. . .  The foregoing I wrote before this Mexican business took its present place.  I can’t get away from the feeling that the English simply do not and will not believe in any unselfish public action—­further than the keeping of order.  They have a mania for order, sheer order, order for the sake of order.  They can’t see how anything can come in any one’s thought before order or how anything need come afterward.  Even Sir Edward Grey jocularly ran me across our history with questions like this: 

     “Suppose you have to intervene, what then?”

     “Make ’em vote and live by their decisions.”

     “But suppose they will not so live?”

     “We’ll go in again and make ’em vote again.”

     “And keep this up 200 years?” asked he.

     “Yes,” said I.  “The United States will he here two hundred years
     and it can continue to shoot men for that little space till they
     learn to vote and to rule themselves.”

I have never seen him laugh so heartily.  Shooting men into self-government!  Shooting them into orderliness—­he comprehends that; and that’s all right.  But that’s as far as his habit of mind goes.  At Sheffield last night, when I had to make a speech, I explained “idealism” (they always quote it) in Government.  They listened attentively and even eagerly.  Then they came up and asked if I really meant that Government should concern itself with idealistic things—­beyond keeping order.  Ought they to do so in India?—­I assure you they don’t think beyond order.  A nigger lynched in Mississippi offends them more than a tyrant in Mexico.

     To Edward M. House

     London, November 2, 1913.

     DEAR HOUSE: 

I’ve been writing to the President that the Englishman has a mania for order, order for order’s sake, and for—­trade.  He has reduced a large part of the world to order.  He is the best policeman in creation; and—­he has the policeman’s ethics!  Talk to him about character as a basis of government or about a moral basis of government in any outlying country, he’ll think you daft.  Bah! what matter who governs or how he governs or where he got his authority or how, so long as he keeps order.  He won’t see anything else.  The lesson of our dealing with Cuba is lost on him.  He doesn’t believe that.  We may bring this Government in line with us on Mexico.  But in this case and in general, the moral uplift of government must be forced by us—­I mean government in outlying countries.

Mexico is only part of Central America, and the only way we can ever forge a Central and South American policy that will endure is this way, precisely, by saying that your momentarily successful adventurer can’t count on us anywhere; the man that rules must govern for the governed.  Then we have a policy; and nobody else has that policy.  This Mexican business is worth worlds to us—­to establish this.

     We may have a diplomatic fight here; and I’m ready!  Very ready on
     this, for its own sake and for reasons that follow, to wit: