aloof from those of France. I saw cold faces, unwarmed by the memory of what our country had done for humanity. And I asked myself whether, were a new war to occur, the world would rally to the banners of France again. When I ascended the tribune at that meeting of the League Assembly as representative of France appointed by the President of this Chamber, at that time Premier, the first delegate to address that body, and perhaps the only one who could have uttered similar words, I said: 'I come here to announce that France signs without reservations the Accord before us and binds herself to accept the decisions of the International Court of Justice.'

I wish I could convey to you the enthusiasm with which that statement was received. Every face was turned, not toward us, but toward the France we represented. Calumnies dropped from us as if by magic, and our country stood forth in all her glory as the great, liberal, generous nation to whose defense the peoples of the world had sprung, believing that in defending her they were defending their own liberties. In a moment France recovered all her moral prestige.

Moral prestige! The Locarno Agreement restores that in all its plenitude by showing that France is ready to clasp the hand of her enemy of yesterday in order to end forever our bloody and tragic wars. 'Ah, the German nation!' you say. Do you suppose, gentlemen, that it was without a certain emotion that I went to that rendezvous on the shores of an Italian lake to meet the German Ministers? Do you not realize that I was filled with complex and disturbing sentiments? But I went. They came. We talked European. That is a new tongue which it would be well for all of us to learn. I must acknowledge that the two

gentlemen with whom I conferred showed both moral and physical courage in coming there, in view of the threats against them in their own country. But they understood the new tongue. Do the German people understand it? I hope so.

The German people are a great nation. They have their merits and their faults. They and the French nation have measured strength throughout the centuries on many a bloodsteeped battlefield. The last war was the worst of all. It was not a war between armies, but between whole peoples struggling for years in a bloody embrace of death. At length the war was won. The victors came out of it with enhanced prestige, with increased moral grandeur, but, alas, bled white! What nation can indefinitely survive such shocks? And what fear seizes us when we consider that our country in this state of weakness, robbed of the flower of her manhood and crushed with debts, may be exposed, perhaps to-morrow, to another like disaster and all for lack of some accord that will give us a breathing-space to avoid a war? Locarno may prevent such a catastrophe. Locarno is a barrier against hasty action. Locarno means talking things over. It means an opportunity for the people to recover their reason before blindly flying at each other's throats.

The Treaty of Versailles will always be a source of irritation. It was the fruit of war, of victory. It can be called, and is called, a treaty imposed by force, under duress, that the defeated party is morally justified in repudiating when it can do so. But the Locarno Agreement is voluntary. The frontiers it describes are freely recognized. The obligations it imposes are freely accepted. Some may say that Germany expects to profit by it. That is quite natural. We shall look out for

our own interest. We too shall resist any attempt to impose upon us. We are a powerful and intelligent nation, and we have many friends.

Need we fear lest the League of Nations be poisoned by the presence of Germany? Why? Several of our 'exenemies,' to use the language of the treaties, are already members of that body. And is it a special favor to Germany to make her a member of the Council? Gentlemen, a great nation like Germany must be a member of the Council, if her collaboration in the League is to be of value. (Applause from the Left and Extreme Left)

Some one objects: Germany is scarcely in the house before she wants to rule it.' Without wishing to be disagreeable, I shall not deny that our neighbors sometimes fail to show all the tact desirable in our discussions. They have their own way of doing things. I do not think it is always the best way. But the League of Nations already has a tradition, an atmosphere, an established procedure. Any new member must conform to this, or it will suffer from its failure to do so. More than that, the League must have a certain unanimity in order to accomplish its purposes. This has produced a spirit of collaboration that rises somewhat above grossly material and selfish objects. We have to reach common accords. Germany will be forced to adapt herself to that situation if she wishes to exercise influence in that body. France believes that Germany has a rôle to play in Europe and in the world. In fact, the very equilibrium of the world depends upon the fact that we have different nations with different characters. To obliterate those diversities, to make it impossible for nations to express their own mentality and racial qualities in an inoffensive and harmless way, would be a crime against humanity. (Applause from the Left, the

Extreme Left, and certain benches of the Centre.)

It is with this in mind that we should view the future. Justice compels me to say that, in all the wars where France has fought Germany, Germany too has shown herself to be a strong and heroic nation. Are our two countries, then, to fight eternally? Are they to remain forever covered with ruins and desolation? They have made wonderful economic progress; they have built vast factories; they have created great centres of production; and yet every twenty-five years or so armies sweep over them and leave them in flames and ruins. . . .

Faced by such problems as these, I do not think that I have merited ill of my country, nor that I have shown lack of patriotism, because I have had faith in the possibility of an enduring peace; because I have trusted to the ability of France to organize, in coöperation with the other great nations, a true peace; because I firmly believe that we are witnessing the dawn of a new age.

All nations are trying to get closer together. We are all trying to create a Europe that will not be incoherent and anarchic. Do we not see the effects of this anarchy in industry? Do we not behold our huge factories in many cases producing goods beyond the capacity of consumers to absorb? What will happen if our Governments cannot get together and remove the economic competition that causes war? Do you imagine that you can have social peace until this is done? No. The only possible path before us is the path of concord. Of course there will be difficulties. The Locarno shoe will pinch at times. We shall have to break it in. But we shall do so little by little.

As for myself, I should not have measured up to my task if, having the honor to represent my Government, I

[DESPITE the greater events that have intervened, many Americans still recall vividly the shock produced in the United States by the news that President Madero, the reforming Berkeley University graduate who had overthrown the Porfirio Diaz régime in Mexico, had been assassinated, together with his colleague in office, while a prisoner in the hands of the man who had usurped his post. This episode has doubtless influenced all subsequent American opinion of political conditions in our neighboring republic. The external facts of the crime are generally known and hardly require a new description, but the following analysis of the conditions and circumstances that lay behind it throws some light into a still obscure recess of history which is not without immediate interest to the people of our country.]

1 From El Universal (Mexican Independent daily), March 6

VOL. 329-NO. 4266

OUR press has recently revived discussion of the crime committed thirteen years ago when the Supreme Magistrates of the Republic, Francisco I. Madero and José María Pino Suárez, were assassinated. This discussion concerned itself with certain definite questions, the answers to which will help us to reconstruct a moral as well as a physical picture of that nefarious deed. But these inquiries have inevitably extended beyond concrete facts, in an effort to establish the guilt or innocence of those suspected of being the remoter accessories or instigators of that act.

A comprehensive answer to the questions thus raised is easy. There is no doubt or mystery as to their answer. The names of those responsible are indelibly engraved on the nation's memory and the opinion of foreign chanceries. All that remains to-day is to assign his fair share of guilt to every person directly or indirectly

implicated in the crime. We know that it had several instigators, that several actually participated in it, that there was a still larger number of accomplices, and that the list of those who covered up the guilty, who were passive and unprotesting witnesses of what occurred or who intentionally profited by the deed, is a long one. But the chief criminal was Victoriano Huerta. That, I believe, is proved without question. It is a positive, clear, precise historical fact.

I bear in mind all the varying versions of that tragic episode. I understand the very natural motives that color most of these accounts. No man who was a member of any of Huerta's cabinets could frankly accuse him of ordering the double assassination of February 22, 1913. That would be tantamount to a confession that he was Huerta's conscious accomplice, that his personal vanity or ambition had made him an accessory to a nefarious assassination. Naturally no man can be expected to make such a confession. His vanity or ambition blinds him to the enormity of this double murder, although all the rest of the world views it with abhorrence. Some of these apologists have gone so far as to argue that no one should stand morally convicted of the crime so long as the written order to commit it has not been produced! Risum teneatis!

If Huerta had been 'surprised and stunned' to learn of the crime, he would naturally have punished immediately the men who committed it. Instead of that, he published an absurd official version in the press, which the members of his Cabinet helped him to circulate, regardless of the opprobrium heaped upon them by the nation at large, and, as soon as the facts were known, by public opinion abroad. They still bear the burden of that infamy, not

withstanding their personal ability and a certain superficial standing that some of them have subsequently managed to regain. The only way they could have kept their reputations clean would have been to resign their posts immediately and irrevocably as soon as the facts were known; but not one of them did so. Relatively less interest attaches to the men who actually committed the crime- mere paid executioners as they were. They belong to that repulsive gunman class that has existed at all times in every country and that unhappily we shall have with us as long as men exist who are willing to stoop to pick their tools out of the dregs of society.

When Huerta, after conferring with his traitorous lieutenants and with the American Ambassador, conferences that are a matter of public knowledge, decided to betray and arrest President Madero, his further plan of action was not fully worked out. He had taken the first step in a political crime, and left the further progress of his adventure to that peculiar personal God to whom he so often appealed. For several days he vacillated between different courses of conduct. His nerves were in such a state that he was scarcely rational. He was at the mercy of any suggestion that did not involve weakening his usurped authority, which it was his sole preoccupation to retain. In fact, both the military usurpers, Felix Diaz and Victoriano Huerta, were involved in identical perplexities, although they showed it in different ways. Their followers and advisers were similarly at sea. The diplomatic corps was likewise uncertain how to act, except the honorable few who were honestly indignant and horrified at what was taking place. The American Ambassador, who had been delighted for a moment at the result of what he

quite rightly regarded as his own work, began to be seriously disturbed over its possible effect at Washington. So he bombarded his State Department with misleading dispatches, in an effort to get its approval for what he had taken it upon himself to do. He could not doubt for a moment that as long as Madero and Suárez, although under arrest, retained their legal status as the Supreme Magistrates of Mexico the Washington Government would continue to treat them as such, and would take prompt and vigorous measures to correct the underhanded and unworthy actions of its intemperate and avaricious representative.

The other members of the diplomatic corps, except three whose names the whole country knows and one who was conveniently absent, trotted after the American Ambassador like a flock of sheep; and residents of the capital, perplexed over what was happening, concealed their true sentiments behind a cowardly mask of acquiescence. Timely measures had been taken to intimidate them by a demonstrative bombardment. The army wavered. It was not very enthusiastic for Madero, but it felt that the President of the Republic was none the less its commander-in-chief. The governors of the different States, with a very few exceptions, were loyal to the constitutional authorities. The Supreme Court was exceedingly averse to any resort to ultralegal measures. A large majority of the Chamber of Deputies supported Madero.

But a group of the older senators, who were inveterate admirers of Porfirio Diaz, encouraged Huerta's ambitions and 'authorized' him to arrest the President of the Republic and the members of his Cabinet. As a result the situation was most precarious. The Mexican people, on learning what was going on, were likely to recover at

any moment from their temporary surprise and indecision and to brush aside the little Prætorian band at the capital with a single indignant gesture. So it was necessary to settle things at once. Those implicated in the Huerta movement and the arrest of the President and the Vice-President concentrated all the mental power they possessed upon this task.

Since Madero and Pino Suárez had not been killed when they were attacked in the Cabinet Room, nor at the time they were arrested, it was necessary to preserve their lives as long as they retained their high offices. It was essential to secure their formal resignations, for even in the existing chaos Huerta must have some legal claim to office. If Madero and Suárez could be persuaded to resign, Huerta, under the Constitution then in force, might be made President by recognized legal procedure-by extorting an election from Congress.

But Huerta, the American Ambassador, and the other conspirators knew very well that neither Madero nor Suárez would willingly resign the posts to which they had been elected by popular vote. They had indignantly refused to do so at the suggestion of the meddling Ambassador, although some weak-kneed members of their Cabinet were inclined to advise surrender. Neither of these men was the sort of person to yield to threats, no matter what the circumstances were. But they might be amenable to the pleas of their families, and so the army usurpers and their civilian abetters brought pressure to bear upon Madero and Suárez in this manner. They used frightened relatives who were ready to do anything to save the lives of those dear to them, and one or two pliable members of Madero's Cabinet, to work upon the arrested Chief Executive and his associates.