File No. 812.00/15122b.
Department of State,
Washington,
June 2, 1915—1 p.m.
741. You will please lay before the Mexico City authorities for their
information the following public statement just issued by the
President.
statement by the president.
For more than two years revolutionary conditions have existed in
Mexico. The purpose of the revolution was to rid Mexico of men who
ignored the constitution of the Republic and used their power in
contempt of the rights of its people; and with these purposes the
people of the United States instinctively and generously
sympathized. But the leaders of the revolution, in the very hour of
their success, have disagreed and turned their arms against one
another. All professing the same objects, they are nevertheless
unable or unwilling to cooperate. A central authority at Mexico City
is no sooner set up than it is undermined and its authority denied
by those who were expected to support it. Mexico is apparently no
nearer a solution of her tragical troubles than she was when the
revolution was first kindled. And she has been swept by civil war as
if by fire. Her crops are destroyed, her fields lie unseeded, her
work cattle are confiscated for the use of the armed factions, her
people flee to the mountains to escape being drawn into unavailing
bloodshed, and no man seems to see or lead the way to peace and
settled order. There is no proper protection either for her own
citizens or for the citizens of other nations resident and at work
within her territory. Mexico is starving and without a
government.
In these circumstances the people and Government of the United States
cannot stand indifferently by and do nothing to serve their
neighbor. They want nothing for themselves in Mexico. Least of
[Page 695]
all do they desire to
settle her affairs for her, or claim any right to do so. But neither
do they wish to see utter ruin come upon her, and they deem it their
duty as friends and neighbors to lend any aid they properly can to
any instrumentality which promises to be effective in bringing about
a settlement which will embody the real objects of the
revolution—constitutional government and the rights of the people.
Patriotic Mexicans are sick at heart and cry out for peace and for
every self-sacrifice that may be necessary to procure it. Their
people cry out for food and will presently hate as much as they fear
every man, in their country or out of it, who stands between them
and their daily bread.
It is time, therefore, that the Government of the United States
should frankly state the policy which in these extraordinary
circumstances it becomes its duty to adopt. It must presently do
what it has not hitherto done or felt at liberty to do, lend its
active moral support to some man or group of men, if such may be
found, who can rally the suffering people of Mexico to their support
in an effort to ignore, if they cannot unite, the warring factions
of the country, return to the constitution of the Republic so long
in abeyance, and set up a government at Mexico City which the great
powers of the world can recognize and deal with, a government with
whom the program of the revolution will be a business and not merely
a platform. I, therefore, publicly and very solemnly, call upon the
leaders of faction in Mexico to act, to act together, and to act
promptly for the relief and redemption of their prostrate country. I
feel it to be my duty to tell them that, if they cannot accommodate
their differences and unite for this great purpose within a very
short time, this Government will be constrained to decide what means
should he employed by the United States in order to help Mexico save
herself and serve her people.
Woodrow Wilson.
The White
House,
Washington
, June 2, 1915.
