If, as Captain McCullagh thinks, an American protectorate over Mexico
is "fairly certain," unless the other great republics of South America intervene, then automatically the troubles and horrors described in Red Mexico (Brentano, 15s.) will come to an end. The book is designed to show with a wealth of gruesome detail that (to quote the words of an American journalist) "throughout the whole country civil restraints have broken down ; human life is not worth the snap of a finger ; property belongs to the man with the gun." Moreover, as an attempt is being made in Mexico, as in Bolshevik Russia, to legislate the Church out of existence, America's tolerance would give Rome the liberty which the present rulers of Mexico are now denying to it. According to the author, the United States, which "has always favoured those Mexicans who leant towards Socialism and anti-clericalism," has itself to thank for the disorders and cruelties the author describes so luridly. That may or may not be. But meanwhile for the United States the position in Mexico to-day is pretty clearly a case of De te agitur panes cum proximus ardet.
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