a murderer; the murderer of Madero, let the act be execrated as an act of political desperation and wickedness. Is it not conceivable in this case was it not preferable in the interests of mercy, of expediency, of eventual reformation and popular restitution-to have taken this murderer-certainly a strong and capable man—and turned him, as a skilful or magisterial mind might have done, into an agent of reformation, with the escape from the present confusion in Mexico, and the omission of the disgust and rage amongst ourselves?

To this end a broadly thoughtful policy would have led, and, in conjunction with other powers-at least the mediatorial American agents already involved in the present quasi settlement-and with the co-operation of such men as we have previously suggested would be helpful, the emergence of a scheme, ensuring primarily stability, and secondarily justice, with provisions for better and better adjustment of the civic and social states of the Mexican people to modern civic ideals.

At the moment though Victoriano Huerta has made his exit, the outlook for pacification is dark. Carranza and Villa are yet untried instruments of reform, and seem inclined to only regard an arbitrament of force. And what now lies between the opening of the drama and its yet unfinished end, the dispassionate and gloomy records of history betray unnumbered dead, untold wretchedness, loss, and perhaps an irrepressible resentment, a possible stumbling block to future American usefulness.

There was indeed an alternative of action in the Mexican question that many vigorous minds would have supported, but which would have been utterly repudiatedhad Wilson's mind even ventured to approach its tentative consideration-and that was to have deliberately

entered Mexico and governed the country, in such wise, and for such a length of time as observation determined was essential.

A policy of that Napoleonic type, of course, could have no lodgment in temperaments and brains civilly commonplace or coldly cultured. And yet these same brains and temperaments can contemplate with equanimity an unnecessary slaughter;

As if a man should be dissected

To find what part is disaffected.

Mr. Wilson and the democratic party disown and denounce all views of aggrandizement and the thought of mere national glory in the expansion of our country and its growth into monumental and imposing territorial splendor, revolts every sensitive fibre of their carefully nursed velleity.

To Mr. Wilson the crux of the Mexican situation was Victoriano Huerta, and his particular detestability was due to the death of Madero, a man appealingly worthy in the President's eyes, as personally interesting, and perhaps as one led by

Such language as no mortal ear

But spiritual eaves-droppers can hear.

And yet it is more than probable that Victoriano Huerta has merit, and yet not have received his first principles of conduct from a Presbyterian seminary, or from the Pandects of President McCosh. Doubtless Mr. Wilson knows

that "to the end of the seventeenth century theologians taught, occidatur, seu occidendus, proscribatur, quando non aliter potest haberi tranquillitas Reipublicae,” and even his sabbatical mind may at times realize with Mr.

Morley, "that we shall judge men of action by the standards of men of action"; that Retz said, "les vices d'un archevêque peuvent être dans une infinité de recontres, les vertus d'un chef de parti"; that it has been uncontradicted that "Louis XIV. and his despotism and his wars have never produced the evil that would have resulted from the councils of the good Fenelon, the apostle and martyr of virtue and the good of mankind." Does he know that this urbane and not altogether useless interpretation of conduct, as Lord Acton says, "is found not only in philosophers of the Titanic sort, to whom remorse is a prejudice of education, and the moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begat upon pride, but among the masters of living thought"?

Does he also know, amongst the countless reminders, which we cannot afford to quote, that "die ewige Aufgabe der Politik bleibt unter den gegebenen Verhältnissen und mit den vorhandenen Mitteln etwas zu erreichen. Eine Politik die das verkennt, die auf den Erfolg verzichtet, sich auf eine theoretische Propaganda, auf ideale Gesichtspunkte beschränkt, vor einer verlorenen Gegenwart an eine künftige Gerechtigkeit appelirt, ist keine Politik mehr?"

But to conclude with the pregnant words of an editorial writer in the New York Evening Sun:

"The truth, of course, is that Mr. Wilson has destroyed a government in Mexico. To him, to the army and navy of the United States, to the control of the importation of arms, has been due the overthrow of Huerta. Villa and Carranza have been but allies of the President in this. In this division of his policy Mr. Wilson's triumph is personal."

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW BANK ACT

Reform of the banking system has long been desired. The defects of our present methods-enormously superior as they are to the wildcat banking that preceded it has been often commented on. But, as Professors Conway and Patterson write: "For fifty years the United States has lived rather happily under the National Bank Act born in the strife of the Civil War and developed in the period of the nation's greatest expansion and growth, which has by its record, earned for itself applause as a great piece of constructive legislation; and the recognition of this fact is responsible for the preservation of our national banking system almost intact under the Federal Reserve Act." Under the National Bank Act 25,000 banking institutions have arisen in the United States.

The Federal Reserve Act was, we think, intended by the democratic financial designers to be a popular measure, and to appeal emphatically to the agricultural interests by reason of the facilities it offered in borrowing money. It is likely that the expansive tendencies in the act, as first drawn, were dangerous. The Secretary of State and the President seemed unwilling to correct them; the Senate did so, after a process of criticism and investigation, and a tolerable, a workable-it is to be hoped-a safe law was enacted. It is not so regarded in this essay.

The banking act is a credit to the Administration. No

one should minimize its advantages or too gloomily anticipate its failure. The question of reserves has been repeatedly emphasized. The new act attempts to provide reserves whose instantaneous release will overcome the impetuous and exhaustive demands for money in times of stringency, and thus check the contagion of panic.

Professor Conway tells us: "The greatest advantage of the regional system is that the country will no longer be dependent upon the tranquillity of the financial situation in a single large city of the nation. The disturbance of conditions in New York will affect chiefly the section comprised within the territory of the reserve bank of New York; and if other reserve banks of the country have followed a conservative policy, it should exert a little more influence upon the territory of the other reserve banks than such disturbances in this country now affect England, Germany, or France. If a rather clumsy simile may be permitted, we might compare our present system to a huge. warehouse in which fire can sweep from one end to the other without check, but which is now to be divided into from eight to twelve sections confined by fire walls. A conflagration started in any section can be confined largely to that section, and through the other sections of the warehouse aid may come to fight the fire which has thus been localized."

We believe that this optimism is not altogether justified. The relations between sections of this country is far more intimate of necessity than those which exist between us and foreign countries, and the comparison of the immediate disorders caused by any sectional disaster to the effects produced by our financial troubles upon Germany, England, or France, is a misleading one. Nor do we believe that the image of fire exactly expresses the sort of visitation