threat is a form of intervention. Not to speak of aeroplanes, which have strangely flown hundreds of miles over Mexican territory, not once but many times, American war vessels have been held for a long period in Mexican ports in violation of international law and over repeated protests of the Mexican government.
The Villa raid, the President held, was a violation of Mexican sovereignty; the "punitive expedition," he said, was NOT a violation of Mexican sovereignty (Speech of Acceptance, 1916). He commanded Huerta to salute the flag, but refused Huerta's offer to salute the flag simultaneously with an American salute to the Mexican flag. He declined to enter into a reciprocal agreement with the Mexican Government, already recognized as such, for the crossing of the international line by military forces in pursuit of bandits—insisting that American forces should cross, but that Mexican forces should not cross under similar circumstances. He refused Carranza's request for mediation of the difficulties growing out of the "punitive expedition." In almost innumerable other ways the President has denied to Mexico the "genuine equality," the "unquestioned independence," the "scrupulous respect for sovereignty," so frequently and solemnly promised.
The PURPOSE of the Wilson policy is as widely misunderstood as is its essence. To discover the real purpose it is necessary to look beyond the Wilsonian pronouncements of high intention, to glance at the subject matter of the various diplomatic representations to Mexico, and especially at the EFFECT that they, the overt acts, and the other features of the policy tend to produce.
For it happens that, while saying one thing to the American people, the President has been saying another thing to Mexico; that, while the opponent of intervention can find a complete vindication of his position in the words of Wilson, the interventionist can find as complete vindication of his position in OTHER Words of Wilson; that every Wilson quotation herein against intervention can be paralleled by another Wilson quotation of a diametrically opposite import. Every salient argument of the interventionist propaganda reappears, in some form or another, in the President's pronouncements attempting to justify his meddling policy.
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