XII

Ojinaga evacuated—Tepozotlan’s beautiful old church and convent—Azcapotzalco—A Mexican christening—The release of Vera Estañol—Necaxa—The friars—The wonderful Garcia Pimentel library.

Yesterday Huerta decided to suspend payment on the interest on the national debt for six months, which will free about three million pesos a month for pacification purposes. He denies anything approaching repudiation, but says this step was forced on him by the attitude of the United States. It will make the European investors rather restive under “watchful waiting,” though they can employ the time by making large and frequent additions to the bill they intend to present to Uncle Sam,pobrecito.

Ojinaga has been evacuated by General Mercado, who would better look out for his head. Huerta says he is going to have him shot. Villa will use Ojinaga for strategic purposes, and the refugees, four thousand officers and soldiers and about two thousand five hundred women and children, are eventually to be interned at Fort Bliss. Uncle Sam will present the bill to Mexico later on. They have been started on a four days’ march to Marfa, where they will at last get a train. Mercado says he only surrendered and passed on to American soil when his ammunition gave out. The soldiers and generals—six of these last were in Ojinaga—will not be permitted to return to Mexico untilpeaceis effected.From the head-lines in someHeraldsI am sending you, you can see that that won’t be immediately.

Of course our delay on the journey made a sensation. Dr. Ryan heard that we were held up in a tunnel and was planning to get to our relief by hook or crook. He is “without fear and without reproach.” I am very glad to be safe again in this big, comfortable, sun-bathed house.

N. went to see Huerta a day or two ago. The President was most relieved to have him safely back. He asked him the results of his visit to Vera Cruz and N. told him there was no change in the attitude of his government. Huerta remained impassive, and there was no further political conversation. He promised, however, that he would attend to several matters of the United States, in regard to claims, etc., affecting rather large interests. There are some advantages in living under a dictator, if you enjoy his favor, and Huerta would barter his soul to please the United States to the point of recognition.

While not convinced of the necessity, or even advisability, of formal recognition, N. does realize that everything for Mexico and the United States could have been accomplished by diplomacy in the early stages of Huerta’s incumbency. Now the bullying and collusive and secret arrangements with his enemies, the revolutionaries, to overthrow him, must eventually succeed, and in his fall we fear Huerta will take down with him the entire fabric of state. How often he has said, “I don’t ask your help; but don’t help my enemies!”

To-day we had a long motor trip to the old church and convent of Tepozotlan, with Seeger, Hay, the Tozzers, and Elim. There were pistols under the seats, of course,though the road (the old post-road to the north) is not a haunt of the Zapatistas. We drove two hours or more through the dazzling air, the road running for miles between picturesque fields planted with maguey, the Indian’s all, including his perdition. Here and there are collections of adobe huts, with bright-eyed, naked children playing by fences ofnopal, and sometimes a lovely candelabra cactus standing guard. We passed through Cuauhtitlan—a most interesting place, with its deserted, picturesque hostelries that used to do a lively relay trade in the old coaching days. Each carved door, with glimpses of the big courtyard within, seems to tell the tale of past activities.

Tepozotlan is celebrated for its beautiful old church, with a fine carved façade, built by the Jesuits at the end of the sixteenth century. It was suppressed in 1857, under the Juarez laws of reform, and is now neglected, solitary, and lovely. Cypresses guard the entrance to its grass-grownpatio, adorned by a few pepper-trees, with here and there an occasional bit of maguey. It was all sun-baked and radiant, receiving the many-colored light and seeming to give it forth again in the magic way of the Mexican plateau. We wandered through the church, which preserves its marvelous altarpieces in the Churrigueresque style, and admired the gilded, high-relief wood carvings, to which time has lent a marvelous redpatiné. Some of the old chapels are still most beautifully adorned with rich blue Puebla tiles, now loosened and falling from neglected ceilings and walls. The adjoiningseminario, with its endless corridors and rooms, is dim and deserted, except for spiders and millions of fleas; I thought at first, in my innocence, that these were gnats, as they settled on my white gloves. We lunched in the enchanting oldpatioof the cloisters, where orange-trees and aNoche Buenatree, withits brilliant red flowers, were growing around an old stone well in the middle. For those hours, at least, we felt that all was well with the world. Afterward we climbed the belfry and feasted our eyes on the beauty unfolded to our sight. East, west, south, and north other pink belfries pressed themselves against other blue hills, repeating the loveliness until one could have wept for the beauty of it all. The almost deserted village, straggling up to thepatioof the church, is where Madre Matiana was born at the end of the seventeenth century. She made, on her death-bed, the celebrated prophecies which have been so strangely confirmed by subsequent events in Mexican history.

The Ojinaga refugees, garrison, and civilians are just arriving after the four days’ march through the desert to Marfa and Fort Bliss. This affair has cost $142,000 up to date, and $40,000 were spent for new equipments for officers. I think every officer in Mexico will contemplate, for a brief moment, the idea of crossing the frontier. There will be a good deal of disillusionment and suffering in the detention camp, however, if the soldiers are called on to comply with the hygienic rules of the American army.

Jesus Flores Magon, whom we knew as Minister of Gobernación under Madero, a strong and clever man of pronounced Zapoteca Indian type, is going to Vera Cruz at N.’s suggestion, to see Mr. Lind. Flores Magon, who knows his people, says there is no use in “trying out” another government here. Though he was in Madero’s cabinet, he is now for the sustaining of Huerta. He thinks another government would only mean another set of traitors, who would, in turn, be betrayed. N. asked him if he were convinced that Huerta had other aims in view than the graft and personal aggrandizement his enemies credit him with. Though not unreservedly enthusiastic,he answered that he thought he had within him the elements necessary to control in Mexico, but that, like all Indians, he was cruel. Lind is out-and-out for recognizing the northern rebels, or, at least, raising the embargo on arms and ammunition. A terrible policy, it seems to me. Taking from the possessors to give to those desirous of possessing can hardly mend things—here or anywhere. Nothing that Mr. Lind has seen or heard has modified in the slightest the ideas with which he arrived.

Delendus est Huertais themot d’ordre, and I find myself assisting at the spectacle. I am dazed at this flying in the face of every screaming fact in the situation. N. went to see Moheno yesterday, with the usual bundle of claims against the government, and M. said, in a wild, distraught way: “My God! When are you going to intervene? You are strangling us by this policy.”

We hear from a railroad man (they are always informed) that there are two thousand well-armed men in Oaxaca, doing nothing—simply awaiting orders. They are Felicistas. Everybody is waiting to betray everybody else.

I had to stop writing for a few minutes; one of those strange accompaniments of life in Mexico has just manifested itself—a slight earthquake. The doors that were ajar swung quietly open and as quietly closed themselves. The chandeliers were thrown out of plumb in a rhythmic way; there was a sliding sound of small objects from their position and then back. I had an unpleasant sort of depolarized sensation. It is all over now—thetemblor, as they call it. But I feel as if some ghost has passed through the room, leaving me not quite the same.

The papers have the report of the five hours’ conversation between Flores Magon and Lind at Vera Cruz.Lind is reported as saying: “Flores Magon is a splendid gentleman, with the welfare of Mexico at heart.”

We continually ask ourselves what is going to happen. Mexico is not, by any means, starved out; there is plenty of food, there is money for oil stock and bull-fights, and other necessaries. We may have to see Pancho Villa in a dress-suit. He has collected wives, as he would anything else, in hispaso de vencedorthrough Mexico, and I understand that some of them are curios. I suppose accident will decide which one he will turn up with as “first lady in the land.” A recent portrait of one of them drove a woman we knew nearly crazy. It showed the “bride” decked out in an old family necklace forcibly taken from our friend, with other valuables, before her flight from Torreon.

Yesterday I went to the christening of the Corcuera Pimentel baby. The young mother, very pretty, was still in bed, enveloped in beautiful and costly laces, and the house was full of handsome relatives. After I had congratulated her, Don Luis, her father, took me out to tea. The table was laden with all sorts of delicacies, foreign and domestic. I partook of the delicioustamales, appetizingly done up and cooked in corn-husksà la Mexicaine, and drankatolli aurora, a thick, pink drink of corn-meal and milk, flavored with cinnamon and colored with a dash of carmine—though less exotic dainties were pressed on me.

Yesterday was a busy day. To show you how difficult it often is to get hold of Huerta,—N. was up and out at seven-thirty, looking for him. He went to his house—gone. He went to Popotla, a place Huerta has in the suburbs near theNoche Triste[8]tree. Not there. N. camehome. I was just starting down-town, so I drove him to the Palace, where one of the aides said the President might be found at Chapultepec—the restaurant, not the castle, which he does not affect. We again went the length of the city, from the Zocalo, through Plateros, up the beautiful, broadPaseo. Huerta was just passing through the entrance to the Park in a big limousine, followed by two other automobiles containing secretaries and aides. N. got out of our auto and went into that of the President, the others keeping their distance. There is always more or less “waiting around” on royalty. They sat there for an hour, I remaining in our auto, during which time N. procured the release of Vera Estañol, one of the most brilliant of the Deputies, imprisoned since thecoup d’étatof October 10th. Huerta also sent one of his aides with a note to the Supreme Court, written and signed by him, telling the judges to render a just decision in a case affecting American interests, which is now before the court. This case has been in the Embassy nearly twenty years, and four of our administrations have tried, without result, to get justice done through the Embassy, using every form of diplomatic representation. Though N. saw him write the order, and the auto which took the note started off in the direction of the Supreme Court, and returned, having delivered it, no one can tell what wink may later be given the judges.

I came home and ordered a room to be prepared for Vera Estañol, as, of course, he must remain with usuntil he can be shipped to the States or to Europe. I imagine that the clean bed and the hot water and the reading-lamp and desk will look very pleasant, after three months in jail. N. wrote and signed a letter to Huerta, in which he guarantees that Vera Estañol will not mix in politics and will immediately leave the country with his family. He is one of the most prominent and gifted lawyers in the republic, liberal and enlightened, and head of the Evolucionista party. N. was out until midnight trying to find the President, to get the final order for his release, but was, in the end, obliged to give it up. The old man has ways of disappearing when no one can track him to ground. This morning, N. is after him again, and, I suppose, will bring Vera Estañol to the house, whence he will take the well-worn route of hastily departing patriots to Vera Cruz.

Yesterday afternoon Mrs. Tozzer, Mr. Seeger, and I motored out beyond Azcapotzalco, where Tozzer and Hay are excavating. Anywhere one digs in these suburbs may be found countless relics of Aztec civilization. Azcapotzalco was once a teeming center, a great capital, and there were then, as now, many cypress groves. One of them is still supposed to be haunted by Marina, Cortés’ Indian love.

Built on the site of the temple,teocalli, is an interesting old Dominican church of the sixteenth century; its greatpatio, planted with olive and cypress trees is inclosed by a pink scalloped wall, marvelouslypatiné. Here the Indians came in masses, were baptized, had their wounds bound up, their ailments treated, their strifes allayed, by the patient friars. As we went slowly over the broken, neglected road little boys offered us beads and idols and bits of pottery, which are so abundant in the fields that it is scarcely necessary to digfor them. T. and C. H., for their work, simply chose a likely-looking sun-baked mound, planted with maguey, like dozens of others, and with twenty-five or thirty picturesque and untrustworthy descendants of Montezuma (one skips back six or seven hundred years with the greatest ease when one looks at them) they dug out an old palace. When we demandedregalitos(presents), our friends drew, unwillingly, from their dusty pockets some hideous heads and grotesque forms, caressed them lovingly, and then put them back, unable, when it came to the scratch, to part with them.

THE “DIGGINGS” (AZCAPOTZALCO)

THE PYRAMID OF SAN JUAN TEOTIHUACAN

It is a heavenly spot. Here and there a pink belfry showed itself, its outline broken by a dead black cypress; the marvelous, indescribable hills, both near and far, swam in a strange transparency.

We sat long among the grubby, mixed Toltec and Aztec ruins, and made tea, and, in what may have been some patrician’s parlor, watched the sun go down in a blaze of colors, reappearing, as it were, to fling a last, unexpected glory over the snow-covered volcanoes and the violet hills. Every shaft of maguey was outlined with light, the whole universe a soft spectrum. A mysterious, blue-lined darkness fell upon us as we drove toward the city.

N. was only able to get Vera Estañol out of thePenitenciaríaon Wednesday afternoon. He didn’t come here, but was taken immediately to the station, caught the night train to Vera Cruz, and sailed yesterday, Thursday, by the Ward Line steamer. When N. went to the prison with the President’s aide, carrying the order for his release and the duly signed safe-conduct, Estañol came into the waiting-room with a volume of Taine’sHistoire Contemporainein his hand, and the detached air acquired by persons who have long been in jail. Therewas scarcely any conversation, his one idea being to leave the building and get to the train under American cover.

Huerta told N. yesterday that General Mercado had been bribed by wealthy persons in Chihuahua to go to Ojinaga on the frontier, instead of going to Jimenez, where he had been ordered. He feels very bitter toward Mercado, who cost him 4,000 good soldiers. Mercado makes all sorts of counter-charges against the other generals, especially against Orozco—of cowardice, of placing drunken officers in important positions, and of robbing their own Federal trains of provisions. General Inez Salazar’s fate is tragi-comic. He was arrested for playing “a little game of cards” on the Texas train, never suspecting that in a free country you could not do such a thing. After escaping the rebels and the American authorities he was most chagrined to be jailed and consequently identified just as he was about to recross the border into Mexico.

Wednesday we had a pleasant lunch at the Norwegian Legation. The Norwegian minister is the son of Jonas Lie. He and his wife are cultivated people of the world, and kind friends. Madame Lie always has delicious things to eat, very handsomely served. One knows that when things are well done here it means that the lady of the house has given them her personal care. In the evening there was bridge at Mme. Bonilla’s. The lights suddenly went out, as we were playing, and remained out. As is usual in such occurrences, the cry was, “At last the Zapatistas are cutting the wires!” Madame B. got out some beautiful old silver candlesticks and we played on recklessly, with our fate, perhaps, upon us. The street lamps were also dark.

Mexico City is lighted from Necaxa, nearly a hundred miles away, and one of the loveliest spots in the world. In a day one drops down from the plateau into the hotcountry; the train seems to follow the river, which flows through a wild and beautifulbarranca, and at Necaxa are the great falls supplying the power for this wonderful feat of engineering. In my mind it is a memory of blue skies, enchanting vistas of blue mountains, myriads of blue butterflies against falling water, bright singing birds, and the most gorgeous and richest of tropical vegetation, vine-twisted trees, orchids, morning-glories of all kinds, and countless other magnificences. I sometimes think that it is because Mother Earth is so lavish here, asking only to give, demanding nothing of her children, that they have become rather like spoiled children. Every mountain oozes with precious ores. On the coast, any accidental hole in the earth may reveal the oil for which the world is so greedy; and each green thing left to itself will come up a thousandfold. Marvelous, magical Mexico! A white moon is shining in through the windows of the frontsalon, making my electric lamp seem a dull thing. At this altitude the moonlight cuts out objects as if with a steel point.

Yesterday, Mr. Prince, Aunt Laura’s friend, and brother-in-law of Mr. C., came to lunch. Mr. C. died during the bombardment, and in his last illness was moved from house to hospital, and from the hospital, when that was shelled, to another house, opposite the Embassy. During the armistice Mr. P. was able to go out for a coffin, and to take it himself on a cab to the cemetery. This was the only way to dispose of it, the town being under fire at the time. That same week one of the little boys had his foot crushed by the tramway, and it had to be amputated while shot and shell were falling and his father was lying dead. Emma, the child who fell through my glass roof, two years ago, has never since walked. A chapter of tragedies! Mrs. C. is now in the States, trying to recuperate.

Hanihara, the bright secretary from the Japanese Foreign Office, who is here to look into the conditions and, doubtless, the possibilities of the Japanese situation in Mexico, turned up yesterday; we used to know him in Washington. He speaks English perfectly, and is Europeanized, externally, to an unusual extent, but, of course, he remains completely Japanese at bottom. I shall give a luncheon for him at Chapultepec, with his minister, the retiring Austrianchargé, and the new Italian minister, who fell at my door, the day before yesterday, and was laid up with a bad knee. I had him bound up by Dr. Ryan.

I saw a man yesterday who had known Villa in his purely peon days; he said some mental, if not moral, evolution had been going on; among other things, he generally keeps to the regulation amount of clothing, but a collar gets on his nerves almost as much as the mention of Porfirio Diaz—his pet abomination. He keeps himself fairly clean, and has shown himself clever about finding capable agents to whom he is willing to leave the gentler mysteries of the three R’s. We wonder who is getting out certain polished political statements appearing under his name. What he once did to an official document, on an official occasion, instead of signing his name, pen cannot relate. He evidently has military gifts, but remains, unfortunately, one of the most ignorant, sanguinary, and ruthless men in Mexico’s history, knowing nothing of the amenities of life, nothing of statesmanship, nor of government in any form except force. And he may inhabit Chapultepec.

D’Antin brought home a beautifulsaltillo, a hand-woven, woolen sort ofserape, about a hundred years old, that he got from an Indian at a price so small I hate to think of it. He saw it on the Indian on the street, one cold night, and his clever eye realized what it was. I amnot quite happy about it; but I have had it disinfected and cleaned. I can only bring myself to use it because some one said the Indian had probably stolen it.

Elim is singing at the top of his voice the popular air, “Marieta, no seas coqueta porque los hombres son muy malos” (“Marieta, don’t be a coquette, because men are very wicked”).

I spent a quiet evening reading the fascinating book Don L. Garcia Pimentel sent me yesterday,Bibliografia Mexicana de lo Siglo XVI. I am impressed anew with the wonderful work done by that handful of friars, Franciscans and Dominicans, who came over immediately after Cortés and began with the Conquistadores the work of Spanish civilization in the new world. Their first acts, as they made their way through the country, were to do away with the bloody sacrificial rites which disgraced and discredited the Aztec civilization. They built everywhere churches, hospitals, and schools, teaching gentler truths to the Indians, who gathered by thousands for instruction in the beautiful oldpatiosto be found in front of all the colonial churches.

One might almost say that Mexico was civilized by that handful of friars, sixteen or seventeen in all, who came over during the first eight or ten years following the Conquest. Their burning zeal to give the true faith to the Indians dotted this beautiful land with countless churches, and an energy of which we can have no conception changed the gorgeous wilderness into a great kingdom. Padre Gante, one of the greatest of them, who arrived in 1522, was related to the Emperor Charles V. He had been a man of the world, and was a musician and an artist. He had his celebrated school at Tlaltelolco, now the Plaza de Santiago, which, shabby and shorn of all its ancient beauty, is used as the city customs headquarters.He wrote hisDoctrina Christianaand baptized hundreds of thousands of Indians during his fifty years’ work. He not only taught them to read and write, but started schools of drawing and painting, at which he found them very apt. They already possessed formulas for all sorts of beautiful colors, and had their own arts, such as the glazing and painting of potteries, the making of marvelous garments of bright birds’ feathers, and of objects in gold and silver, of the finest workmanship. In the museum one can see beautiful old maps of Mexico City when she was Anahuac, the glory of the Aztecs, painted on cloth made from the maguey.

Fray Bartolomé de las Casas worked with Fray Gante, and they were greatly aided by the first viceroys. Fray Motolinía came later, and hisHistoria de los Indiosis the reference book of all succeeding works onNueva Espagna. The friars tried by every means to alleviate the miseries of the Indians, and hospitals, homes for the aged and decrepit, orphanages and asylums of all kinds were established. The generation which immediately succeeded the Conquest must have been a tragic spectacle, exhausted by resistance and later on by the pitiless work of rebuilding cities, especially Mexico City, which was done in four years—to the sound of the whip. The viceroys were responsible only to theConsejo de las Indias, in far-away Spain, and their success came naturally to be judged by the riches they secured from this treasure-house of the world, at the expense, of course, of the Indians, though many of the viceroys tried honestly, in conjunction with the friars, to alleviate the Indian lot. Seven or eight volumes of hitherto unpublished works are waiting for me from Don Luis Garcia Pimentel, to one of whose ancestors, Conde de Benavente, Motolinía dedicated hisHistoria de los Indios. I have simply steeped myself inMexicana—from the letters of Cortés, the recitalsof Bernal Diaz, who came over with him, down to Aleman and Madame Calderon de la Barca.

Well, it is getting late and I must stop, but the history of Mexico is without exception the most fascinating, the most romantic, and the most improbable in the world; and the seed of Spanish civilization implanted in this marvelous land has produced a florescence so magnetic, so magical, that the dullest feel its charm. All that has been done for Mexico the Spaniards did, despite their cruelties, their greeds, and their passions. We, of the north, have used it only as a quarry, leaving no monuments to God nor testaments to man in place of the treasure that we have piled on departing ship or train. Now we seem to be handing back to Indians very like those the Spaniards found, the fruits of a great civilization, for them to trample in the dust. Let usnotcall it human service.

Von Hintze came in for a while this morning. Like all the foreign representatives, he is weary of his work here; so manyennuis, so much waiting for what they all believe alone can be the outcome now—American supremacy in some form.

Shots were heard in town last night. Dr. Ryan, who is making his home with us, thought it might be the long-threatenedcuartelazo(barracks’ revolution), and went out to see, but it turned out to be only a little private shooting. The Burnsides have gone to live at Vera Cruz.

Only a word before beginning a busy day. I must go out to Chapultepec to see that the luncheon of twelve, for Hanihara and Cambiaggio, is all right. The town is filling with Japanese officers from theIdzuma, lying at Manzanillo. There will be a veritable demonstration forthem, indicating very completely the anti-American feeling. There is an enormous official program for every hour until Friday night, when they return to their ship.

My luncheon for Hanihara went off very pleasantly, at Chapultepec. That restaurant is the knife with which I have cut the gordion knot of entertaining. The new Italian minister was there, the Norwegians, Mr. E. N. Brown, president of the National Railways, Parra, from the Foreign Office, and others. We reached home at four o’clock, and I drove immediately to the Garcia Pimentels, where Don Luis was waiting to show me some of the special treasures in his library. Up-stairs, the handsome daughters and their equally handsome friends, married and single, were sewing for the Red Cross. We meet there every Tuesday. Each daughter had a beautifully embroideredrebozothrown over her smart Paris gownà la Mexicana—heirlooms of the family.

The house is one of the noble, old-style Mexican edifices, with a largepatio, and a fine stairway leading up to the corridor that winds around its four palm- and flower-banked sides. Large, handsome rooms, with pictures, rare engravings, priceless porcelains, and old brocades, open from the corridor. I merely put my head in at the door of the big drawing-room where they were working, as Don Luis was waiting for me in his library down-stairs. I spent a couple of delightful hours with him, among his treasures, so lovingly guarded through generations. Oh, those fascinating title-pages in reds and blacks, that thick, rich-feeling hand-woven paper, that changeless ink, fit to perpetuate those romantic histories and the superhuman achievement of the men of God! I could scarcely put down the beautifully written letter of Cortés to Charles V., wherein he tells of theIndians as he found them. They so closely resemble the Indians asIhave found them.

Many of Don Luis’s most valuable books and manuscripts were found in Spain, and his library ofMexicanaembraces everything obtainable down to our own time.[9]His wife is a charming woman, verygrande dame, cultivated, and handsome. She and her daughters are always busy with countless works of charity. Just now they are busy making up little bundles of layettes for the maternity home. It does make one’s fingers nimble to see Indian women obliged to wrap their babies in newspapers!

I had just time to get home and dress for dinner at the British Legation, but we came away at half past nine, leaving the rest of the party playing bridge. I had on again the gray-and-silver Worth dress, but I feel sad without my black things.

This afternoon I went with de Soto to see Mme. Lefaivre at the Museo Nacional, where she is copying an old Spanish screen. It is always a pleasure to go through the lovely, sun-bakedpatio, filled with gods and altarsof a lost race. Many of them, found in theZocalo, have made but a short journey to their resting-place. De Soto is always an agreeable companion for any little excursion into the past—though it isn’t thepastwe are dreaming about, these days. And as for his looks, put a lace ruff and a velvet doublet on him and he would be a “Velasquez” of the best epoch.

Mme. Lefaivre, enveloped in an apron, was sitting on a little step-ladder before the largest screen I have ever seen, its eight mammoth leaves representing various amorous scenes, lovers, balconies, guitars, etc.—all most decorative and truly ambassadorial. I told her that nothing but the Farnese Palace would be big enough for it, and the light of dreams—the kind of dreams we all dream—appeared in her eyes. The big sala was getting a bit dim, so she left her work and we started for a turn through the museum. When we found ourselves talking of Huerta by the “Morning Star,” a mysterious, hard-faced, green god (his little name is Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli), I thought we might as well take a turn in the motor; so we went up to Chapultepec and continued the discourse under the cypresses, which are growing, though slowly, with the living events that alone really interest one. The past is for those with peace and leisure.

A quiet day, but we are distressed beyond words at the renewed reports of a lifting of the embargo on arms and ammunition for the rebels. I feel as if I couldn’t stand it, and N. even felt that he ought to resign if it happens. The ship of state is going so inevitably on the rocks. He will make some sort of protest to Washington against the advisability of this move. Villa’s cry is “On to Mexico,” and he may get there, or rather, here—if we decide to carry him.

It appears that he is becoming daily more intoxicated by the favors of the United States. No one is more surprised than he at his success with the powers that be, and as for the vogue he has with the confidential agents, they tell me his face is one broad grin whenever their names are mentioned. However, this doesn’t mean he is going to try to please them. Just now he wants Huerta’s head, but that foxy old head can have asylum here. Shouts and shots were heard an hour or so ago, but probably only from some Zapatistas near town.

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