Meanwhile, what is it our duty to do?  Clearly, everything that we do must be rooted in patience and done with calm and disinterested deliberation.  Impatience on our part would be childish, and would be fraught with every risk of wrong and folly.  We can afford to exercise the self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes its own strength and scorns to misuse it.  It was our duty to offer our active assistance.  It is now our duty to show what true neutrality will do to enable the people of Mexico to set their affairs in order again and wait for a further opportunity to offer our friendly counsels.  The door is not closed against the resumption, either upon the initiative of Mexico or upon our own, of the effort to bring order out of the confusion by friendly cooeperative action, should fortunate occasion offer.

While we wait the contest of the rival forces will undoubtedly for a little while be sharper than ever, just because it will be plain that an end must be made of the existing situation, and that very promptly; and with the increased activity of the contending factions will come, it is to be feared, increased danger to the non-combatants in Mexico as well as to those actually in the field of battle.  The position of outsiders is always particularly trying and full of hazard where there is civil strife and a whole country is upset.  We should earnestly urge all Americans to leave Mexico at once, and should assist them to get away in every way possible—­not because we would mean to slacken in the least our efforts to safeguard their lives and their interests, but because it is imperative that they should take no unnecessary risks when it is physically possible for them to leave the country.  We should let every one who assumes to exercise authority in any part of Mexico know in the most unequivocal way that we shall vigilantly watch the fortunes of those Americans who cannot get away, and shall hold those responsible for their sufferings and losses to a definite reckoning.  That can be and will be made plain beyond the possibility of a misunderstanding.

For the rest, I deem it my duty to exercise the authority conferred upon me by the law of March 14, 1912, to see to it that neither side to the struggle now going on in Mexico receive any assistance from this side the border.  I shall follow the best practice of nations in the matter of neutrality by forbidding the exportation of arms or munitions of war of any kind from the United States to any part of the Republic of Mexico—­a policy suggested by several interesting precedents and certainly dictated by many manifest considerations of practical expediency.  We cannot in the circumstances be the partisans of either party to the contest that now distracts Mexico, or constitute ourselves the virtual umpire between them.