April 13th. Evening
No news has come. I wonder what they did in Tampico at six o’clock. A very insistent note has come from the Foreign Office, recounting, I think for the first time, Mexico’s many grievances against us—troubles caused by the raising of the embargo and the consequent supplying of arms to the rebels; claiming the Federals’ right to conduct the fight at Tampico any way they see fit; saying that they will tolerate no interference in their national affairs, etc. We, having armed the rebels, can hardly take exception to the Federals’ defending themselves. They insist that the whaleboat of the Dolphin was on forbidden territory when the men were arrested, but the statement is not official. Washington is to-day either finding a way out of the affair or looking into the grim, cold eyes of intervention.
I had an Easter-egg hunt in the garden, for Elim, at which nine little darlings assisted. Then we had tea, with many flashes of Spanish wit. All the foreign children here prefer to speak Spanish. The mothers and other ladies left at six, after which the French military attaché, de Bertier, and Letellier, came in, and we talked Mexicana till eight. De Bertier said this was the second most interesting situation he had ever watched. The first was the beginning of the French power in Morocco—that clear flame of French civilization, at first trembling and uncertain, in the deserts and mountains of North Africa, but ever increasing, carried to the Arabs, a “race pure,” by a handful of brave and dashing soldiers, also of a “race pure.” He finds the problem much more complicated in Mexico, where a salade of races is involved.