File No. 812.00/15546.
Special Agent Cobb to the Secretary of State.
Lombardo plan, published Sunday morning, to ignore Carranza, respect Villa and unite Carranza generals with Villistas, tends only to further disorganization and to end any tangible hope for voluntary agreement between the two factions. Villa’s conduct and the demoralization of his organization (my various recent reports) which is merely the death struggle of his collapse, I think exclude the Villistas as a permanent factor. Yet they are a temporary menace to their own people, to foreign rights, and as possible tools for Huertistas.
It is respectfully recommended that you consider the wisdom of forbidding the invasion of foreign rights and, if violated, that you [Page 730] consider an embargo or some other means of bringing an end to this Villa menace.