December 2d
I go in the afternoon to a charity sale at Mrs. Adams’s, for the “Lady Cowdray Nursery Home.” Mr. A. is the Cowdray representative of the huge oil interests in Mexico. It sometimes looks as if this whole situation could be summed up in the one word, “oil.” Mexico is so endlessly, so tragically rich in the things that the world covets. Certainly oil is the crux of the Anglo-American situation. All the modern battle-ships will be burning oil instead of coal—clean, smokeless, no more of the horrors of stoking—and for England to have practically an unlimited oil-fount in Mexico means much to her.
We had a pleasant dinner last night here—Clarence Hay, Mr. and Mrs. Tozzer, and Mr. Seeger; the dinner itself only so-so. Mr. Seeger’s suggestion that the guajolote had been plied with grape-juice rather than with something more inspiring was borne out by the bird’s toughness, and there were strange, unexplained intervals. However I impressed upon C. H. that I was giving him this splendid fiesta because his father had signed N.’s first commission (to Copenhagen), and the time passed merrily. There are other things you can do at dinner besides eating, if you are put to it.
I inclose a long clipping, most interesting, from Mr. Foster’s Diplomatic Memoirs. He was minister here for some years—1873-1880, I think. His relations, too, of conditions at that time seem a replica of these in our time: “The railroad trains always contained one or more cars loaded with armed soldiers. The Hacendados did not venture off their estates without an armed guard and the richest of them lived in the cities for safety. Everybody armed to the teeth when traveling and the bullion-trains coming from the mines were always heavily protected by guards.” Mr. Foster sets forth the actions of the United States in delaying recognition of Diaz when he assumed the Presidency, and tells of the various moments in which we were on the brink of war with Mexico. In 1875, Congress conferred on Diaz “extraordinary faculties,” the effect of which was to suspend the legislative power and make him a dictator.
N. paid over the Pius Fund, yesterday—the indemnity of 45,000 pesos that Mexico is forced to pay yearly to the Catholic Church in California for confiscation of its property about one hundred years ago. It was the first decision of the Hague Tribunal. Archbishop Riordan, when consulted about the manner of paying it, telegraphed to Mr. Bryan that he left it in N.’s hands to be disposed of as if it were his own. N.’s policy has been to get the various foreign powers to appeal to us for protection of their citizens, thus tacitly acknowledging our “Monroe” right to handle questions that came up. So far France, Germany, Spain, and Japan have done so.