We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. Planting himself squarely upon the foundations of right, international as well as national, advocating for nations the standard of justice prevailing among individuals, disclaiming any acquisitions for his country which the law, even of his own country, as interpreted by the public opinion of mankind, did not permit, President Wilson might well say, as he did in his address of June 30, 1916, before the Press Club in the City of New York: So, gentlemen, I am willing, no matter what my personal fortunes. may be, to play for the verdict of mankind. WASHINGTON, D. C. JAMES BROWN SCOTT. ADDRESS ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS DELIV ERED AT A JOINT SESSION OF THE TWO HOUSES OF CONGRESS, A sympathetic yet discriminating critic of Mexico, the late John W. Foster, formerly Secretary of State of the United States, was accustomed to say that the one great and fundamental mistake of the late Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico from 1876-1880, 1884-1911, was that he did not educate his fellowcountrymen in the practice and the responsibilities of constitutional government, and that, because of his failure so to do, he was leaving his countrymen without training in government and without a leader to succeed him trained in a constitutional régime. From time to time rebellions broke out, which were speedily crushed. In 1911, however, a serious insurrection, under the leadership of Francisco I. Madero, caused President Diaz, his Vice-President and the members of his cabinet to resign; whereupon Francisco de la Barra, who had been appointed Secretary of State, succeeded to the presidency ad interim until an election could be held. At this election, held on October 15, 1911, Mr. Madero was chosen President of Mexico. A rebellion under the leadership of Felix Diaz, nephew of the late President, broke out, and as a consequence Madero and his Vice-President, yielding to the pressure of General Victoriano Huerta, resigned under duress and Huerta, Secretary of War, became by the resignation of Madero, the President, Vice-President and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, President ad interim. His authority as such was not recognized by his countrymen as a whole, although it might have been had not Madero and the Vice-President, on their way from the palace to the prison, been assassinated, in which assassination, rightly or wrongly, Huerta was implicated. Carranza, under Madero, Governor of the State of Chihuahua, opposed Huerta, and, gathering around him a strong body of partisans under the title of Constitutionalists, he was eventually recognized by the United States as President de facto on October 19, 1915. He was elected President on March 11, 1917; an American Ambassador had in the meantime been appointed, on February 25, 1916, and had repaired to Mexico, and on February 17, 1917, Carranza's government was recognized by the United States not merely as the de facto but as the duly constituted government of Mexico. GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS: It is clearly my duty to lay before you, very fully and without reservation, the facts concerning our present relations with the Republic of Mexico. The deplorable posture of affairs in Mexico I need not describe, but I |