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drought; the buffaloes would break out with pest; Thuc would see his only son dying, and the soil beneath the house would tremble. When all was over, when the evil deed, cause of all Nguyên's sorrows, had been punished, the soul would come back to the land of the Opposite Ways. There she would pause at the humble tomb, hidden in

the grass, and there in a low, low voice, would whisper what she had done and seen. Then, for all their weighty mantle of dull earth, the bones of the dead would tremble with unspeakable joy.

And Nguyên the soul, having avenged Nguyên the body, would soar to the Buddhist heavens, there to rejoice in the bliss of Nirvana.

HOW SPAIN VIEWS MEXICO

[We print below the principal paragraphs of an address by Dr. Albiñana, before the Ateneo de Madrid.]

From La Ilustracion Española y Americana, March 15, 22
(MADRID ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY)

I HAVE often noticed that, at the mention of Mexico, Spaniards look as if the word meant something painful or disquieting. Evidently it evokes for them the spectre of revolution. I have observed the same effect in other European countries. I once heard a Paris merchant lament that he could not go to Vera Cruz, on important business, because of the insurrections there. A Russian colonel, living as a refugee in Amsterdam, informed me with the utmost seriousness that only two nations habitually disturb the peace of the world: Mexico and Russia. And a university professor in London, who was escorting me through the British Museum, highly approved the United States solely because the Times had printed a leader that morning upon a possible Yankee intervention in Mexico.

Let us ask those who cherish these absurd apprehensions and misconceptions: has no European nation, then, had a revolution? Is it unprecedented for a country passing rapidly from child

hood to maturity to have such growing pains?

I can well understand why other foreigners deplore the frequent domestic broils in Mexico: these interfere with their private business. But I am surprised at the attitude of Spaniards, since the Mexican nation is an offshoot of our own.

The character of a people does not change in a century. A hundred years is no more in the life of a nation than a year is in the life of an individual. Mexico still retains the traits and features of its original Spanish civilization. Spanish genius flourishes there as vigorously as on its native soil. It incorporates itself almost unchanged in the towns and cities of the Republic. Thousands of immigrants from every province of Spain are helping to build up by their intelligence and energy the country's trade and industry. They have acquired wealth in their new home. It is the adventurous and aggressive spirit of the Spanish explorer and

pioneer that inspires these very revolutions, where so much blood has been spilled to cement the foundations of a vigorous and enduring democracy. Sometimes, it is true, revolutions are sadly misguided; but their object is always the prosperity and greatness of the nation.

These belligerent excesses of a youthful people, where improvised armies rally around popular leaders of their own choice, closely resemble Spain's guerrilla wars early in the nineteenth century, where popular leaders fought first for national independence and to repel the Napoleonic invasion, and afterwards for political liberty and constitutional government. Before condemning Mexico's turbulent progress toward civil liberty, let us recall the constant revolts which the history of Spain records between the reign of Ferdinand VII and the Restoration. Was France a land of stable order before 1870? Have we no precedent for such events in the Italy of Garibaldi?

Has not even the United States, which now regards with patronizing disapproval or stern condemnation Mexico's stormy struggle toward political equilibrium, had its own bloody discords in the sixties, and its own eras of public corruption, financial scandal, repudiation, and political assassination? Even England, the classical land of law and order, has its Irish insurrection, accompanied by every excess of violence and outrage. Is not the pot of revolution boiling in every country? And are we entitled to pass judgment on any single land because it exhibits this universal phenomenon? Far from being a symptom of decadence, it is the growing disease of a new society. Nations like individuals have their climacterics.

Spain's colonial rule in America has left behind it a legend of tyranny and corruption, to preserve which certain

nations sedulously pervert the facts of history. These ignoble efforts to sully the fair name of Spain are meeting at last the just reprobation of impartial and learned scholars. Some cynical passages in foreign authors of wide reputation, who have assumed the unworthy task of painting Spain's history in the New World as a panorama of tyranny and misgovernment, would be absurd were they not so pernicious. Cunningham was one of the first to attain, through ignorance or misinformation, the questionable distinction of a pioneer in thus maligning Spain. Two Frenchmen Launay and Seignobos - followed in his footsteps, instilling false history into the minds of the youth of France through official channels of instruction. Another Frenchman, the geographer, Feyel, betrayed equally gross ignorance in his eagerness to rob Spain of credit for her brilliant services to American civilization. A learned and fair-minded Mexican historian, Carlos Pereyra, in his excellent volume La obra de España en América, disproves the prejudiced statements of these authors, and notes Feyel's absurd geographical blunders; for instance, that scholar supposed Caracas was a seaport! Pereyra quotes from a book by the latter this astounding statement: 'Spanish colonization was confined to the coast, except in Cuba, and it was the work of adventurers and conquerors, not of settled families.' Pereyra thus comments upon this statement: 'So the public schools of France teach that there were no Spanish colonies in Mexico, New Granada, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Mendoza, Salta, or Cordova.'

One day, in hunting for old books along the quays of the Seine, I chanced upon a compendium of universal history used as a textbook in French lycées. I do not recall the name of the author; but that is not important. I opened the book, as chance would have

it, at a description of the Battle of Trafalgar. Neither Churruca nor Gravina was mentioned. But the author had the effrontery to say that this famous battle was lost through the fault of the Spaniards!

We encounter in other countries also this systematic hostility, this attempt to depreciate and discredit Spain in the hearts of her children in America. Interests are at work endeavoring to root out Spanish culture there. Mexico has answered these efforts by drawing ever closer to her mother-country. An eminent publicist, Felix Fulgencio Palaviccini, editor of the important daily El Universal, when Minister of Public Instruction, ordered the textbooks used in the schools of Mexico revised, to remove the slanders against Spain which they contained. A circular has recently been sent to the public-school teachers of that country, cautioning them against teaching these old errors to their pupils, and directing them to present in its true light the lofty mission of the mother-country in America.

Were this not sufficiently eloquent proof of the loyalty to Spanish tradition which still survives in Mexico, I might cite also the recent appeal issued by the National Congress of Municipal Councilors, inviting public contributions for the erection of a monument to Hernando Cortes.

Early this year Mexico experienced some commercial distress on account of the sudden and unexpected fall in prices. But this phenomenon was world-wide, and was not attributable to local conditions. It was natural that, after the recent revolution, there should be a deficit in national revenues. Insecurity and uncertainty had paralyzed production. In spite of that, the President of the Republic feels justified in promising a surplus during the present year. Revenues are estimated at two hundred and seventy-seven million

dollars, and expenses at two hundred and seventy-one million dollars. At the present moment there are actually more than fifteen million dollars in the treasury.

Agriculture is prospering. The railways, of which there are more than thirteen thousand miles, are being rapidly restored to normal, and important extensions are projected. Mexico has recently acquired several merchant vessels from England.

I now come to a very important question: possible efforts by the United States to prevent the free development of Mexico. It would be blindness to facts, or a hypocritical evasion of the facts, to pretend that this question is not all-important. The divergences of interests, which tend to cause violent conflict between the two countries, are of ancient date; and if that conflict is postponed and eventually avoided -it will be wholly due to the patient labor of Mexican statesmen.

However, I feel that even the diplomacy and model self-restraint of Mexico's leaders may fail to withstand her northern neighbor's pressure southward. The Mexicans can compromise on anything but that. And at bottom the issues between the United States and Mexico, no matter with what fair words they may be disguised by both parties, are territorial. Mexico possesses the richest oil-fields in the world. Powerful nations in both hemispheres, particularly England and the United States, covet this petroleum for their industries and navies.

Mexico gave its northern neighbors a free rein during the late era of cordial relations. But when the Mexican government endeavored to exercise its right of eminent domain over its oil and mineral lands, as it was entitled to do as a sovereign state, this action was immediately resented. Thereafter, New York financiers readily gave financial

aid to every discontented element in Mexico. Revolts and insurrections followed; governments trembled and fell. Yankee millionaires shrewdly stimulated the turbulent tastes of the youthful people, believing that the government would eventually fall into the hands of men who would prove pliant as soon as they were faced by the choice of either perishing or compromising. That is the reason for Mexico's recent revolution; or, at least, it is the explanation of them which we receive in Spain.

In old Europe, Great Powers seldom solve their problems alone. They form alliances, which aid them to master obstacles to their progress and expansion. England is the only exception. She has held more or less aloof, invariably seizing the proper instant to side with the combination which best served her interests. But no powerful alliances have been formed in America to resist the imperialism of the North.

When great nations prepare to absorb their neighbors, they invariably follow the same tactics. At first they seek close association with their future victim, under the pretext of friendly and disinterested protection. In the next stage they accomplish an economic penetration, gradually engrossing the sources of their neighbor's wealth. The last step is to seize some excuse making one, if necessary to pounce upon

their prey and swallow it.

That is the order of events in all territorial expansion which is not the outcome of a sudden clash of arms. What is the true attitude of the United States toward Mexico? Just now the White House is exerting itself to the utmost to be conciliatory and friendly. That is the first step. This disinterestedness looks very suspicious, since its pose is one hand extended in friendship to Mexico, while the other grasps that country's oil-wells.

Lest I be thought the victim of an optical illusion, in trying to scan America from this distant observation post, let me quote from a recent book, El Pulpo, a truly sensational work written by Juan T. Burns, Consul-general of Mexico in New York:

They [the Yankees] have struck their talons into the two oceans. They have torn from Spain the Philippines and Porto Rico; they have dismembered Colombia; and they have established their economic suzerainty in Cuba. Since they invaded Santo Domingo and Nicaragua, even during Wilson's Puritan régime; since they exercise a more or less complete hegemony over all South America; and since the original thirGreat Britain, have expanded into eight teen colonies, which threw off the yoke of and forty commonwealths, what reason have we to place faith in the disinterestedness of their government? . . . Wilson's kindly interest in our revolutions is easily explained; for it was no new phenomenon among American statesmen. Roosevelt took the same kindly interest in the revolution which dismembered Colombia. Taylor felt it for the filibusterers, under Houston, who tore from us our state of Texas.

I do not know how much we should discount the book of Mr. Burns. The author says in the preface that it is written with passion but without hatred.' But, in any case, El Pulpo is indispensable for a study of the documentary antecedents of the existing controversies between the Yankees and the Mexicans.

What should be Spain's attitude toward these disputes? Diplomacy perchance requires us to be neutral. But there is a higher law, dictated by the generous impulses of the Spanish soul, which bids us side with Mexico. We are united by a brotherhood of blood, and blood is stronger than all diplomacy.

It is a law of the biology of nations that revolutionary convulsions are followed by a period of peace and expansion. I am not here to apologize for

revolutions and the suffering and ruin that they bring. I would confine myself to emphasizing the progress that accompanies these periods of peace; a progress already well illustrated by what has been accomplished under President Obregon. It is hard to describe this extraordinary man, in whom every foreign office of Europe rests its hope, without citing that legendary Spanish type personified in Don Quixote a man thirsting for heroic deeds and dangerous adventures. Of humble origin, but endowed with remarkable intellectual gifts, he finds himself, while still a young man, the first magistrate of his nation. That is no mere caprice of fate. He has purchased his honor on the battlefield with his own blood.

His tenure of power is contingent upon reviving the strength and prosperity of his country. He is laboring to restore the resources and credit of the ruined banks; to return to their legitimate owners private property lost in the stress of revolution; to reëstablish the country's finances on a sound

basis in which he has succeeded, as we have seen, so that a surplus is in prospect; to find some solution for the perennial petroleum problem so threatening to peace with Mexico's northern neighbor.

But he has another task to perform, as indispensable for Mexico as the restoration of domestic prosperity. He must rectify the errors concerning his country and its people which prevail in Europe. Men with little knowledge of geography, and little disposition to enlarge that knowledge, are wont to speak of Mexico as a semi-barbarous country inhabited by Indians, who war eternally against each other. Europe has not yet learned to think of Mexico as a modern nation. That is why the government of the country is giving so much attention to propaganda in Europe, to teaching the world the truth. It is a grand nation; powerful by virtue of its natural wealth, possessing modern political institutions, wise laws, and fine schools. We Spaniards should do all in our power to educate the world concerning Mexico.

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