IN DEFENCE OF MEXICO [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
SIR,—I cannot accept the accusation of writing " pure bunkum " without protest, nor can I here recapitulate the argument of a forthcoming book. May I simply issue a caveat with regard to Mr. Martin's restatement of the stock party apologist's case? Mr. Green; in his brilliant study which I had the honour to review for you, gave a personal impression of Mexico. I have tried to give a more solid and general account, in which Mr. Martin will learn, among other things, that it was Cortes, not Columbus, who colonised Mexico; that the bulk of the population are devoutly Christian and have died in great numbers for their faith; that the shoot- ings are done by the people who have driven the priests from the confessionals, not by those who frequent them; that the majority of fine buildings in Mexico were places of worship, learn,ing and civil administration, not private residences; that Mexico has been a nation longer than many of the countries of modern Europe; that the delightful qualities of the peon, which he rightly praises, are a legacy of Christianity, and that the new education, which he wrongly praises, is planned to obliter- ate these qualities; that the reason we " brusquely refused to understand Mexico's case " in the matter of oil expropriations was that there was no case, except the topical one of, " If you daren't fight for your possessions, we will steal them." In fact, that everything in his impolite little article is taken un- critically from the Carlton Beals-Gruening school of breakfast- club lectures and would have been better left there.
I wonder, by the way, how he thinks Mexico is populated if the Indians were "nearly wiped out " and the Spaniards are " a handful "; entirely by co-ed radicals on vacation from U.S. colleges, perhaps.—Your obedient servant,
EVELYN WAUGH.
Piers Court, Stinchcombe, Gloucestershire.
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