plete the fact may be added that after the mines had stood idle for some time, because the owners, having no assurance of protection, dared not restore them to operation, the properties were purchased for a very small part of their value by a corporation representing a group of German capitalists whose headquarters are in Frankfort-on-the-Main. The new owners, under the protection which everything German receives from Carranza, have reopened these mines, and are now producing coal and coke with which to operate smelters which they have also acquired in Mexico, and which are conducted in competition with American-owned smelters whose operations have been hampered in every way, and some of which have been closed altogether by the exactions of the government.
The foregoing is only one of numerous instances in which Germans have been able to secure, at a small fraction of their true worth, properties belonging to citizens of our own country and of our allies, France and Great Britain, the value of which had been largely destroyed by the exactions of the government now in power in Mexico.
The most humiliating result of the Germanophile character of the Carranza element has been that it has forced American citizens to seek for their properties the protection of the German flag. An incident of this sort some time ago came to my
