Boulogne, Genoa, and the Hague. Russia's present plight, for instance, offers striking points of resemblance to that in which Mexico floundered helplessly a couple of years ago. And the heroic remedies, which her present Chief Citizen has been systematically applying since December 1920, took their rise in statesmanlike conceptions which make a fuller allowance for the needs, and more completely dovetail with the highest interests, of the drooping, war-palsied communities of the world, than any yet acted upon or even seriously suggested by the superstatesmen of Europe.

The vexed subject of nationalisation and its bearings upon the title-deeds and subsoil rights of foreigners, narrowed down by the Mexican Constitution to the parcelling out of extensive landed properties and the State-ownership of oil wells; the vexed question of the responsibility of a post-revolutionary Government for the debts contracted by the overthrown regimes that preceded it, and the losses sustained by foreigners during the Revolution and civil war; its own correlative right to compensation from those neighbouring States whose private citizens fostered and financed armed opposition against it; its claim to de jure recognition without being compelled to assent to conditions derogatory to its dignity or destructive of its sovereignty-all these and more are included among the pressing issues which the Mexican Government, isolated and left to its own slender resources, has for two years been quietly striving to work out to satisfactory solutions by methods which deserve widespread recognition.

Incidentally, too, the latest turn in Mexico's history affords the student of world politics an insight into a curious aspect of the vast process which is also going on in other quarters of the globe-steadily but almost imperceptibly-and which I feel tempted, for want of a better word, to name the Americanisation of humanity. In Europe, where respect for form and for measure is ingrained in diplomatists and where the vested rights of many States have to be scrupulously reckoned with as checks to masked aggression, the working of this new force, although perceptible enough to the eye of the practised student of politics, is so slow and so closely interwoven with other movements as to pass unnoticed

by the many. But on the new Continent, where there are no such distracting side issues, and where diplomacy scorns to encase in velvet glove the iron hand, the progress of Americanisation is clearly visible and the tactics of those who further it lie open to analysis. And a study of the aims and methods of these world-reformers reveals the circumstance that the 'White Man's burden' is now being made to include all those backward races of mankind whose countries are rich in natural resources. The others may possibly be gathered into the true fold later on; but for the present they must wait. It is not merely the Russian and the German that the stewards of Providence are eager to help to their feet; they are devoting their energies to the moral upbringing of all those communities whose native soil offers attractions to capital and whose military and financial weakness deprives them of an alternative to submission. Barren countries like Armenia, therefore, are not ripe for salvation and must remain exposed to the tender mercies of their enemies.

Those, then, who would fain gauge the force of the waters which bid fair one day to inundate the world and sweep away many of the characteristic institutions of its various civilisations and races, must turn their attention to the remarkable condition of things in Central America and to the lingering agony of the political communities there which are being steadily and systematically sapped by forces from without. It is but fair to remark that some of those States themselves are to a considerable extent responsible for the wretched plight in which they find themselves. It is a case of saying that, if the tree had not provided the hatchet with a handle, the woodman could not have hewn down the forest. Disunited in the council chamber, ignorant and heedless of the dangers which encompass their respective countries, consuming their energies and resources in aimless civil wars, they supplied the wood for the handle of the Yankee hatchet, and now they watch helplessly and hopelessly the absorption of their countries by their great self-righteous neighbour. Haiti and Santo Domingo are classical examples. At no time was their condition irremediable. Haiti, indeed, was well on the way to permanent betterment when the United States Government intervened in

the name of morality and despatched troops thither whose amazing cruelties excited pity and loathing in the callous, imparted energy to the feeble-minded, and goaded even the venal and corrupt to feats of patriotism.

Among all the Latin-American Republics Mexico occupies a place apart. It has the largest population and the widest range of climates. It is an almost inexhaustible storehouse of everything that the mechanised world of to-day most urgently needs: raw stuffs and agricultural produce, oil wells, silver, gold, iron, copper, rubber, sugar, coffee, tobacco, and every variety of fruit and fish. Administratively the Republic is divided into twenty-eight sovereign States and three territories, each State with its elective Governor, its parliament and its own laws, which often differ widely from those of its neighbours. And of all those States there are only three which do not possess mines. Of copper mines alone there are more than a thousand in the Republic; and the State of Durango can boast the largest solid mass of iron on the globe in the shape of a great iron mountain. Cotton and maize are indigenous plants and were cultivated extensively and with success in prehistoric ages. Long before the Spanish invasion the natives wove artistic mantles for their potentates and chiefs, and contrived to make arrow-proof breastplates of cotton for their warriors. This plant, perennial in some parts of the Republic,* does not require to be planted oftener than once in ten years. Henequen fibre, also known as Sisal grass, conferred material well-being upon the inhabitants of the Peninsula of Yucatan until the working men, holding out for wages which the planters were unable to pay and not receiving them, struck work permanently and reduced their employers and themselves to indigence. To-day a German invention is about to be employed throughout Mexico for the extraction from henequen and other kindred plants of a fibre much superior to cotton and at a mere fraction of the cost, whereby a new source of riches will be tapped, which may have far-reaching consequences, not only in the Republic but throughout the world. Mexico can

In the States of Coahuila and Durango.

successfully compete with Cuba in the production of sugar and with Egypt in that of cotton.

In a word, the country is a small replica of the planet produced by the hand of the same Maker. It abounds in mountains and valleys, virgin forests of precious timber, lakes and rivers teeming with fish, a coast-line of nearly nine thousand kilometres, oil wells that are reckoned among the richest on the American Continent, countless mines, valuable coal measures, vast tracts of pasture land, moderate stretches of fertile arable districts, vast deserts, temperate zones, snowbound hills, volcanoes, and hot mechanical springs. It could easily be made self-sufficing. All it needs in order to become the most thriving country on the American Continent are the funds to provide irrigation and extend ways of communication by land and water. And this it could receive at any moment under normal conditions. But the relations between the United States of North America and the Southern Republic are unhappily the reverse of normal, and have been so, with brief intervals, ever since the second decade of Mexican independence. One of the consequences of the attitude of the politiciansnot of the great and noble-minded people-of the United States has been the annexation, within the memory of persons still living, of more than half of Mexico's territory to that of the English-speaking Republic.

The fact is that great potential wealth in a militarily weak State is at once a temptation and a stimulus to its more powerful neighbours-a temptation to the evergreedy foreign capitalist, and a stimulus to the selfrighteous politician which supplies him with a highly moral shibboleth and a humanitarian flag. The capitalist covets the land, the oil, the mines; while the politician feels impelled to take the whole population in hand, re-educate it according to the highest principles of morality as he understands them, and distribute its goods to feed the poor and covetous of his own country. That would seem to be an essential part of the process of civilising the backward which is now going forward in China, Syria, Georgia, Adzerbeidjan, Mesopotamia, Colombia, and Cuba. It has had a tremendous and baleful influence on the destinies of Mexico, the country which Humboldt termed the Treasure House of the

World' and which, under less adverse conditions, might to-day be the recognised leader of Latin America.

A large part of Mexico's treasures is already in the hands of English-speaking foreigners, mostly American, who within the short span of time that has elapsed since the opening up of the oil wells are said to have withdrawn from the country more millions of pesos and pesetas than did the Spaniards during their three hundred years' misrule there. A special attraction is exercised by the oil wells, the possession of oil being the main purpose of the civilising Powers of the world to-day. The high-flown phrases about peace and order, morality and righteousness, which mask the greed of capitalists and the ambition of politicians, embitter the Mexican mind and quicken it at times into active antagonism towards foreigners, who were at first welcomed as helpful pioneers. It is not denied that Mexico has reason to be grateful to certain of those hardy wrestlers with the brute forces of Nature, especially to those who devoted themselves to irrigation and land-reclamation and benefited the natives while enriching themselves; nor can it be questioned that her behaviour towards them in revolutionary times was occasionally actuated by sentiments which had nothing in common with gratitude. But one should bear in mind the decisive circumstance that most of those pioneers belonged to the great nation whose government had annexed over one-half of the Republic, strove to dispossess it of more territory, and labelled these acts of spoliation humanitarianism and zeal for God's law.

From the days of the Spanish Conquest down to the Revolution of 1917, a vast stream of wealth poured steadily out of Mexico, at first into Spain, and, when the Spanish yoke was shaken off, into the United States, England, and France. The benefits to the people in whose territory these treasures lay were practically nil. They were plunged in ignorance, poverty, and squalor, decimated by hardship and disease, and taught to regard their lot as part of the cosmic scheme of things, which it behoved them to accept with resignation. It is no exaggeration to describe their condition since they acquired their independence as considerably worse than when Hernando Cortés landed at Tabasco in the year