people into self-government,” which had so entertained the British Foreign Secretary, was a characteristically breezy description of the alternative that Page, in the last resort, was ready to adopt, but which President Wilson and Secretary Bryan persistently refused to consider.  Page was just as insistent as the Washington Administration that Huerta should resign and that Great Britain should assist the United States in accomplishing his dethronement, and that the Mexican people should have a real opportunity of setting up for themselves.  He was not enough of an “idealist,” however, to believe that the Mexicans, without the assistance of their powerful neighbours, could succeed in establishing a constitutional government.  In early August, 1913, President Wilson sent Mr. John Lind, ex-Governor of Minnesota, to Mexico as his personal representative.  His mission was to invite Huerta to remove himself from Mexican politics, and to permit the Mexican people to hold a presidential election at which Huerta would himself agree not to be a candidate.  Mr. Lind presented these proposals on August 15th, and President Huerta rejected every one of them with a somewhat disconcerting promptitude.

That Page was prepared to accept the consequences of this failure appears in the following letter.  The lack of confidence which it discloses in Secretary Bryan was a feeling that became stronger as the Mexican drama unfolded.

     To Edward M. House

     London, August 25, 1913.

     MY DEAR HOUSE: 

. . .  If you find a chance, get the substance of this memorandum into the hands of two men:  the President and the Secretary of Agriculture.  Get ’em in Houston’s at once—­into the President’s whenever the time is ripe.  I send the substance to Washington and I send many other such things.  But I never feel sure that they reach the President.  The most confidential letter I have written was lost in Washington, and there is pretty good testimony that it reached the Secretary’s desk.  He does not acknowledge the important things, but writes me confidentially to inquire if the office of the man who attends to the mail pouches (the diplomatic and naval despatches in London[35]) is not an office into which he might put a Democrat.—­But I keep at it.  It would he a pleasure to know that the President knows what I am trying to do. . . .

     Yours heartily,
     WALTER H. PAGE.

Following is the memorandum: 

In October the provisional recognition of Huerta by England will end.  Then this Government will be free.  Then is the time for the United States to propose to England joint intervention merely to reduce this turbulent scandal of a country to order—­on an agreement, of course, to preserve the territorial integrity of Mexico.  It’s a mere police duty that all great nations have to do—­as they did in the case of the Boxer riots in China.  Of course Germany and France, etc., ought to