. . .  The fundamental thing is that they (British critics of Villa) are all radically mistaken.  There has been less disorder and less danger to life where the Constitutionalists have gained control than there has been where Huerta is in control.  I should think that if they are getting correct advices from Tampico, people in England would be very much enlightened by what has happened there.  Before the Constitutionalists took the place there was constant danger to the oil properties and to foreign residents.  Now there is no danger and the men who felt obliged to leave the oil wells to their Mexican employees are returning, to find, by the way, that their Mexican employees guarded them most faithfully without wages, and in some instances almost without food.  I am told that the Constitutionalists cheered the American flag when they entered Tampico.

I believe that Mexico City will be much quieter and a much safer place to live in after the Constitutionalists get there than it is now.  The men who are approaching and are sure to reach it are much less savage and much more capable of government than Huerta.

These, I need not tell you, are not fancies of mine but conclusions I have drawn from facts which are at last becoming very plain and palpable, at least to us on this side of the water.  If they are not becoming plain in Great Britain, it is because their papers are not serving them with the truth.  Our own papers were prejudiced enough in all conscience against Villa and Carranza and everything that was happening in the north of Mexico, but at last the light is dawning on them in spite of themselves and they are beginning to see things as they really are.  I would be as nervous and impatient as your friends in London are if I feared the same things that they fear, but I do not.  I am convinced that even Zapata would restrain his followers and leave, at any rate, all foreigners and all foreign property untouched if he were the first to enter Mexico City.

     Cordially and faithfully yours,
     WOODROW WILSON.

     HON.  WALTER H. PAGE,
     American Embassy,
     London, England.

On this issue, however, the President and his Ambassador to Great Britain permanently disagreed.  The events which took place in April, 1914—­the insult to the American flag at Tampico, the bombardment and capture of Vera Cruz by American forces—­made stronger Page’s conviction, already set forth in this correspondence, that there was only one solution of the Mexican problem.

     To Edward M. House

     April 27, 1914.

     DEAR HOUSE: