the result of our present interference, notwithstanding the Alphabet of Mediation. He says at the end of his long analysis and history: "these remarks seem to me pertinent because I believe that the United States will be compelled to take control of Mexico."

And as to Carranza and Villa, the constitutional leaders, will their recognition-apart from such expiatory regrets it may bring to the heart of the murderer Huerta-be more desirable in the sense of putting to rest the Mexican devil? Will it altogether gratify the American people? The matter is tersely put by Mr. Bell: "there was war in Mexico, and the United States seriously hampered one of the contending parties, while giving important support to the other. It would appear, at the date of this writing, that nothing more need be done to insure the triumph of the Constitutionalists; and that, when this shall have been achieved, the United States must interfere to deprive Carranza and Villa of the usual rewards of victory, or must permit a government to be set up by them and their adherents. Having gone so far with these men, President Wilson can hardly turn his back upon them. The obligations incurred cannot be evaded by mediation. By supporting the Constitutionalists the United States has become responsible in part for their fortunes and their behavior. Despoiled Europeans are recognizing this; so are their governments."

This is a disquieting statement.

Mr. Bell's book is not confessedly, but none the less is plainly, an advocacy of Francisco I. Madero, Jr., and its references to the American Ambassador, Henry Lane. Wilson, no less thinly veil the author's condemnation and inculpation of the American representative. Madero was the victim of circumstances, of plots, of lies; "around

this unfortunate man there was formed a net-work of conspiracies, interwoven at certain points deliberately by men who understood what they were doing, at other points by blunderers; and wherever there were two loose ends the fingers of the fates tied them together." In these conspiracies the hand of Henry Lane Wilson is descried.

This view is we believe incautiously stated. Madero fell from his unfitness to meet a critical moment, the harvest of uncertainties, disquietudes, fears, hatreds, unrests and petty ambitions that must swarm around the opening scenes of a new administration, a new departure in government and one, too, as in the case of Madero, which proclaimed, formerly in curbstone lectures, a new era and the privileges of confiscation, and behind which was an almost bankrupt treasury.

Madero was a rebel, and a society that found him antagonistic to its safety, as it thought, or as it knew, did not hesitate to weave new schemes for his discomfiture, nay for his undoing. A conquistador at such a moment, and in Mexico, must have his hands and his teeth clenched and his mind made up. He must have gained possession of staunch and able friends, nor be too solicitous as to how he retains them. Those partial to seeking historic precedents may find them-certainly with a differencein the struggle of Tiberius Gracchus, in Nicola di Rienzi, in Richard II., men who have not been able to control or protect what they have won. Francisco Madero did not placate or enthrall his friends, he did not terrify his enemies, he failed lamentably to visualize his promises to the people, and whatever elements of psychological influence reside in the mere corporeity of man were utterly missing in Madero. There were contributing circumstances in himself, and there was the fortified and enracined walls

of capital, whose constructors, for good reasons, did not care to have them undermined, and for better ones believed that they could prevent that catastrophe. In view of the distracted state of business how could they have acted otherwise?

It was unfortunate for Madero that he was not ably and zealously represented at Washington, but that would not have saved him. And it is unjust to President Taft to blame him for protecting the American borders with arms, when its populations were in serious danger, even though, as Mr. Bell claims, the appearance of the troops was the signal for the outburst of innumerable lesser rebellions. Yet this plea, upon analysis, seems too permeable.

The success that counted for Madero was Huerta's crushing defeat of Orozco, but the harvest of that victory was either poorly gathered, or was wasted, or for him there was none. The decrees of fate are pitiless; no one subserved the purposes of their irony more completely than Francisco I. Madero, Jr. Mommsen has written: "When a government cannot govern it ceases to be legitimate, and he who has the power to overthrow it has also the right." Was then Victoriano Huerta guiltless of the crime of treachery?

To recapitulate, however, brought about, and no matter what predicament it presented, the situation in Mexico at the outset admitted, at the hands of Mr. Wilson a simple solution so far as his own conduct was concerned. But it was too a simplicity that demanded a rare conjunction in the same person of wisdom, emphasis, patience, and that Mr. Wilson did not possess. It was, too, a solution which might have reached, in the final stages of its pursuit, a really better, more permanent and philanthropic terminus than the present rather spectacular conclusion of the A,

B, C mediation, with no immediate prospects of assured stability; with Mexico itself torn, dismantled, bleeding, impoverished, ourselves humiliated, brave men of our own foolishly sacrificed and an incalculable loss of values added to the accumulated horrors of war.

And all this for the satisfaction of Mr. Wilson's predetermination that Huerta was a bad man and should be ejected from his office, and that Providence-it would almost appear some fatalistic presumption of the sort inspired him had interposed him, Mr. Wilson, in a redemptory relation to the Mexican people.

There is something whimsical in this, something that expresses the tragic dullness or drollness of infatuation, and something, we will confess, favoring a higher reference to nobility of purpose as well. But why should Mr. Wilson have been so blind, so obdurate to instruction, so painstakingly and unpardonably interfering and pragmatic? The situation handled by a less domestic mind, one less pertinaciously aposiopetic would have been frankly sized up, and the process of adjustment would have taken the following steps:

President Huerta would have been recognized, but with the recognition would have gone the most peremptory demand that constitutional government was to be fully granted to the Mexican people, and that the process of internal reform was to be at once inaugurated and faithfully completed. A policy of patience, of decision, of geniality and persuasion too, reinforced by the appointment of the best possible selection of our representative in Mexico City, would have engrafted slowly a purer and juster government upon that blighted land. The rebels would have been discountenanced, and their almost nefarious encouragement by our government prevented, while the really

strong administrative capabilities of President Huerta would have been appropriated, and the evolution of events guardedly directed have led to his subjection to limitations imposed by the constitution.

See what Mexico would have been saved, what a position of influence in Mexico the United States would have gained, and what stupendous losses would have been avoided! And yet Mr. Wilson probably believes under the inspiration of that "familiar spirit" which excuses to himself his errors and continues to prompt him with its mischievous suggestions that he has done exceedingly well, that the slaughter of Mexicans caused by this government's almost treacherous support and sympathy for the rebels is of no consequence, and that if some ultra-marine vision of ideal conditions, unrealized and unrealizable, at least not realized through his conduct, can only be persistently, in words, kept before the minds of Americans, he will escape their condemnation. He cannot. Neither Mexicans or Americans-those who have suffered-will forgive him. He has thoughtlessly brought into the homes of thousands too much misery, ruin and despair, and in the stiff-necked desire to have his own way he has compromised his country.

And what are the blessed prospects which his rose-tinted spectacles descry? Is there peace? Is there an assurance of stable government? Is there as much chance for the stabilizing hand of the United States now to insure justice, as there might have been in the case of Huerta's recognition, his subsequent subordination and use? National regeneration might have been slow, it would not have been horrible, all the more horrible because its iniquities of murder have been engendered by men who shrank with terror before the thought of condoning the murderer.

And take the case at its worst. Let Huerta be confessed