Page:Hands off Mexico.djvu/13

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operators, at least insofar as the immediate issues between them are concerned.

The Mexican Government is going to succeed in asserting its sovereignty, or it is going to fail to do so. One side or the other will have to yield. The oil operators acknowledge that they will choose intervention in preference to yielding. No essential fact is lacking to prove that Wall Street seeks intervention except a straightforward confession that the word "intervention" fits the thing that it seeks.

Wall Street is apparently not yet ready to make such a confession. It is afraid of the word. Public opinion is not yet sufficiently mobilized to look with complacence upon the sinister circumstances which the word implies. Meanwhile, an important fraction of the American press industriously agitates for the act itself, while a number of Senators and Congressmen have joined the chorus from the floors of their respective Houses. Intervention by any other name will smell as sweet to the Mexican oil king. In view of the fact that publications and politicians who attack Mexico nowadays do not suggest any remedy except intervention, that, indeed, the remedies they suggest invariably involve some form of intervention, all present attacks upon Mexico or the Mexican Government may fairly be termed pro-intervention propaganda.

Pro-intervention propaganda we have always had with us, but never, before the organization of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico, in January, 1919, has it been so voluminous, so undisguised and aggressive; never before was it possible to establish its source beyond question. The assertions and arguments of both press and politicians are an echo of those of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico. Although a part of the press propaganda can be traced directly to this organization, it is not necessary so to trace it in order to establish the position of the press in the conspiracy. Anyone who has read the Pujo Committee report upon the Money Trust, showing the concentration

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