[Footnote 1:  See The Income Tax in America, page 338.]

Perhaps, too, the change in the Senate may prove a help to the cause of universal peace.  The governments of both Taft and Wilson were persistent in their efforts to establish arbitration treaties with other nations, and the Senate, jealous of its own treaty-making authority, had been a frequent stumbling-block in their path.  Yet, despite the Senate’s conservatism, arbitration treaties of ever-increasing importance have been made year after year.  A war between the United States and England or France, or indeed almost any self-ruling nation, has become practically impossible.[2]

[Footnote 2:  See A Step Toward World Peace, page 259.]

In her dealing with her Spanish-American neighbors, the United States has been less fortunate.  She has, indeed, achieved a labor of world-wide value by completing the “big ditch” between the Oceans.[3] Yet her method of acquiring the Panama territory from Colombia had been arbitrary and had made all her southern neighbors jealous of her power and suspicious of her purposes.  Into the midst of this era of unfriendliness was injected the Mexican trouble.  Diaz, who had ruled Mexico with an iron hand for a generation, was overthrown.[4] President Madero, who conquered him, was supported by the United States; and Spanish America began to suspect the “Western Colossus” of planning a protectorate over Mexico.

[Footnote 3:  See Opening of the Panama Canal, page 374.]

[Footnote 4:  See The Fall of Diaz, page 96.]

Then came a counter-revolution.  Madero was betrayed and slain, and the savage and bloody Indian general, Huerta, seized the power.[1] The antagonism of the United States Government against Huerta was so marked that at length the anxious South American Powers urged that they be allowed to mediate between the two; and the United States readily accepted this happy method of proving her real devotion to arbitration and of reestablishing the harmony of the Americas.

[Footnote 1:  See Mexico Plunged into Anarchy, page 300.]

In itself the entire Mexican movement may be regarded as another great, though confused, step in the world-wide progress of Democracy.  The upheaval has been repeatedly compared to the French Revolution.  The rule of Diaz was really like that of King Louis XVI in France, a government by a narrow and wealthy aristocracy who had reduced the ignorant Mexican peasants or “peons” to a state of slavery.  The bloody battles of all the recent warfare have been fought by these peons in a blind groping for freedom.  They have disgraced their cause by excesses as barbarous as those perpetrated by the French peasantry; but they have also fought for their ideal with a heroism unsurpassed by that of any French revolutionist.

DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD