The Passing of Don Luis 



Mexicans freed themselves politically but not socially. By 

 freedom we mean the right to make the most of one's body and 

 brain, and to direct the process himself. For the differences 

 between the cientifico and the peon, between educated and 

 illiterate in Mexico as in medieval Europe, are not wholly 

 matters of blood or brains. They are in part questions of 

 "nurture" rather than "nature." With equality of oppor- 

 tunity present differences will tend to disappear. With educa- 

 tion, however, still greater ones will arise, corresponding, not 

 as now to hereditary caste, but to fundamental qualities of 

 mind and character. Under more favorable conditions, a 

 crude, bloody, and forceful Villa might become a real leader 

 of men. No one can guess the human possibilities buried 

 beneath illiteracy in Mexico. 



Revolution is never a pleasant thing. It is unjust, undis- 

 criminating. We have been taught to look on its excesses with 

 horror — while the vastly more terrible incidents of war — of 

 any kind of war — are invested in our minds with a sort of 

 dignity. This is a part of the age-long superstition which 

 justifies killing when performed on a large scale with the 

 sanction of the state and the blessing of the church. 



In the year 1791, James Mackintosh, having in view the 

 bloody atrocities of the French Revolution, wrote as follows: 



The massacres of war, and the murders committed by the sword of Justice, 

 are disguised by the solemnities which invest them. But the wild justice of the 

 people has a naked and undisguised horror. Its slightest assertion awakens 

 all our indignation, while murder and rapine, if arrayed in the gorgeous disguise 

 of acts of state, may with impunity stalk abroad.' 



One may not like the methods of the Revolution, and can 

 imagine much better ways of reaching the desired results. 

 But armed intervention is not a good way. To bring security 

 and order does not demand more killing, nor the restoration by 

 force of former conditions. It is not for us to hand back to 

 Don Luis his lost hacienda. "Too long," says Professor Seeck, 

 "too long have historians looked on the rich and noble as 

 determining the fate of the world." Neither is it our duty 

 to restore to the religious orders, either "charitable" or "con- 

 templative," the lands and privileges forfeited to the state 



' "Defence of the French Revolution," page 88. 



