Page:Mexico under Carranza.djvu/245

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MEXICO UNDER CARRANZA
229

conditions appearing to result from the corrupting influence of the servile majority working upon the moral character of the governing minority, that we have found in the history of Mexico.

For more than twelve hundred years the government went from bad to worse in corruption and inefficiency until, finally, it became necessary for an alien country, England, to assume control in order that it should be made to discharge its international obligations and, at the same time, give a chance in life to the submerged majority. And there can be no doubt that since the English have controlled the Egyptian government, the fellaheen, for the first time in more than twelve hundred years, have had something approaching a fair chance in life. During all that period and until the control of England was established, the fellah, who worked the lands and furnished practically all the other common labour, was the economic victim of his Arabian and Turkish masters. He was given of the results of his labour barely sufficient to sustain life; he was denied every opportunity for economic or intellectual improvement, and he became largely what the Mexican peon, under the economic rule of his Latin masters, is to-day. Under the control of the English administrators he has, for the first time, received something more than a bare living as the result of his industry and, by the extension of popular education, is beginning