dor's efforts during the bombardment, were desirable as a testimonial of high personal regard. The work was overdone and the design which lay behind it could not remain hidden. It was known not only in Mexico City but in the United States, where versions of the story appeared in the newspapers. Doubt was then thrown upon the spontaneity of the movement. But these considerations merely emphasized the opinion which very early began to be voiced in the press of the United States, that the American Ambassador had meddled deeply in Mexican affairs, and had then endeavored to commit his home government without authority. If these acts of an ambassador were to be sanctioned, unlimited discretion amounting to usurpation of executive power would in effect be conceded to Washington diplomatic agents in general. The result might have been foreseen from the beginning, but it was so long in coming that its effect for good was lost. The problem which the Mexican tangle presented to the Wilson administration at the very outset was a severe test of its qualities if solution were to be found on a moral and entirely peaceful basis. Later on in these pages the subject will receive further treatment. What impressed the American public, as indicated by the experience of interested individuals and the occasional escape of steam in Congress and the press, was the resisting power of the new administration. For four months no man from Mexico could get a hearing. On March 6 a slip in routine at the Washington State Department resulted in cabling a note of commendation bearing the signature of the Secretary of State to Ambassador Wilson at Mexico City. Promptly given to the press by its recipient, it was cabled back to the United States and across to Europe. Three days later the Secretary cabled again withdrawing his generous words. On March II President Wilson issued a statement of intent to cooperate with the people of Latin America, and to use the moral force of his Administration in the interest of electoral reform in those countries, to the end that their governments should be based on the consent of the governed. He announced his lack of sympathy with revolutions that served personal ambitions. The statement was regarded in Europe as too vague to commit the Washington Government to non-recognition of Huerta while an Ambassador was held in Mexico City who was exerting all his power through the American consular service and the diplomatic corps at Mexico's capital to support the Huerta rule. In the months of April and May, 1913, England, France, and Germany accorded recognition to the new Mexican government. This was the logical procedure from the European standpoint. Bankers and other interested persons could see no hope of settled conditions in Mexico, should any other course be pursued. If the advice of Señor Limantour and Lord Cowdray was asked for, it was doubtless supplied - and heeded. Although Lord Cowdray's name and his much misunderstood oil concession in Mexico have figured prominently in news reports since the setting up of the Huerta government, he has said that he refrained from meddling; and Señor Limantour, in July, 1913, specifically denied having made "intriguing representations to the Powers." It is essential, nevertheless, to consider carefully the positions and the influence of these two men. They had long been regarded by European financiers and statesmen as the chief authorities on Mexican matters. They had been consulted in preference to all others. Limantour's opinion as to Mexican credits, and as to politics also, was weighty beyond comparison. Lord Cowdray's knowledge of practical business development in Mexico had been obtained from the closest contact, and from the control of large investments. Each of these men had gained in grasp of the situation by his relations with the other during fifteen years of intimate acquaintance resulting in mutual sentiments of profound respect. It may be confidently stated that neither would have chosen Victoriano Huerta to rule over the country in which both were so deeply interested. "What a spectacle before the world!" said Limantour in referring to him. Yet Limantour could not view with any degree of tolerance whatever the armed revolt in the North, nor favor by his advice to bankers such action as would precipitate Huerta's fall and put the so-called Constitutionalists into power. The thing to be supported was Mexico; the thing to be averted was a sweeping financial disaster which would pile up the National Railways merger and the Mexican government obligations in a tangled mass of wreckage under which would lie the ruins of every considerable investment that had been made by private individuals. Whatever degree of reticence may have seemed proper to Limantour in his desire to avoid the appearance of participation in Mexican politics, he could not have avoided giving to those who consulted him some disclosure of his conviction as to this matter which was uppermost in his mind. In default of any evidence of a constructive policy formed by the United States in recognition of its responsibilities toward Mexico, Limantour was compelled to regard a measure of support for the de facto government of his country as offering the only hope of staving off disaster. Lord Cowdray must have arrived at a similar conclusion through considering his own interests in the petroleum fields in the Mexican states along the Gulf of Mexico. The boring concession which he had secured in 1907, while not productive of direct results on government land, had led him to undertake extensive operations on areas secured from private owners by purchase and lease. These operations had produced magnificent results, in sharp contrast to the slow progress he was making in the sale at retail of the refined product in Mexican markets. Production of crude petroleum for export and for fuel therefore declared itself as the wise business policy, and preparation was made by him to secure immense tracts in the most promising sections of the oil belt. For several years the plans to acquire proprietary or leasehold rights in the oil states were followed with vigor, and the actual area thus brought under Lord Cowdray's control reached, in 1913, the vast total of 1,600,000 acres, about half of which is owned in fee by him or his companies, and the remainder held under thirty-year leases. Two hundred and eighty thousand acres of land held in fee had been acquired by Lord Cowdray in 1902 as part of his Tehuantepec railway deal with the Mexican government. A tract of 418,000 acres adjoining this he bought from private owners subsequent to 1907. He bought 100,000 acres more in northern Vera Cruz. The 800,000 acres acquired on leasehold necessitated nearly a thousand separate leases, some of them requiring the signatures of more than forty persons. This illustrates the complications of land ownership in those sections. The proprietors were of all classes, hacendados, planters, ranchmen, and even the unmodified aborigines whose ancestors had held the land from the days of Moctezuma. The enormous labor which this process entailed throws light upon the difficulties that will confront the framer of any equitable plan for redistribution of Mexican lands. While Lord Cowdray had been laying this foundation for producing oil in quantities beyond the previous record |