CHAPTER XLIII WATCHFUL WAITING Bryan in State Department THE success of President Wilson's policy of settling immediately the tariff, financial, and banking problems brought a solution by the autumn of 1914 to the question as to whether or not he could be the leader of his party. William Jennings Bryan, whose dominance was unquestioned at the date of the Baltimore Convention, was believed to have it in his power to wreck the Administration of any other man. His appointment as Secretary of State made it possible for the Administration to use his influence over Western and Southern Democrats, while he in the new office showed a willingness to subordinate himself and coöperate with his chief that contributed to the successful leadership of the latter. The influence of Bryan was always potent at the Capitol, maintaining party discipline, soothing the discontented, and facilitating the passage of the statutes of 1913 and 1914. By the latter date the President was in actual enjoyment of the party leadership that Bryan had possessed, and there was no sign of any break between them. In the administration of the State Department Bryan contributed no special training and no unusual understanding of the problems. Technical matters were carried on by the permanent staff. Minor officials in the diplomatic service were promoted and transferred as consistently as the law allowed. The chief ambassadors and ministers were as usual allowed to retire, and their successors were appointed directly from civil life. In the more important posts men of letters or active partisans replaced Republican predecessors. The editor of World's Work, Walter Hines Page, was sent to the Court of St. James, Thomas Nelson Page to Rome, Brand Whitlock to Brussels, Henry van Dyke to The Hague, and James W. Gerard, a wealthy New York judge, to Berlin. It was commonly believed that the President gave the leading title in his Cabinet to Bryan, but retained control of the diplomatic policies of the State Department himself. A few days before the change in administrations Mexico underwent another of her periodic revolutions, and a miliMexican tary dictator, Victoriano Huerta, assumed the Revolution executive power, displacing Francisco I. Madero, whose own title had been based on successful revolution. For thirty-five years, until 1911, Mexico enjoyed tolerable tranquillity under the heavy hand of General Porfirio Diaz, dictator and President. In the Diaz régime Mexico came nearer to the United States as railroads crossed the Rio Grande and penetrated the highlands of the Latin Republic. Foreigners were encouraged to take concessions for the development of Mexican resources. Mining and railroad construction were promoted, and in later years, when oil was discovered in the State of Tamaulipas, petroleum concessions were granted in the Tampico district. Foreign industry found it possible to do business under the Diaz régime and the disorder that had formerly existed along the Rio Grande was rigorously repressed. By a semblance of popular government Diaz reëlected himself term after term, but in 1911 he fled the country in the face of an agrarian insurrection that brought Madero to the front. The protests of the Maderists asserted that natural resources had been misappropriated, that the common Mexican was being driven from his land, and that foreign capital was dominating the government. The Madero régime was never peacefully established over the whole republic. On February 18, 1913, Madero was overturned by a military conspiracy, and three days later he was murdered amid circumstances that suggested that the new dictator, Huerta, was guiltily responsible. Taft took no step respecting Mexico that might embarrass his successor in handling the new problem. After the Maderist revolt he increased the number of regular troops stationed along the Rio Grande in order to lessen the border disturbance that invariably accompanied Mexican revolutions. Texan, New Mexican, and Arizona towns, with considerable Mexican population, found their peace and safety disturbed as plots were hatched in them for execution in Mexico, and as Mexican fugitives and pursuers carried their fighting across the boundary into the United States. The Huerta tration The murder of Madero gave the Huerta Administration a bad start, and in one State at least it was repudiated from the beginning. In Coahuila, General Venustiano Carranza refused to recognize the change, and Adminisbecame the nucleus of an anti-Huerta movement. In March, 1912, under the stimulus of the Mexican revolt, Congress authorized the President to endeavor to moderate domestic violence in the Latin republics by forbidding the export of arms and ammunition. Operating under this law Taft endeavored to influence the course of the revolution, with the result that the Mexican revolutionists were driven to procure their supplies in Europe, where German dealers were entirely willing to provide them. One of the first tasks of Secretary Bryan was that of determining what to do with Huerta. The American Ambassador in Mexico, Harry Lane Wilson, openly supported the new Government, and returned to Washington in the summer to report that the alternative for Mexico was Huerta or chaos. The Administration repudiated his conduct in the early days of the revolution. He resigned his post in August, and John Lind, of Minnesota, was sent to Mexico as a confidential agent to investigate the state of affairs. On August 27 the President addressed Congress upon the crisis, indicating his determination not to intervene, but to exert a "steady pressure of moral force" for the reestablishment of peace. Mexico was to be allowed to work out her own problem, with the United States in a position of "watchful waiting" for the outcome. In October the violent dissolution of the Mexican Congress by Huerta evoked the announcement that the United States would not recognize the Huerta Government or accept the approaching Mexican election as constitutional. An American Chargé d'Affaires, Nelson O'Shaughnessy, was allowed to remain informally in Mexico, where all of the other great powers had already recognized Huerta. The former Ambassador issued a public attack upon the Mexican policy of the Administration, and on October 17, 1913, President Wilson discussed the Latin-American relationships of the United States in a speech at Mobile. The "Mobile Doctrine" constituted a new interpretation of the Doctrine of Monroe. The diplomatic interventions The "Mobile of the United States in the affairs of Venezuela Doctrine" by Cleveland in 1895 and by Roosevelt in 1902 were welcomed in Latin America as evidence that the Monroe Doctrine constituted a safeguard against attack, but the brusque treatment of Colombia in 1903 and the prevention of her recovery of Panama aroused deep suspicions of the sincerity of the United States when its own expansion was involved. The special missions of Root and Knox to the Latin Americas were designed to allay these suspicions, which were revived when American business interests, aroused by the Mexican revolution, began to demand an intervention "to clean up Mexico." Speaking at Mobile, President Wilson promised that the United States would never add a foot to its territory by conquest, and expressed the hope that law and order might prevail in the neighboring republics. A large part of the regular army continued in camp along the Rio Grande, where Texas and New Mexico were continually demanding protection. Canal treaty with Huerta, deprived of recognition by the United States, was unable to procure substantial aid from other countries since these were unwilling to interfere in American problems. As evidence of the sincerity of Colombia the Mobile policy, Bryan signed a treaty with Colombia on April 7, 1914, regretting that the relations of the countries had been marred in 1903, and providing compensation to Colombia for the loss of the Canal Zone. The treaty remained only an evidence of administrative intent, as the Senate did not ratify it, and two days after its signature an episode at Tampico tested the self-restraint of "watchful waiting." An American naval officer with a few marines was arrested by the Huerta forces, and adequate apology was not forthcoming. A military and naval demonstration was at once prepared against Vera Cruz. "There can in what we do be no thought of aggression or of selfish aggrandizement," said the President as he announced the intervention to Congress on April 20, 1914. "We seek to maintain the dignity and authority of the United States only because we wish always to keep our great influence unimpaired for the uses of liberty, both in the United States and wherever else it may be employed for the benefit of mankind." In both parties impatience with watchful waiting was pronounced. Henry Watterson declared for war "because, helpless to help herself, Mexico has become a menace to us." With Frank F. Fletcher in command of the fleet and Frederick Funston in command of the expeditionary force Vera Cruz was occupied and held for a short Mexican period. The "A.B.C." powers-Argentina, Bra- intervention zil, and Chile-offered their services as mediators between the United States and Mexico, which were accepted at once. The formal satisfaction for the insult at Tampico was never attained, but the steady pressure upon Huerta accomplished its result, and he resigned his position on July 15, 1914. A few days later he set sail for Spain, an exile from his country. But peace failed to be established. General Carranza acceded to the presidency, while disorder continued throughout the republic; and along the Rio Grande life and property remained uncertain because of revolutionary turbulence. In the spring of 1916 a second military intervention took place in an attempt to capture a notorious bandit, one Francisco Villa. This time the whole available force of the regular army was used, and the National Guard was called out and mobilized along the border. Villa escaped, the invading column was drawn back across the Chihuahua desert to El Paso, and there remained nothing definite in the Mexican situation except the fixed determination of President Wilson not to take advantage of the |