November 4th
More battle-ships are announced. We shall have, according to to-day’s paper, about 6,000 men at Vera Cruz. Box-cars are being sent to the frontier; it must all mean preparation for some definite stroke on the part of the United States. I feel that I am seeing life from a very big angle. In spite of the underlying excitement here, outwardly things take their usual course. Now we motor out to Tlalpam with the Belgian minister, to lunch at Percival’s. It is a wondrous, glistening day, and the swift run over the smooth, straight road toward the enchanting hills which form its near background will be pure joy. The mountains have a way of changing their aspect as one motors along, even with one’s eye on them. From being a breath, an emanation, they become blue, purple realities of matchless beauty—dark shadows pinned to them with spears of light.
The extremely delicate negotiations N. has been having with the President’s private secretary, Rabago, concerning Huerta’s possible resignation, have leaked out, not from Mexico, but from the United States, and, we suspect, via Vera Cruz. At the somewhat early hour of two in the morning the press correspondents began to come to the Embassy. It is now 11.30 and they have been coming ever since.
N., of course, denies categorically having negotiations on hand. Mr. Bryan, we see by the morning newspaper, is reported as looking very pleased at the aspect of the Mexican situation, on account of the aforesaid negotiations. The correspondents here must be heaven-born. Their scent is unerring. If there is anything even dreamed of they appear in shoals; when things are in abeyance you wouldn’t know there was one in town. They try, naturally, to read something political into everything that happens. For instance, the officers of the German training-ship invited several of the ministers to take a little trip to Vera Cruz, and the German, Russian, and Norwegian ministers accepted—which is why the newspapers had it that there was a meeting of plenipotentiaries at Vera Cruz. They are on a hunting trip for two days and will return to-morrow.
Felix Diaz has at last been landed at Havana (much to the relief, I imagine, of the captain of the U. S. S. Wheeling, on which ship he sought refuge) and his political curtain has been rung down on this especial act.