Appendix I 



the present hour, are easily tempted to steal. A thief is a 

 nuisance; a rifle ball, therefore, and no questions asked. No 

 court of appeal, either, from Don Luis the alcalde! 



Those who know that region say that the hospitable Terra- 

 zas represents "the very best element in the nation." . . . 

 And some say also that a million high-minded and cultured 

 men and women of Spanish descent cannot in justice be con- 

 trolled by fourteen millions of Indians and halfbreeds, illiterate, 

 superstitious, violent, and impecunious. 



. . . But the day of great estates and mighty concessions, 

 for natives as well as for foreigners, is over. Men of culture 

 must lend a hand to build up the state. They must take their 

 part in the new free schools springing up everywhere as the 

 war spirit subsides, even as fresh grass follows a prairie fire. 

 They must meet taxation and even expropriation in the interest 

 of the common good, for the huge, half-occupied feudal estates 

 must necessarily be turned over to groups of small farmers. 

 They must be content to see pass the regime of Porfirio Diaz 

 with its semblance of order resting on force, affection, chicane, 

 and the interwoven interests of foreign capitalists. They must 

 find their place in the coming republic, crude, unsteady, 

 pleasure-loving, bloody at times, but having within itself the 

 germs of real democracy. 



Is there hope in military intervention? No, a thousand 

 times no! We would not, we could not restore the medieval 

 past with its reckless concessions to foreigners, its arbitrary 

 control at home, its persistent maintenance of ignorance, 

 poverty, superstition, and disease. Intervention has a very 

 different meaning to different people. To Don Luis, as to 

 many not all of the foreign concessionaries, it means simply 

 "the last chance." To the exploiters, native and foreign, and 

 especially to the noisy swarm of agents along the Rio Grande, 

 it means "easy money." To the devoted friends of civiliza- 

 tion in Mexico, those on whom its future must depend, it 

 means conquest, annexation, the loss of national existence, 

 and a legacy of undying hate. 



Revolution is the historic means by which the serf of Europe 

 has gained freedom. Present conditions in Mexico are a sur- 

 vival of the system of old Spain. In the first Revolution, the 



C 814 3 



