characterized by a bitterness scarcely transcended by that of the slavery discussions before the Civil War. That this increasing bitterness results from a clash between very powerful forces, no one, I think, will deny, although he may not be prepared to define their alignment. To my mind it is not simply a case of Reformers versus the Rest of Us, or Puritans versus Pagans, as at first sight may appear. The division is less complex than this, but more ominous. It is, quite simply, a clash between women as a group and men as a group, and the reason for the clash is as old as Eden and as new as the Nineteenth Amendment.

The history of civilization is also in no slight measure the history of the relationship between the sexes. In the beginning, so diverse were the activities of men and women that there could be no more antagonism between them than between Fiji Islanders and Eskimos, who are not even aware of each other's existence. Later, when man finally began to attain mastery over the fullness of the earth, and the struggle to live became less all-absorbing, the supremacy of purely physical strength began to wane and sex antagonism gradually developed. For some time we have been conscious of its undercurrent below the surface relationship, but now, I think, it is manifesting itself openly for the first time in history and its first act is to hoist man with a petard constructed by himself.

For a sufficient number of generations women had it drilled into the innermost recesses of their conscious and subconscious minds by men that self-sacrifice, principally for the sake of husbands and sons, was not only the station in life, as we say in the Catechism, to which they had been called by God, but also the highest ideal to which they could attain. Even so recently as thirty years ago literature

When the absurdity of this idea at last percolated through society, woman, emerging from the background of which she had so long been a part, brought with her the best of the old way of thought a thorough comprehension of the necessity, power, and beauty of self-denial. Society no longer considered so admirable a quality ideal for women only, but showed a growing tendency to set it up as a standard for men.

If self-denial on woman's part was good for the world, self-denial on the part of both men and women must be twice as good. At any rate this assumption sounded logical to the women, and the men with some slight reluctance agreed. Eventually America turned herself into a huge psychological laboratory to see how the theory worked out in practice.

For a year or two after the war it seemed that the woman's solution was correct. Drunkenness, and the crime and disease attendant thereon, markedly decreased, but before the women could say, 'I told you so,' something happened. With very little warning a reaction set in, so violent and so complete that to-day we are confronted with a state of affairs which is little short of appalling. I think it is fair to say that this reaction was principally among the men, who, as a group, were never whole-heartedly enthusiastic over Prohibition. Self-denial is at best a negative virtue, and the psychological make-up of man desires something more positive as his ideal. This reaction to an ideal too uninteresting or too imponderable for his continued

loyalty brought the ever-mounting wave of sex antagonism to a climax, and for the first time men and women openly confront each other across the line of sex. That women as a whole are either actively or passively for Prohibition, while men either actively or passively are against it, is abundantly proved when we consider the undeniable fact that, if men ardently upheld and strove for the enforcement of the Volstead Act in the same proportion as do women, Prohibition would for some time have been a well-established fact.

The W. C. T. U. is correct, then, when it says that if the Eighteenth Amendment is to be enforced it must be done by the women, aided by the clergy (the only great masculine group which has been especially trained to the woman's ideal of self-denial). Such enforcement can be brought about only at the price of ever-increasing bitterness. Bad Bad as conditions are now, I believe that this clash on Prohibition may be only a skirmish in a sex war which will probably be bloodless, except incidentally, — but which nevertheless may prove subversive of civilization, old style.

Since men and women are alike necessary to each other and to the world, it is difficult at first glance to see why sex antagonism should ever have arisen and still more difficult to understand why it should have developed its present intensity. A little thought, however, soon shows us that through the ages the ideals which urged forward men and women were not the same. Just as women, from time immemorial, have been trained to selfdenial, so men have been taught to regard personal liberty as their most precious attribute. Now we are discovering that the two are not necessarily compatible; and the clash is not only between men and women, but between the two different ideals toward

which the two groups have struggled for uncounted generations.

What the end will be, who can say? Unfortunately there seems little common ground between the two sides. The increasing similarity between the sexes of which we have heard so much is after all a recent and superficial growth. The ideal self-denial which is almost a sex trait in woman is a recent development in man, and while he can, on occasion, sacrifice himself with the best woman who ever lived or died for others, yet when it comes to the little self-denials of every day he violently reacts and reverts to the old and hardly won ideal of personal liberty.

In spite of her much discussed freedom, equal in every respect to man's, so used is woman to sacrificing her personal liberty to the welfare, first, of the family (and as long as there are families this sacrifice must be made), second, of the community, that she is utterly out of sympathy with the attitude of man. She cannot even understand it. Where the average man sincerely feels that denying him his right to take it or let it alone strikes at the very root of a liberty which in past ages has been dearly bought, woman can only see that man in order to avoid denying himself what she considers a very trivial gratification is willing to connive at almost any crime.

Under the conditions of the present day, physical strength no longer counts as in past ages. Differences of opinion are settled by ballot boxes more often than by bayonets. Thus woman's power to control modern life so nearly matches man's that to me it looks as if the irresistible force of woman's desire to protect humanity even against itself had encountered the immovable obstacle of man's inherent objection to being protected. Out of the resulting chaos, who can tell what new social system may evolve?

WHERE are we going with Mexico? What is the reason for the confusions and the failures in our Mexican relations? Is it, actually, a lack of policy, or is the situation really an impossible one, or is it that we follow a policy which, as the Mexicans tell us, is outworn and unfair and unwise?

A learned doctor of laws from one of the great lands that lie to the south said to me the other day:

"There are only three policies that you of the United States can follow toward Mexico. First, you can leave her alone. Second, you can intervene in her affairs by turning revolutions loose upon her. Third, you can make a conquest of her territory.

"The third you may not follow, because your people will not let you. The second, intervention, you have been following for a hundred years, in all the ways possible to the imagination, and yet you still have the same old troubles with Mexico. Why not try the first way, and leave Mexico alone?'

Before answering that keen inquiry, we have much ground to cover. First, this policy of 'intervention.' The Latin American can never be convinced that the United States is without a policy in Mexico, an international plan of procedure. The Latin American starts with a premise that all we have done with Mexico is a manifestation of that definite policy. He traces these steps in our past history: the Mexican War, and its conclusion in the cession

of the rich empire of California to the United States; the thirty-five years of support of Porfirio Diaz while Americans grew in power and wealth in Mexico; the massing of troops at the Texas border, which all Mexico (including General Diaz himself) took to mean that his hour had struck, and that we had deserted him; the death of Madero, glibly laid to American interference; the fall of Victoriano Huerta, frankly brought about by President Wilson's pressure; the decision, in Washington, that Carranza, although he had flouted us, was the right man for Mexican president, and our forthright recognition of him; our disgust with Carranza that encouraged Obregón to hasten his own rise to power following upon his triumphal tour of the United States; and finally, in recent months, the tremendous diplomatic pressure on Calles while he was stubbornly seeking to enforce the myriad inchoate provisions of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 that his predecessors had allowed to lie fallow. The Latin American observer sees not illogically- a continuing policy running through it all.

Whether these predatory appearances of what my Latin American friend called 'intervention' set forth fairly the real policy of the succeeding governments in Washington is, however, open to question. The recent reiteration by President Coolidge of an earlier Mexican doctrine that of President Hayes- certainly suggests

that the activities of the Department of State may really be motivated by a determination for 'the protection of American lives and property,' by means not always tactful, to be sure, but sincere, and, above all, the result of a definitely chosen road.

On January 7, at the White House Press Conference, the presidential 'spokesman' read, for the benefit of the assembled journalists and the millions who were to read their dispatches, the so-called 'Evarts Doctrine,' contained in the note written on August 12, 1878, by William M. Evarts, Secretary of State, to John W. Foster, then Minister to Mexico. It was stated, on behalf of the President, that this had been, and still was, the policy of the United States toward Mexico.

are

The first duty of government is to protect life and property. This is a paramount obligation. For this governments instituted, and governments neglecting or failing to perform it become worse than useless. This the government of the United States has determined to perform to the extent of its power toward its citizens on the border. It is not solicitous, it never has been, about the methods or ways in which that protection shall be accomplished, whether by formal treaty stipulation or formal convention; whether by action of judicial tribunals or that of military force.

Protection in fact to American lives and property is the sole point upon which the United States are tenacious.

We did not, however, have to wait for that old Evarts phantom to walk the boards anew to learn the present attitude of the American Government toward Mexico. It is expressed over and over again in the diplomatic correspondence of 1917 to 1926. True, the voice of the White House carries farther than voluminous notes hidden in government archives. But Mexico, at least, read the documents, even if the American public did not - for her

Foreign Minister answered them. Out of the mass we can pick clarifying phrases regarding our present policy.

My government reserves on behalf of citizens of the United States whose property interests are or may hereafter be affected by the application of the two above-mentioned laws (the alien land law and the petroleum law) all rights lawfully acquired by them under the constitution and laws of Mexico in force at the time of the acquisition of such property interests and under the rules of international law and equity, and points out that it is unable to assent to an application of the recent laws to American-owned properties so acquired which is or may hereafter be retroactive and confiscatory. (American Ambassador James R. Sheffield to the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aaron Saenz, January 8, 1926)

An injury done by one state to a citizen of another state through a denial of justice (should there be a denial of justice) is an injury done to the state whose national is injured. . . . The injury . . . is the basis of the right of his state to seek redress for the injury in conformity to the established standards of civilization which modern states have mutually acquiesced in and which have become a part of international law. (Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg to Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs Aaron Saenz, March 1, 1926)

The basis of present negotiations over the retroactivity of Mexican laws enacted in the past two years is a series of memoranda drawn up in August 1923 at the meeting in Mexico City of the Mexican and American Commissioners who negotiated the two Claims Conventions which were signed just prior to, and were in part the basis of, the recognition of President Obregón by the United States Government, on August 31, 1923. The American Commissioners were Charles Beecher Warren, later American Ambassador to Mexico, and John Barton Payne; the Mexican representatives were Ramon Ross and Fernando Gonzalez

Roa. Besides the Claims Conventions, arranging for a settlement of sixty years of damage suits against Mexico and the United States, the 'proceedings' of these conferences set down a number of principles. These included agreements on Mexico's future oil policy and on the form of payment to American owners for the lands taken by the Mexican Government for the establishment of small holdings and village commons.

These 1923 agreements the United States has continuously held to be of supreme political importance, as setting down the promised future policy of Mexico. In the negotiations with the Calles Government since 1924, the Mexicans have held that these agreements were merely the expressions of the policy of President Obregón, his platform, so to speak, and have and have neither the binding force of a treaty nor anything approaching it. Much has turned on this difference of point of view. It is typical of the whole controversy, and of its misunderstandings and charges of bad faith. To the Department of State the Mexican attitude has been a breach of honor, while to the Mexican Foreign Office it has apparently been a palladium of independence from the pressure of American diplomacy.

The Payne-Warren agreements do stand, however, as a definite milestone in Mexican-American negotiations, as the statement of Mexican policy accepted by Washington. At the formal Conference on August 2, 1923, the Mexican Commissioners set down the following as among the 'natural consequences of the political and administrative programme which the Mexican Government has been carrying out':

It is the duty of the federal executive power, under the Constitution, to respect and enforce the decisions of the judicial power. In accordance with such a duty,

the Executive has respected and enforced, and will continue to do so, the principles of the decisions of the Supreme Court of Justice in the 'Texas Oil Company' case and the four other similar amparo cases, declaring that paragraph IV of Article 27 of the Constitution of 1917 is not retroactive in respect to all persons who have performed, prior to the promulgation of said Constitution, some positive act which would manifest the intention of the owner of the surface or of the persons entitled to exercise his rights to the oil under the surface to make use of or obtain the oil under the surface; such as drilling, leasing. . . or manifesting [such] an intention.

The above statement has constituted and will constitute in the future the policy of the Mexican Government . . . and the Mexican Government will grant to the owners, assignees, or other persons entitled to the rights to the oil, drilling permits on such lands, subject only to police regulations, sanitary regulations, and measures for public order and the right of the Mexican Government to levy general taxes.

II

Although the present era in the negotiations over the oil situation dates properly from the Payne-Warren agreements, the question has been virtually unchanged as well as unsolved since May 1, 1917, when the new Constitution of Mexico went into effect. The first protests filed by the Department of State with the Mexican Government were over the provisions of Article 27, the famous antiforeign clause of that document. Then came the decrees of Presidents Carranza and Obregón, and now the law and its regulations. The Constitution of 1917 specifies:

In the Nation is vested direct ownership of all minerals . . . including petroleum and all hydrocarbons - solid, liquid, and gaseous.

The laws enacted under the old Constitution of 1857 provided that all