech leading to an acrimonious controversy between him and the Mayor of Montreal. He told a congress of archaeologists that "Rome is not a museum but a modern city." He even addressed a mixed French audience on the folly of beatifying Joan of Arc. DE Why Signor Nathan Was Made ESPITE his advanced years, Signor Nathan is deemed abroad the most energetic as well as the ablest man of business in all Italy. The very limitations he displayed while Mayor of Rome were the defects of business traits. His tireless energy, his incorruptibility and his efficient administration are vouched for by the Roman correspondent of the London Post, who came into frequent contact with him. Of late years, concedes this observer, Signor Nathan's great popularity with the Roman masses had declined. The eternal city has municipal street cars, thanks to Signor Nathan, but she has suffered the mutilation of her Aurelian walls. Himself a foreigner by birth, he has more than once expressed the opinion-not shared by the tradesmenthat Rome should cease to live by foreigners and become an industrial city like Milan. He lacked what the Paris Gaulois terms the "historical spirit," the offense he gave the Vatican being acute and long continued. It seemed natural to the authorities at the Quirinal to bestow upon so renowned a man of affairs such an appointment as that which gives Signor Nathan his representative position at the Panama world's fair in San Francisco. He knows Italian commerce thoroughly. He is an expert on the state of Italian industry. It is incorrect, according to information reaching the Tribuna, to affirm that the Vatican will order any boycott of the Panama exposition. Members of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States may refuse to patronize the affair in any capacity. Organizations within the Church have passed resolutions in this sense, the demand for the retirement of Signor Nathan being already loud and emphatic. The Italian government, according to the Roman daily, will not ask for his resignation. New slogan for the Prohibition party: "Dare to be a Daniels!" Boston Transcript. |