favor her own vessels engaged in the purely domestic trade. This position had been approved by both the Republican and Democratic platforms of 1912, and Wilson himself had justified it in a campaign speech to a gathering of farmers at Washington Grove, New Jersey, only nine days before the act was passed. Now he receded from his position, indorsed the protest of the British ambassador against the act, and said in his message, "We are too big, too powerful, too self-respecting a nation, to interpret with too strained a rendering the words of our own promises, just because we have power enough to give us leave to read them as we please." He asked for the repeal of the exemption act in support of the foreign policy of the administration. "I shall not know how to deal with other matters of even greater delicacy and nearer consequence," he added cryptically, "if you do not grant it to me in ungrudging measure." Nothing shows more clearly the commanding position of the President than the compliance of Congress with his request, in spite of the declaration of the Democratic platform. The act was repealed on June 15, after a stirring debate, in the face of objections of such powerful Democratic opponents as Senator O'Gorman, Mr. Underwood, and Speaker Clark. The President's motives were bitterly assailed by the anti-British agitators. He was accused of "truckling" to Great Britain, of seeking to form an Anglo-American alliance, of sacrificing American shipping to the greed of the British, of bribing England to stop her ally, Japan, from continuing the protest against the California land laws or from giving aid and comfort to Huerta's government in Mexico. Representative Knowland of California asserted on the floor of the House that the President was making a bargain with England by sacrificing our rights in Panama in exchange for a free hand in Mexico, an accusation which the President branded as an "insult." There is little use in speculating on the motives of President Wilson in demanding the repeal of the tolls exemption act, when he himself did not choose to reveal them. It is probable that they were mixed. The correspond1 On the other hand, several Republican senators (Root, Lodge, Burton, Kenyon, McCumber) supported the President.

ence with Ambassador Page at London' shows how determined British public opinion was on the injustice of the exemption of American vessels, and how slim were the chances, so long as we insisted on a policy which could be plausibly resented as "broken faith," of arriving at that good understanding with England which seemed necessary for the success of our diplomacy in Latin-America and elsewhere."

An attempt was made in a treaty negotiated April 7, 1914, to restore amicable relations with the republic of Colombia, which ever since the revolt of Panama had protested against the unfriendly behavior of the United States in that crisis, and had refused to recognize the new republic under our protection. The submission of the treaty to the Senate revived the controversy over the alleged "national dishonor" in the "rape of Panama," and brought down upon the President's head the imprecations of Colonel Roosevelt and his champions, who resented the concession to "the blackmailers of Bogotá." But the most persistent and serious of all the diplomatic questions which President Wilson had to handle in those two crowded years was the Mexican imbroglio, which he had inherited from the Taft administration.

1" Life and letters of Walter H. Page," Vol. I, pp. 221, 229, 249, 262.

2 The reasons for the support of the President's policy were varied. With many of the members of Congress the mere fact that the executive was responsible for the foreign policy of the country was sufficient argument for voting for the repeal. Senators Root and Lodge (who could never be accused of pro-British leanings) supported the President because they believed that the exemption act was a clear violation of the treaty. James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railroad came to Washington to use his influence for repeal, partly because he feared Great Britain would close the Welland Canal to American ships as a measure of retaliation. Mr. Burton Hendrick, in his "Life and Letters of Walter H. Page," believes that " 'a satisfactory solution of the mystery" is disclosed in the Page papers. He says (Vol. I, p. 269): "They show that the President and Colonel House and Page were at this time engaged in a negotiation of the utmost importance. At the very time that the tolls bill was under discussion, Colonel House was making arrangements for a visit to England, France, and Germany, the purpose of which was to bring these nations to some kind of an understanding that would prevent a European war. This evidently was the great business that could not be disclosed at the time, and for which the repeal of the tolls legislation was the necessary preliminary."

MEXICO AND THE CARIBBEAN

How little the anticipation of diplomatic complications entered into the calculations of Mr. Wilson may be shown by the fact that he did not discuss foreign affairs in his campaign speeches nor mention them in his inaugural address. His purposes and plans were centered in the domestic reforms which should introduce the era of the "new freedom" for the initiative, energy, and opportunity of the American business man and farmer, whom he saw bound down like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians by the withes of an iniquitous tariff, a cramping currency system, and the coercive domination of the trusts. But just before he took office the situation in Mexico had become so acute that his first statement of policy (March 1I, 1913) was a declaration that one of the chief objects of his administration would be "to cultivate the friendship and deserve the confidence of our sister republics of Central and South America, and to promote in every proper and honorable way the interests which are common to the people of the two continents." "Coöperation," he added, "is possible only when supported at every turn by the orderly processes of just government based upon law, not upon arbitrary or irregular force. . . . We shall lend our influence of every kind to the realization of these principles in fact and practice, knowing that disorder, personal intrigue, and defiance of constitutional rights weaken and discredit government and injure none so much as the people who are unfortunate enough to have their common life and their common affairs so disturbed. We can have no sympathy with those who seek to seize the power of government to advance their own political interest or ambition." This was a noble doctrine. Its attribution of the capacity and general desire for "the orderly processes of just government based upon law" to the people of Mexico did credit to the President's generous idealism. But its application to the actual state of affairs in the republic on our southern border was made infinitely difficult by the evident lack of such capacity and desire.

For centuries the thin veneer of the Spanish language and

the Spanish formalism in the government of state and church had created a deceptive appearance of national unity in Mexico. But beneath the superficial and limited culture imposed by the Spanish conqueror there was the great mass of unassimilated indigenous population attached to its agrarian barbarism and filled with hatred for the foreign oppressor. Eighty-five per cent of the Mexican people are still of Indian or mixed blood. About one half of these retain their Indian customs and dialects as well. The aboriginal attachments of the varied Indian population have always been a fruitful field of division and discontent to which the revolutionary leaders may appeal, and the latter have led armies feudal in type and loyalty rather than national. The long despotism of Porfirio Díaz (1877-1911), known officially as "Porfirism" and popularly as "Diazpotism," kept the racial and social antipathies of the Mexican population curbed under an iron hand. "Economically and socially," says Carlton. Beals, "that system was an agrarian, feudal, sacerdotal, and aristocratic system based on serfdom and slavery. Politically it was a monarchy, represented by the absolute viceroy, who was surrounded by a small ruling clique, . . . the mass of the people enjoying no political rights. Ethnically it consisted of a ruling race divided into antagonistic Europeans and creoles, made up of nobility, priests, and incipient capitalists; and beneaththe hybrid mestizos and native Indians still conscious of national antipathies and differences in blood, but united in their common hatred of the white race." Upon a people in the mass penetrated with age-long ideals of communism and isolation, Díaz suddenly grafted the modern industrial system. He handed over the incalculable riches of the country-the minerals, oil, rubber, ranching, and fruit-growing-to foreign concessionaires, who brought their hundreds of millions into Mexico for the exploitation of its resources and the firm support of the Díaz régime. Banks and railroads were organized under American promoters. The Greens and Hearsts were granted large concessions in copper, the Rockefellers and Aldriches in rubber, the Guggenheims and Pearsons in oil. Díaz gave his country 1 1 Carlton Beals, "Mexico-an Interpretation," p. 25.

civilization but not culture. There was no attempt to educate or liberate the people. On the contrary, the power of the oppressive landed aristocracy and the medieval priesthood was strengthened. The ejidos, or communal lands, were seized. The workers were held in a ruthless system of peonage. Every aspiration for personal liberty or political independence was quenched by the despotic power of the political judge (jefe político). Díaz and his little group of political henchmen, the científicos, flourished on the graft which they obtained from the foreign concessions, while the people stagnated in poverty and sullen discontent.

It could not last forever. The celebration of the centennial of Mexican independence in 1910 stirred the hatred against the dictator, who was about to have himself reëlected for the eighth time. A wealthy tribune of the people, Francisco Madero, came forward to contest the election, and when his candidacy was contemptuously quashed, he started a revolution to force Díaz to resign or "to restore the dignity of the constitution." Madero had the sincerity of a fanatic and the faith of a fatalist, but he was barren of counsel and weak of will. He succeeded in eliminating the eighty-year-old Díaz by winning the revolutionary forces to his attractive program of the allotment of lands to the poor, the nationalization of the railroads, the extension of the suffrage, the establishment of local autonomy, the prohibition of presidential reëlection, the abolition of the political judges (bosses), and many other social, political, and economic reforms. But when he himself was elected, in October, 1910, he found himself entirely unable to redeem his promises. Month by month power slipped from his weak hands. His own relatives plundered the treasury under his nose. Díaz's nephew Felix and the old generals plotted against him. The governments (including our own) whose nationals found it hard to obtain concessions cooled toward him. His promise of land distribution failed to materialize. He was powerless to reward his supporters or punish his opponents. He was isolated and contemned. On February 18, 1913, the commander in chief of his own army, Victoriano Huerta, deposed the Merovingian Madero and pro