ment of Mexico it became legally bound under international law to collect all just claims of American citizens for damages to property or injuries to person from the Mexican Government. Failing so to collect, this Nation is morally, though not legally, bound to pay the claims itself. We recognized this principle of international law some forty years ago when twenty-one Chinamen were hanged in Los Angeles during an anti-Chinese outburst. Although China had no navy and was wholly incapable of enforcing any claim we voluntarily paid the bill for damages. We again recognized this principle a few years later, when a number of Italians were lynched at New Orleans, by paying promptly and without protest a bill for damages from the Italian Government. Finally we have recognized the duty of Government to protect its citizens wherever they may be, in more than a hundred instances in various places from the Chinese coast to Armenia; from Patagonia to Japan and on the Barbary coast. When armed force was necessary to insure protection or exact reparation for injury to its citizens the American Government has not hesitated to use such force in the past. Indeed, the protection of its citizens abroad as well as at home is one of the fundamental functions for which governments are created.
So bitterly did the citizens of the border states
