December 8th
A very nice letter came from Mr. Lind this morning. He says that Villa boasts he will eat his dinner at the Jockey Club, and he thinks there may be something in it, adding that if it had not been for the progress of the rebels he would have gone home. Chihuahua is in their hands now, and their military man is installed in the house formerly occupied by the Federal governor of the state.
Last night I had a long talk with Burnside and Ryan after dinner. There is a general expectancy of a cuartelazo (revolution in the barracks) on the 10th. The troops are paid every ten days, and this will be the second pay-day to be passed over, unless Huerta can raise the necessary millions before that time. Many influences besides the United States are at work to make things uncertain; sedition is rife, and the work of the press-gang is so constant that the peons do not dare to leave their homes or their holes to go to work.
Revolutions are not convenient, either for those who watch or for those who participate. The hegira of natives and foreigners continues. The Mexicans who can get away are, without doubt, thankful “there is no place like home.”
I can’t agree that the foreign representatives could be, at any time, in real peril. Huerta, Carranza, Zapata, Villa, or the intervening United States troops would see to it that not a diplomatic hair was touched. I can imagine us all tightly housed in the Palacio, with our infants and our jewels, the rest of our belongings gone forever. Dr. R. is for having every woman and child leave Mexico City, things have come to such a pass. I know one who won’t go!
N. is thinking of telegraphing to Washington to ask to have a few marines sent up from one of the war-ships, en civil, of course. We could lodge them easily down-stairs. The losing of material things does not disturb me. When the bad day comes we will be occupied with life and honor. “Todo por la patria” (“all for one’s country”), which reminds me of the story of Huerta’s parting with a one-time Minister of War, and one of the various men supposed to have witnessed Madero’s death. (Another distinction is, that in six weeks’ office he was able to amass a fortune of some millions, quite a record.) The President told him, at a dinner, casually, that it might be better for his health to leave next day for Paris. He cried, “Impossible!” The upshot, of course, was that Huerta saw him off at the station at the appointed hour, saying, as he embraced him: “Todo por la patria, mi General!” whereupon the victim, not to be outdone, repeated in his turn: “Todo por la patria, mi General!”
People have curious stories to tell of the “tragic ten days,” among them little ways of handling the machine-guns. Ryan came across a group of men who were hovering about one of the mitrailleuses, and the man in charge obligingly started it off, to show them how it worked—shooting down the street in the direction in which it happened to be turned. Rather debonair! Mr. Seeger tells the tale of asking a man at a gun who his jefe was—Huertista, Maderista, Felicista? He answered, “I don’t know.” He saw him, a moment afterward, turn the gun around and shoot toward the opposite barricade. Enemy or friend, it was all the same to that “man behind the gun!”