12.30
The news previously leaked out from Vera Cruz last night. Nothing gets out from the Embassy, as our staff all happen to know how to keep their counsel. It is what Mr. Lind has wanted for months, and I suppose the news was too satisfactory to keep. You will read it in to-morrow’s Paris Herald and the Journal de Genève. Don’t worry about us. We will have first-class safeguard if Huerta declares war. He may not. It is his policy, and a strong one it has been, to ignore Washington’s proclamations. On the other hand, he will have no intention of being caught by Villa, like a rat in a hole; and war with us may seem to him a glorious solution of his problems. Villa and Carranza will not arrive in the city together. No street is broad enough to permit the double entry of their contrary passions, violence, and greed.
It is “to laugh” when Villa is thanked publicly and officially for his kind promises in regard to life and property in the north.