ter educated, gifted with a surprising genius and temperament for self-government, and deeply imbued with that Anglo-Saxon philosophy which has always insisted that liberty must somehow be reconciled with authority and that freedom, instead of serving the purposes of anarchy and confusion, must always serve the purposes of peace and order.

Another great weakness of selfgovernment in Mexico is the country's woeful lack of capable and unselfish leaders. 'A democracy without great men is a dangerous democracy.' And in the last hundred years Mexico has produced only two or three political figures whose unselfish devotion to the public good and whose unquestioned capacity and statesmanship place them in the category of great men. Few indeed have been the Mexican leaders who could command the devotion of the Mexican masses, understand and sympathize with their vague and formless aspirations, formulate a programme at once just and practical for improving their condition, and carry that programme forward until it became an actual reality.

The weakness arising from this lack of commanding leadership is greatly intensified by the dishonesty, inefficiency, and corruption which characterize almost every branch of the public service. One can scarcely exaggerate the evils which spring from these conditions. Public office is rarely a public trust. The great ambition of the Mexican politician is to attain power in order to acquire wealth. And, by devices too numerous to mention, a government position is made to yield a revenue far beyond the meagre salary which the law attaches to it.

Sometimes these practices are only questionable from the standpoint of public ethics, but quite commonly they are flagrant and open violations of

every canon of decent and honest politics. "The most fruitful source of the revolutions which have marked the independent existence of the Latin American States,' wrote John W. Foster, United States Minister to Mexico in 1872, 'has been the effort of the public men of these countries to continue themselves in power or to attain the Presidency by other than peaceful and constitutional methods.' And, when the motives which lie behind this eager desire for public office are carefully sifted out, it will be found that the revenue which the office can be made to yield is almost always the supreme objective. It is indeed no exaggeration to say that if a seal could be placed on the Mexican treasury, which could not be broken except to meet the nation's legitimate needs, the revolutionary spirit of that country would speedily wither away and disappear.

These statements are not made in any spirit of hostility. Almost every page of Mexican history bears witness to the truth of what I have just said. Those familiar with Mexican conditions know I have not exaggerated. The Mexican people themselves frankly acknowledge the evils here described. Nearly every administration coming into power truthfully accuses its predecessor of having played fast and loose with the public funds. And, finally, the low state of political morality which has characterized Mexican history for a hundred years (with here and there some notable exceptions) is the natural product of factors and conditions which lie deeply rooted in the nation's life.

Mexico, in the first place, inherited the Spanish conception of public office and for three hundred years lived under that conception as a colony. She saw the Crown officials openly buy and sell their offices. She saw the

country impoverished, its defenses neglected, the royal revenues squandered and diverted to private ends; and she grew so accustomed to these things that she came to regard them as the natural and normal characteristics of every government. A hundred years have not been sufficient to uproot this old Spanish tradition of public office, or to render its continued practice particularly obnoxious to the public mind.

Nor is it surprising that public affairs are conducted on a low and inefficient plane among a people so uneducated as the Mexican people. Except in matters of the most outstanding kind, public officials are not restrained by public opinion and feel almost no responsibility to public opinion, because public opinion in Mexico is normally too vague, too disorganized, and too impotent to hold them to account. 'All free governments,' said James Russell Lowell, 'whatever their name, are in reality governments by public opinion, and it is on the quality of this public opinion that their prosperity depends.' But if a country has no such thing as public opinion, how can it maintain a free government or how can it develop the leadership upon which a free government depends?

The constant recurrence of revolution is another powerful factor which discourages the development of true leadership and also makes it quite impossible for public office in Mexico to be administered in an honest and efficient manner. It requires true physical courage to be president of Mexico, or to hold any other high political position; and unless one is willing to face the certainty of revolution and the probability of exile from his native soil or death by violence, he will not aspire very eagerly to an important political office. For this reason, during the last

twelve or fourteen years particularly, many men of undoubted capacity for government have withdrawn themselves from public life. They may not be more timid, perhaps, than the officeholders produced by the revolutions, but they are at least more prudent. And thus it happens in Mexico that the danger which surrounds the office often keeps the man of intelligence and property from seeking it, while men of little education and less ability become the country's leaders - just as in the United States the fear of newspaper criticism and campaign slander often keeps our most capable citizens out of politics while less sensitive, less able, and less honest men become our rulers.

But this is not the only serious effect of the revolutionary evil upon the question of genuine leadership in Mexican politics. How can a government which is being overturned as frequently as the Mexican government is overturned carry out a single constructive programme or accomplish those things which the land so badly needs? With every successful revolution not only is the treasury drained of funds, but every office, from the highest to the lowest, is filled by a new and often untrained man. Policies and programmes undertaken by the former government are abandoned and new policies and new programmes are set on foot. Before these can possibly reach a successful end, the government which started them is in turn overthrown, and the same futile and costly process is begun all over again.

Under such conditions, it is not to be wondered at that men of honesty and ability are discouraged from seeking office, or that they find it almost impossible to do anything worth while if they obtain office. Nor is it to be wondered at that men of less sincerity of purpose, knowing how soon they will be forced out of their positions, and

realizing the futility of attempting to carry through the tasks before them in so short a time, neglect the public good and seek only to use the resources of the office for their own advantage while they have the opportunity.

Another serious handicap Mexico labors under in her government is an utter lack of definite political parties. One might write the history of the United States or the history of England (at least for the last two centuries and a half) around its great political parties. But the historian who should attempt to perform this service for Mexico would soon go mad. Politics in that country are personal or factional but they are never of a true party character. The so-called parties which spring into existence with every election are not much longer-lived than Jonah's gourd. Mexicans do not group themselves around great political principles, but only around individuals. They are not Democrats or Republicans, Liberals or Conservatives, but Juaristas or Porfiristas or Villistas or Carranzistas or Callistas or Floristas.

This lack of definite, organized, permanent political parties in Mexico is a weakness of the first importance. Presidents, Cabinet Members, and Congressmen are not accountable to anyone except to the small faction which places them in control. A president is not the spokesman of a great party, and he cannot bring party pressure to bear upon members of congress, or appeal to party loyalty to secure favorable legislation either on foreign or domestic issues. He can do nothing at all except as he appeals to the self-interest of his followers or uses force to break down opposition.

Political parties, moreover, at their best are powerful factors in moulding public opinion and in educating a nation in matters of politics and government. They furnish, also, the neces

sary mechanism through which public opinion acts, and without some form of party government it is difficult for a practical man to see how a democracy can exist at all.

The Opposition in Mexico, like the Administration, is also greatly handicapped because it lacks the cohesion and effectiveness which come only from organized party action. It is commonly a mixture of heterogeneous and often rival factions, united only in their common hostility to the group which happens to be in power and knit together only by their determination to effect a change of government.

The attainment of this end is never sought by the normal methods employed in other countries and prescribed by the Mexican Constitution, but resort is always had to revolution. When this succeeds and the new government comes into power, the unnatural combination which comprised the Opposition dissolves into its component parts; and some of these, forming a new alliance, begin almost immediately to intrigue against the very government they have themselves so recently established.

Certainly as one views the long hundred years of Mexican independence he finds much to discourage him in the early prospect of true self-government coming to that country. Even the past year in Mexican politics, to judge at least by actual occurrences, has differed in no respect from most of its predecessors. It has witnessed one widespread and destructive revolution, which was subdued only by external aid. It has witnessed political assassinations, and the frequent use of the firing squad to free the country from rebellion. It has witnessed the stagnation of business, the demoralization of the national finances, and the development of serious international complications. Finally, it has wit

nessed a presidential election in which the administration candidate's claim to an overwhelming victory is answered by the threat of revolution, and seriously embarrassed by violent dissensions among his own supporters.

To some degree offsetting these conditions, one gladly confesses that a new spirit is abroad in Mexico to-day which is profoundly affecting the great masses of the common people. It manifests itself in a great variety of ways, chiefly up to this time along social and economic lines. But no one can as yet define this spirit or say precisely what it is. It may be like the wind that comes before the dawn. It may be like the leaven that leaveneth the whole lump. It may be the forerunner of that ordered liberty and genuine self-government for which the distressed nation has waited these hundred years.

But one's hopes should not make him blindly optimistic. Men said that Diaz had ushered in the Golden Age nearly forty years ago. They said the same thing of Madero, and later of Carranza. Now they are saying the same thing of Obregón, and of Obregón's probable successor, Calles. And if the Obregón-Calles faction should be deposed to-morrow, and a new dictator come to power, they would say the same thing of him also.

"There is nothing more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty,' wrote De Tocqueville nearly a hundred years ago. This is true, and every nation that has passed through that hard and bitter training should bear patiently with Mexico in her present struggle. But there are factors and circumstances of an international character

in this problem of self-government across the border that will not admit of indefinite delay.

Mexico's obligations to the outside world and her peculiar and complete economic dependence upon other nations vastly complicate the situation. Whether that country's 'fictitious and rickety independence' (to borrow a phrase from Professor Priestley's recent history of the Mexican Nation) can withstand another generation of chronic revolution, or even a single decade, is altogether doubtful.

In this whole matter one thing at least is inescapable: the United States is almost as vitally concerned in the success or failure of self-government in Mexico as Mexico herself. The success of self-government will give us a prosperous and contented neighbor, and free us from one of our gravest and most irritating international dilemmas. The continued failure of selfgovernment will lay upon us a direct and very sobering responsibility, the ultimate outcome of which no man can foretell.

It is not for the writer to prophesy what the political future of Mexico will be, for he is mindful of Lowell's statement that the course of events 'is apt to show itself humorously careless of the reputation of prophets.' But at least to-day there is an imperative necessity for the people of this country to obtain a more perfect, a more intelligent, and a more sympathetic understanding of the exceedingly complicated and disheartening problem in democracy which Mexico still faces after more than a century of hard and unpromising experiment.

ARMISTICE DAY

LAST night I inquired for my uniform. It could n't be found on such short notice. Things seldom used have a way of disappearing in busy households. That was just as well for, when the sun rose crimson, this was obviously the day to prune the pear orchard.

Noon came before I could begin-a warm, windless, Indian-Summer noon; so much haze that you could look the sun in the eye without blinking. There is a coziness in the scene not often caught in our high clear country. No longer lured to far horizons, the eye examines contentedly things near at hand. This field, yielding hay as well as pears, runs too much to that ingratiating pest-wild carrot. Pleasantly the white houses of the village march up the hill toward the white church.

All quiet here. Quiet, too, the throng in Arlington through which the President will soon pass to lay a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In many a cemetery bugles are sounding Taps over the heads of hushed throngs. Before the sun sets hardly a township in America but shall have heard again those falling notes: 'Go to rest, go to rest, go to rest.'-Sleep well, friends! I know you would approve my staying at home and pruning pear trees, task conducive to reflections which, if roused often enough in enough of us, might go some way toward ending war, famine, and miseries too numerous to mention.

As luck would have it, I marched down and also up- Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington that first Armi

stice Day in 1918. What an outburst of primitive joy that was, formless, unorganized, exuberant. Since then we have evolved ceremonies, always dutifully attended by me until now. The proceedings seldom vary. A lawyer talks patriotism and sacrifice before a flower-decked shrine. Around him stand ranks of men in khaki and blue a trifle tight for their maturing figures, keen Boy Scouts, sad-faced Gold Star mothers, Red Cross nurses, officials, and civic leaders in their Sunday clothes. The public frames the picture, the great soft-hearted general public. With each volley from the firing squad a shiver runs through the public; but it pulls itself together in the first verse of the Star-Spangled Banner and lets down again in the second.

I sit awhile in a sunny fence-corner plying the whetstone. The dogs that kept me random company up and down the files of trees quit burrowing and bickering to court my favor. They interfere. The young Airedale insists upon being tousled, while the dignified collie believes one arm belongs of right around his neck. He wins; dignified senescence, in man or beast, ought to have its day. The whetstone is finally pocketed and the Airedale grows content with having his ears scratched.

We three gaze upon our worlds. My world may be larger than theirs; yet is n't this pear orchard the world in little?