Walter Hines Page to William Jennings Bryan
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London, Dated Oct. 21, 1913,
Rec’d 4:10 pm.
Secretary of State,
Washington, DC 78.
Oct. 21, 4 pm
Your Oct. 14, 7 pm.
Last night I had long interview with Sir Edward Grey. I gave the President’s despatches of Oct. twelfth and thirteenth to Amaerican Charge in Mexico. Sir Edward said his Government would wait till Oct. 26th before deciding its next step and that then he would inform me what they would do. He expressed hope that there was no truth in the newspaper rumor that the President would raise embargo on arms to the “rebels in the North”.
I again explained at length the President’s policy and reasons therefore, saying that if he used the power of the United States in favor of one adventurer in Mexico or any other Latin American State merely because he seemed at any given moment stronger than his opponents, no progress towards stable government could ever be made and that there must be some moral foundation for our approval. I explained how we could not consider financial interests except as secondary to moral interests. I expressed my own belief that the President would never intervene for mere financial interests, however great or insistent, and that merely to wrestore order by force would not mean progress towards stable government by Mexicans but would be only another name for conquest which was abhorent. He expressed sympathy with this view and remarked that the trouble with intervention was the trouble of getting out. I reminded him of that Mexico was only a part of Latin America and that the investments made there under Diaz did not change the fundamental problem.
He granted that the problem of the United States with Mexico was very different from the problem of any other Government. His direct comment was meagre but the general impression he made on my mind very distinctly was his appreciation of the difficulties and an increasing respect for the President’s policy. My inference is that he is under strong financial pressure which is irksome.
At the end of this conversation Sir Edward himself brought up the Canal tolls which I make the subject of a separate telegrams.