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Show CARRANZA TRIES TO STEAL OIL PROPERTIES government to decide' whether it will CARRANZA to prevent the confiscation of property rights legally acquired by American citizens in Mexico. Usually there has been a controlling sentiment in this country averse to war over property rights. Not that the American people ever have condoned robbery, but in their idealism they have refused to consider the dollar more important than the man. They have been willing to wage war whenever American lives were sacrificed or invasion threatened. Thus it was that American opinion did not scruple to applaud the invasion of Mexico by American soldiers a few weeks ago to punish and drive off the Villistas who, in attacking Juarez, slew citizens of El Paso. American sentiment has undergone some notable changes regarding war in the last few years and the reaction to this sentiment is seen in the firmer policy at Washington. Time was when most Americans were pacifists without stopping to classify their views. They looked upon war with a greater horror than the devil is commonly reputed to look on holy water. It is something of a paradox that while their representatives have been busy organizing the machinery of world peace the American people have turned their backs scornfully on pacifism and are ready to make war without the old scruples and hesitation. Their abhorrence of bloodshed can no longer blind them to the need of defending themselves in every just cause. But even today they would go to war reluctantly if they felt that their army were invading Mexico simply to enforce property rights even though the rights might be worth hundreds of millions. In dealing with Mexico, however, property rights are usually involved with other issues. A few weeks ago, for example, President Carranza, in the name of his country, formally repudiated the Monroe doctrine. In view of his evident intention to rob foreign interests of their oil rights his action was consistent, for the Monroe doctrine has a greater validity than ever because of our insistence that the League of Nations covenant specifically recognize it. If a League of Nations is established Europe will look to us more insistently than ever for the protection of foreign interests in Mexico. Since we have forced the European nations to concede our right to keep them from interfering in Mexico we find ourselves obliged to safeguard the just interests of such nations and their nationals in Mexico. We have made ourselves responsible for the good conduct of Mexico and it is a responsibility of conis forcing our siderable magnitude. Mexico has become a bandit nation under Carranza. The oil properties having been legally acquired by Americans, are legally held under the constitution of 1857, a constitution which Carranza bound himself and his government to maintain. By a series of statutes camouflaged as tax laws he has sought to confiscate these properties which were alloted to foreigners because the Mexican people did not have the money, the energy or the brains to develop them. Now that the properties are worth a king's ransom Carranza wants them for Mexico and he has adopted an epedientx familiar to him and his former ally, Pancho Villa. He proposes to steal them. It is a peculiar commentary on the strivings of the nations for universal peace and international amity that the United States government should be planning to erect forts along the Mexican border. In those unregenerate days when pacifism was the hobby of a few and men were more or less frankly warlike forts were not considered necessary on any of the boundaries of our country. But now that a League of Nations to maintain peace is being formed, now that men everywhere except in Mexico and a few other countries have become professional advocates of laws, treaties and alliances that will prevent war the United States is constrained to construct fortificaborder between itself and a wild tions along a neighbor. Evidently our officials at Washington expect the neighbor to remain wild for many years. Fortifications are for defense and, if we build them, will signify that we are simply preparing to hold off a neighbor who desires to smite us now and again. But long before the forts can be finished the Mexican crisis will have culminated in decisive action. The signs are that even before the forts are begun the United States and Mexico will have reached a settlement that will make forts unnecessary, during a long period. It is impossible, however, to look far into the future of the crisis. There are not a few indications that the Carranza government which seems so intent upon forcing a major issue with us will soon be hurled from power. What kind of government will succeed none of us can forecast. It may be a bandit government ; it may be a soviet government, or, happily, it may be a stable government. two-thousand-m- ile LEAGUE INVISIBLE heart that is not thrilled by the promise of the peace ITconference which has just ended in Paris. One is sorely lacking in vision who fails to sec in the event something beyond treaty terms or the mere personalities of the negotiators. And it shall come to pass afterwards that I shall pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see is a callous visions. In spite of obvious injustice as in the settlement of the Shantung in problem, in spite of the selfish trading of some of the negotiators, a real spite of the hate that seems to be the heritage of the defeated, in which League of Nations was founded in Paris. It is, in the sense we conceive it, a ninvisible league, but more potent than the league to which the conference has given a local habitation and a name. The covenant itself may or may not be a scrap of paper; its intricate machinery may not work ; it may break down in some crisis ; it may fail of ratification by the senate of the United States, but the League |