March 9th
I have not written since Saturday morning, before starting to the requiem Mass. I have been so busy seeing people and attending to hundreds of cards, telegrams, and notes. Huerta did not appear at the church, as people thought he might do. Instead, Portillo y Rojas, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, sat by us. All was beautiful and sad. Afterward we went into the sacristy to receive the condolences of our friends, as is the custom here. Though he had never trod the threshold of our Mexican dwelling, it still seemed inexpressibly empty as we returned to it. I was glad of the heaped-up desk and the living decisions awaiting N.
Huerta was very nice on seeing him to-day, called him “hijo” (“son”), gave him an affectionate abrazo, and all his sympathy. Subsequently, Nelson had a long talk with him in a little private room of the Café Colon, that Huerta approached from the back entrance. Huerta is broad in his ideas and very careful as to any remarks about the United States, in Nelson’s presence. He always speaks of President Wilson as Su Excelencia, el Señor Presidente Wilson; there are no diatribes of any kind. The thing that has really got on his nerves is our keeping his 4,000 soldiers at Fort Bliss and expecting him to pay for them. He says Mexico is not at war with the United States; that the rebels are allowed to go and come as they please, and even to organize on the frontier. Why this discrimination? He says that our government thinks he is a bandit, like Villa, but that if Washington would be just it would see that he keeps his mouth shut, does his work as well as he can in the face of the terrible injustice done him, and asks nothing of any one except to be let alone; that he could have had the power in Mexico long before he took it. He repeated that many a person of influence had urged him to put an end to the disastrous Madero administration; that he is not in politics for personal ends; that his wants are few, his habits those of an old soldier. He always insists that he did not kill Madero....
As for that, one can talk for hours and hours with all sorts of people without finding any direct evidence of any direct participation by Huerta in the death of Madero. I have come to think it an inexcusable and fatal negligence on his part, incidental to the excitement and preoccupation of those tragic days. He was astute enough to have realized that Madero dead would be even more embarrassing to him than living, and should have insisted on asylum for him where alone it was to be had. There is, however, at times a strange suspension of mental processes in Mexico; with everything possible and yet nothing appearing probable, nobody ever foresees any situation.
I had a long call yesterday from Rincon Gaillardo, Marqués de Guadalupe, the smart, youngish general. Besides his military work, he is doing something that all the members of the upper class should co-operate in—i. e., helping to amalgamate the classes. His father, Duca de Regla and “Grand d’Espagne,” was the first man in society here to receive Diaz when he came to power. In fact, in his house Diaz met Doña Carmen. He told me that Diaz wasn’t then, by any means, the kind of man he is now, after thirty years of power and knowledge.
Last night, at midnight, Nelson, who had gone to sleep early, was called down-stairs by urgent telephone messages, to hear that the Texas Rangers had dashed over the border to Sabinas Hidalgo to recover the body of the pseudo-American cattle-rustler, Vergara. Whether the report is true is not known, but of course it is an act that would be resented by all classes here, and every class really hates us.
Villa, not being able to get the full amount of the ransom out of Terrazas père, has decided not to execute the son, but to take him with him when he besieges Torreon, and to place him wherever the bullets are thickest. The mad dance of death goes on, and I feel as if we were the fiddlers. Mr. Lind has so idealized the rebels in the north that he has come to think them capable of all the civic virtues, and he is obsessed by the old tradition of north beating south whenever there is an issue. His deduction is not borne out by facts, as in Mexico it is the south that has produced the greatest number of great men—“the governmental minds”; the south has come nearer to loving peace; the south has shown the greatest degree of prosperity and advancement. Vera Cruz is the poorest possible vantage-ground for a study of conditions; it is a clearing-house for malcontents of all kinds, mostly rebels, fleeing from the consequences of some act against some authority. My heart is heavy at the grim fatality that has permitted our policy to be shaped from there.
A dust-storm this afternoon, with all the color gone out of the air, and a few thick drops of cold rain. I left cards for an hour or two, then came home. I am glad to be here in my comfortable home, though I can’t help a shiver as I think of the horrors sanctioned, even encouraged, by us on every side. B. said once that the policy of the United States in lifting the embargo was to really give Mexicans a taste of civil war! There were some chirpings from Carranza the other day, to the effect that “I understand Villa, and Villa understands me.” Doubtless this is true; but they say that after their rare meetings the old gentleman has to go to bed for several days.
I have just been reading an article by Mr. Creelman on Lind. He has caught the spirit of Vera Cruz and described exactly Mr. Lind and his ambiente there. He speaks of him as “Mr. Wilson’s cloistered agent.” “In a small, dark room with a red-tiled floor, opening on a shabby Mexican courtyard,” he adds, “in the rear of the American Consulate in Vera Cruz, sits John Lind, the personal representative of the President of the United States, as he has sat for seven months, smilingly watching and waiting, while Mexico and her 15,000,000 men, women, and children have moved to ruin.” It makes me “creepy,” it is so true!