Page:The Mexican Problem (1917).djvu/48

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10
THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

been ground between political and social theorists both in the United States and their own country.

There are seventeen million people in Mexico ten million pure Aztecs, five million of partially Spanish origin, and two million pure Spanish and other foreigners. Where formerly it was estimated there were fifty thousand Americans there are not now five thousand.

The fact that the Spanish invader married the Aztec woman is not the curse of Mexico. The curse of Mexico is the faith that might makes right. Every schoolboy has heard the phrase "Conquest of Mexico." The idea of conquests, nationally and individually, is so strongly rooted in the world that Europe is now bathed in blood to uproot it.

THE RULE OF MIGHT

When Dr. Dernberg, formerly Colonial Minister in Germany, was in New York after the breaking-out of the Great War, he tried to convince me of the injustice of denying to Germany the right of conquest in foreign parts. He said: "What did England do a hundred years ago? What have they all done? Because Germany comes late into the family of nations, are we to