File No. 812.00/10712.
The Secretary of State to Ambassador W. H. Page.
Washington, January 29, 1914.
Please remind His Majesty’s Government of the several earnest efforts this Government has made to bring about a change of administration at Mexico City which General Huerta could accept without personal risk or humiliation and say that the repeated rejection of these suggestions has created a situation which would make any change now effected there upon terms which General Huerta would accept merely a substitution of the authority and responsibility of the United States for the authority and responsibility of the men now associated with Huerta. The President warmly appreciates the suggestion of Sir Edward Grey but fears that the revolution in Mexico has reached such a stage that the sort of settlement proposed, namely the elimination of General Huerta and the substitution of others in authority at Mexico City, would be without the desired effect of bringing peace and order. The men in the north, who are conducting a revolution with a programme which goes to the very root of the causes which have made constitutional government in Mexico impossible, and who are not mere rebels, would still have to be reckoned with. No plan which could be carried out at Mexico City at the present juncture could be made the basis of a satisfactory settlement with them. No plan which could not include them can now result in anything more than a change in personnel of an irrepressible contest. If the European powers would jointly or severally inform General Huerta in plain terms that he could no longer expect countenance or moral support from them, the situation would be immensely simplified and the only possible settlement brought within sight. No one outside Mexico can now accommodate her affairs. The withdrawal of all moral and material support from without is the indispensable first step to a solution from within. From many sources which it deems trustworthy the Government of the United States has received information which convinces it that there is a more hopeful prospect of peace, of the security of property and of the early payment of foreign obligations if Mexico is left to the forces now reckoning with one another there than there would be if anything by way of a mere change of personnel were effected at Mexico City. There are no influences that can be counted on at Mexico City to do anything more than try to perpetuate and strengthen the selfish oligarchical and military interests which it is clear the rest of the country can be made to endure only by constant warfare, and a pitiless harrying of the north. The President is so fully convinced of this, after months of the most careful study of the situation at close range, that he no longer feels justified in maintaining an irregular position as regards the contending parties in the matter of neutrality. He intends therefore, almost immediately, to remove the inhibition on the exportation of arms and ammuniion from the United States. Settlement by civil war carried to its bitter conclusion is a terrible thing, but it must [Page 446] come now, whether we wish it or not, unless some outside power is to undertake to sweep Mexico with its armed forces from end to end, which would be the mere beginning of a still more difficult problem.