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_ When at Torrance, New Mexico, I 
had planned to make a trip to El 
Paso and down through old Mexico 
to Chihauhua, but the reports from 
the uprising made me think twice 
and I turned back at the river. Diaz 
gave it out that it was simply a little 
flutter that he would put down in 
thirty days, but the Americans along 
the border told me the Czar was 
off about three years in his caleula- 
tions and that flutter would develop 
into a good-sized breeze before Mex- 
jieo’s rebellion ended. 
The American side of the river 
was lined with the leaders of the 
-insurrection—who had crossed over 
for safety 
the cause. 
and to better help 
Every little cow town 
was full of them and out on the 
prairies they would have meetings, 
and plot against the government. 
A ranechman at Langtry pointed 
out to me a Mexican leader who he 
said was one of the shrewdest and 
most troublesome of all the local 
disturbers, and a man whom the 
Mexican government would give 
much to get its hands on. The fel- 
low appeared to me to be just a 
common, low-type Greaser, and he 
sat around the store with the Mexi- 
ean bunch, smoking cigarettes and 
marking time. I let my hat blow 
off and he chased it for me, and then 
I offered him a cigarette and tried 
to engage him in conversation. He 
could say a few words in pigeon 
English and I a few in’ mongrel. 
Spanish, but whenever I tried to 
talk war he could not understand. 
The man appeared to be of the peon 
type, of very little intelligence, and 
it seemed to me that about all he 
was good for was to smoke cig- 
arettes. And yet he was one of the 
“‘leaders.”’ 
And from Brownsville to El Paso, 
a distance of about 800 miles, the 
river bank on the American side 
was lined with these men — smug- 
gling across arms and ammunition— 
while the other bank was lined with 
the. Mexican government’s 
river 
guards and rurales, to see that there 
Was no smuggling—and they tell 
me that many turn their heads so 
they couldn’t see it. 
You have to know Mexico and 
the Mexicans to appreciate the pres- 
ent insurrection. You have to know 
something about the barren, water- 
less, foodless wastes, and the deplor- 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
_ ALONG THE REBELLION'S EDGE. 
me of the People and Things one Finds along the Rio Grande, 
During the Present Mexican Uprising. 
(By M. J. Brown, Epiror Lirtte Vauuey, N. Y., Hus) 
able ignorance of the country native. 
An Alabama negro is a scholar com- 
pared with him and a New York Da- 
go has him skinned many ways in 
intelligence. 
They simply exist, live in the to- 
day, with no thought for the mor- 
row. They are care free, have few 
wants and are happy like animals. 
They have little ambition and sim- 
ply take life as it comes. And this 
is largely the make of the Mexican 
revolutionists. 
There are two classes of people in 
Mexico—the upper and lower—and 
there doesn’t seem to be any middle 
class. And it is the lower class that 
makes up the rebellion. Half of 
these insurgents don’t know what 
it’s all about. They are against the 
government—that’s all. They are 
told that if they can depose Diaz 
they may live in the City of Mexico; 
they may open the jails and free 
their countrymen; that they may 
have riches without labor—and it 
looks good to them, and they get a 
gun and join something. 
Human life among this class is 
mighty cheap in Mexico. There is 
only one cheaper thing, time. A 
killing is nothing. Here’s a little il- 
lustration of how cheap: A year ago 
I came up from Mexico to Eagle 
Pass. Between the coaches was a 
peon, fighting full of mescal and 
armed with a big knife. He had no 
money or ticket but he proposed to 
ride just the same. The conductor, 
an American, didn’t care to mix it 
with the crazy Greaser, so he went 
into another car where four rurales 
were riding and told the boss of the 
quartet to do something with the 
Mexican. And he did. It was neat- 
ness, dispatch. He went back where 
the Mexican was riding, talked with 
lim a minute, caught him off his 
guard, and simply kicked him off the 
train. The train was running thirty 
or forty miles an hour, and it kept 
on its schedule. 
The rurales are to Mexico about 
what the rangers are to Texas—a 
buneh of men picked for their sand 
and fearlessness. Years ago north- 
ern Mexico was at the mercy of high- 
waymen. They held up stage 
eoaches, private rigs and trains, and 
Diaz couldn’t break them up. Fi- 
nally he sent for the leaders and had 
one of Elbert Hubbard’s heart to 
heart talks with them. He found 
35 
out just about how much the busi- 
ness of robbing netted them and 
then put them on the government 
payroll at the same price—made it 
as profitable to them to protect the 
government as it had been to rob 
the people. And he broke up the 
system. Such is Diaz. 
It doesn’t seem possible that a shal- 
low muddy river could draw such a 
sharp line between civilization and 
barbarism. Cross the Rio Grande 
and you go into a community of the 
time of Christ—back to the early 
days of simplicity and antiquity, 
back to where the ox and the horse 
are hitched together and the black 
man holds the handles of an old 
wooden plow. Mexico is of the old 
days and we Americans cannot ap- 
preciate this. We see a descendant 
of the Toltees take a piece of Mexi- 
ean bread from under his hat and 
make a home and a hotel of the 
place where darkness finds him; 
we see a Mexican girl pull the 
threads from a piece of drawn work, 
day after day, and sell it for a dol- 
lar; we see soldiers marching out 
to target practice barefooted; Mex- 
ican women grind corn on the ma- 
tette stone as they ground it in Je- 
rusalem—all is old, simple. 
All northern Mexico is a land of 
drought—a land of much sunshine 
and little water. And there is the 
seat of the rebellion. One can drive 
hour after hour and never see a liv- 
ing thing—not a single ’dobie house, 
not a sign of life. And an army 
must be fed in such a country. Do 
you wonder at the slow progress of 
the rebellion? 
They tell me that almost every 
American along the border is in fa- 
vor of the insurrection; that they 
aid the cause in every way they can 
and that the army is full of Texans 
who are in command. With a Tex- 
an’s natural hatred for the Mexicans, 
a hatred born of Alimo days, it 
seems odd that they should take a 
part in this affair. But a Texan is 
never so happy as after something 
has started, and these border soldiers 
of fortune drop naturally into any 
situation that means risk and fight. 
I met a cowboy in New Mexico 
who told me he had been having the 
time of his life down below Juarez 
drilling Mexicans. He said he was 
broke in El Paso and he got in with 
an insurrecto leader who was look- 
ing for an American to drill some na- 
tives in the little towns below. He 
said all he knew about war was a 
few drill moves he had learned in 
a fancy fire company to which he 
belonged. But he took the job and 
held it down as long as the Mexicans 
had any change, and for a few weeks 
