ir unquestionable right, apply what true American principle
you will,--any principle that an American would publicly avow. The
people of Mexico have not been suffered to own their own country or
direct their own institutions. Outsiders, men out of other nations and
with interests too often alien to their own, have dictated what their
privileges and opportunities should be and who should control their
land, their lives, and their resources,--some of them Americans,
pressing for things they could never have got in their own country. The
Mexican people are entitled to attempt their liberty from such
influences; and so long as I have anything to do with the action of our
great Government I shall do everything in my power to prevent anyone
standing in their way. I know that this is hard for some persons to
understand; but it is not hard for the plain people of the United States
to understand. It is hard doctrine only for those who wish to get
something for themselves out of Mexico. There are men, and noble women,
too, not a few, of our own people, thank God! whose fortunes are
invested in great properties in Mexico who yet see the case with true
vision and assess its issues with true American feeling. The rest can be
left for the present out of the reckoning until this enslaved people has
had its day of struggle towards the light. I have heard no one who was
free from such influences propose interference by the United States with
the internal affairs of Mexico. Certainly no friend of the Mexican
people has proposed it.

The people of the United States are capable of great sympathies and a
noble pity in dealing with problems of this kind. As their spokesman and
representative, I have tried to act in the spirit they would wish me
show. The people of Mexico are striving for the rights that are
fundamental to life and happiness,--15,000,000 oppressed men,
overburdened women, and pitiful children in virtual bondage in their own
home of fertile lands and inexhaustible treasure! Some of the leaders of
the revolution may often have been mistaken and violent and selfish, but
the revolution itself was inevitable and is right. The unspeakable
Huerta betrayed the very comrades he served, traitorously overthrew the
government of which he was a trusted part, impudently spoke for the very
forces that had driven his people to the rebellion with which he had
pretended to sympathize. The men who overcame him and drove him out
represent at lea