t unpleasant
impression upon the new Administration. Mr. Wilson, Mr. Bryan, and their
associates in the cabinet easily found an explanation that was
satisfactory to themselves and to the political enthusiasms upon which
they had come into power. They believed that the sudden change in the
British attitude was the result of pressure from British commercial
interests which hoped to profit from the Huerta influence. Lord Cowdray
was a rich and powerful Liberal; he had great concessions in Mexico
which had been obtained from President Diaz; it was known that Huerta
aimed to make his dictatorship a continuation of that of Diaz, to rule
Mexico as Diaz had ruled it, that is, by force, and to extend a
welcoming hand to foreign capitalists. An important consideration was
that the British Navy had a contract with the Cowdray Company for oil,
which was rapidly becoming indispensable as a fuel for warships, and
this fact necessarily made the British Government almost a champion of
the Cowdray interests. It was not necessary to believe all the rumours
that were then afloat in the American press to conclude that a Huerta
administration would be far more acceptable to the Cowdray Company than
any headed by one of the military chieftains who were then disputing the
control of Mexico. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan believed that these events
proved that certain "interests," similar to the "interests" which, in
their view, had exercised so baleful an influence on American politics,
were also active in Great Britain. The Wilson election in 1912 had been
a protest against the dominance of "Wall Street" in American politics;
Mr. Bryan's political stock-in-trade for a generation had consisted of
little except a campaign against these forces; naturally, therefore, the
suspicion that Great Britain was giving way to a British "Standard Oil"
was enough to arm these statesmen against the Huerta policy, and to
intensify that profound dislike of Huerta himself that was soon to
become almost an obsession.

With this as a starting point President Wilson presently formulated an
entirely new principle for dealing with Latin-American republics. There
could be no permanent order in these turbulent countries and nothing
approaching a democratic system until the habit of revolution should he
checked. One of the greatest encouragements to revolution, said the
President, was the willingness of foreign governments to recognize any
politician who succeeded in seizin