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Issues and Events
A WEEKLY MAGAZINE .
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March 25,1916.
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Vol. IV, No. 13.
' ' II (30.1 .,21P kRow NewYorl< N.Y.
CiEb‘ile)1:Ili1:lei'%svs',eIikfl aiil,y1<yIii-fNC:1sSu3. L. DBCRL, Priiideni ind Editor. ’
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FIGHTING ON A FICTION.
F course we will all want to stand by the President
0 in external affairs. Americans will maintain the
Mexican views of the Administration so ‘long as they
are maintainable. But we are discovering by ‘daily
experience that the theory. that our.arm)'- In MCXICO 15
entirely devoid of territorial ]l1l‘lS(.lICt10l’I and has only
the legal status of a sheriffs posse-is a theory that can-
not possibly be stretched to fit the facts. .
That fiction will have to be given up. The fighting
for order and civilization in Northern Mexico that we
have undertaken cannot be carried very far forward on
a fictional basis. .
An army in a country that is really hostile and only
formally and diplomatically friendly cannot possibly
conduct itself like a sherifi"s posse. It cannot possibly
subject itself to the dubious and feeble civil authorities
that claim, but cannot maintain, jurisdiction over the
territories of Chihuahua, Sonora and the other border
states.
Our army will be compelled by the irresistible
pressure of events to assume the territorial authority
'along the whole border.
It will be obliged, in spite of every legal and diplo-
matic theory, to regard itself as a military government.
It will be obliged to act like a government.
Thus we shall very soon be compelled, in spite of
our reluctance to face the question, What next?
The Conquest of Science. .
Then the government at Washington and the Ameri-
can people will be obliged to give serious consideration
to the programme that was outlined in last week’s issue
of this journal.
The President is right in refusing to undertake the
ruthless military conquest of the whole of Mexico. The
world at large is beginning to feel a kind of mental
nausea at the very idea of crushing military conquests.
There is another kind of conquest that properly belongs
to the genius of democracy and to the generous spirit
of our free western world. Our conquest of Northern
Mexico should be magnanimous and humane. It should
be a victory of science and intelligence over misery,
violence and confusion.
It should be a triumph of working-power, rather than
of Fighting power.
VVe have already established a firm tradition in this
line through our dealings in the past with China, with
Cuba and with the Philippines. But all those matters
were only experiments in the right direction, more or
less tentative and in perfect overturestoward a demon-
stration of the creative and world-regenerative powers
of democracy. The time has now come-and Northern
Mexico is the right place-to make a demonstration
that is full-orbed and entirely luminous.
ISSUES AND EVENTS
We should conquer the Mexican border lands in the
spirit in which General Wood and the army engineers
cleaned the yellow"-fever out of Havana and Santiago
de Cuba.
Buying Northern Mexico.
Somebody with a defective sense of humor says Col.
House has been arranging things in Europe with a view
to our paying three hundred million dollars to the
Southern Mexicans" for legal title to the land that the
Northern Mexicans live on 1 It is as if the State of New
York should strive to get the Dominion of Canada to
consent to the consolidation of this state with the state
of Pennsylvania on payment of a large sum of money,
to the inhabitants of Ohio.
This ponderous pleasantry may not amuse anybody,
but at least it should serve to show something of the
absurdity that lurks under cover of the legal theory
of sovereignty. .
We cannot buy Northern Mexico because there is ‘
nobody to buy it from. If it belongs to anybody in par-
ticular it belongs to the people that live there. But
there is an important sense in which no section of the
planet can be thought of as belonging “in fee simple
absolute” to any particular set of people.
Civilization (or the embodied cause of general hu-
manity) has at least a reversionary interest in all the
territories of the earth. And it appears that this title
ought to be asserted whenever any country falls into
irremediable disorder.
Accordingly, it may be assumed that we have a right
to take possession of a neutral zone in Mexico, not as
“Gringoes,” but as trustees for civilization.
Of course we can honorably discharge that kind of a
trusteeship only by instituting on the other side of the
Rio Grande a civil administration to carry the develop-
ment of the practical arts and sciences to the highest
pitch we are capable of.
Our Political Ignorance.
As to the science of politics most of the famous
statesmen of the world are still in the infant class. For
the truth. is that the laws of social action and of the
combination of large-scale human interests, have not
yet been put on a scientific basis.
Here is one of the least doubtful laws of the yet-to-
be-formulated science of politics : The maximum social
energy, for peace or war, belongs to the country whose
laws are so framed as to encounter the minimum re-
sistance.
Therefore to achieve the highest driving-force in
Mexico we must establish there forms of administration
that promise we'll-being to the greatest possible num-
ber of the inhabitants and which therefore engage the
co-operation and support of the wills of the mass of the
people.
‘A conquest won by crushing down the force of the
wills of a multitude of men, weakens the conqueror in
iecijtigt proportion to the former strength of the broken
On the other hand it should be obvious that the con-
quest of the whole world must ultimately fall to the
nation that first learns the secret of imposing laws that
honest and energetic men everywhere will glady agree
to-and find their own fortunes in. -
BY PERMISSION OF THE KING.
’ HE public will be surprised to learn to what extent
. certain industries are depending on His Britannic
Majesty s Permission. ,
As a practical example the business in paper stock
mfi)’ bqclfed. H..B. Majesty's government interferes
Eiith this industry in three different manners: (1) The
Gnited States is prohibited to import chemicals from
el'm3“Y- (2) Trade in pulp with neutral countries,