Life — August 14, 1913 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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“While there is Life there's Hope” 62 No. 1607 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York J. A. Mircuntt, Pres’t, English Offices, Cannon HE dispo- sition to go in and clean up Mex- ico, though stimulated in some fairly large—though not yet Spanish war size—type by the Hearst newspapers, is tempered by a general reluctance on the part of the people of this country. Sport is fairly good. We have won an international tennis match, the baseball season is on, there are horse races again at Sara- toga, the girls’ clothes were never in the memory of man so interesting as now—so charming in some cases, so amusing in others—and we have the movies in great variety, and we are getting along through the summer very well, Clean up Mexico? Spare us, good Lord! Nobody—next to nobody—wants to do it. There is no great political in- terest to push us into Mexico as there was when we went there before and got Texas. We all sit back and take a commonsense view of our neighbor to the south, and when it is sug- gested that we jump in on her con- cerns, our public mind says, “ Not on your life!” That is the safe side of the situa- tion; that and the fact that- we have at Washington in the present Great Father a cool, reluctant, discriminating head, very busy, getting two important pieces of legislation through Congress, and very indisposed toward a dis- traction that would disturb the progress of legislative proceedings. A. Muura, Sec’y and Treas. fouse, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C. President Wilson certainly would not have the country fail in any duty, but he will make sure there is a duty of ours in Mexico before he under- takes it. Reluctant countries do not often get into fights from a cold- blooded sense of duty. One swallow does not make a spring, nor one yel- low, however much duplicated, a war. So there is still good hope that our national sense of neighborly and in- ternational obligation will be appeased without any calling out of volunteer M*. HENRY LANE WILSON, ambassador to Mexico, who at this writing is giving his personal as- sistance in Washington to the Presi- dent, began his activities as an Indiana editor, but moved to Spokane twenty- eight years ago, lived ‘there eleven years and then went as minister to Chili. He served us there eight years, and. then five in’ Belgium, and has been four years in Mexico. He is a. Republican, but with seventeen years of experience in diplomacy’ he is. entitled to be estimated as a diplomat. How good a one he is we do not know, but, considering the length’ of his diplomatic experience, he has seemed pretty fluent, especially in his confidences to the representatives of the press on his arrival in New York. The intimation that his counsels will not prevail with the present adminis- tration has not been confirmed at this writing, but its confirmation looks probable. Ambassador Wilson’ has been out of the country nearly all the time for seventeen years. It would be nothing surprising, and not much to his discredit if he should seem not wholly conversant and sympathetic with “the new freedom” and the sentiments and methods, domestic and foreign, that are a part of it. Somebody more in touch with the contemporary spirit in American politics may serve us more success- fully in Mexico than Mr. Henry Wilson. We want to do Mexico good. If there is a way to do it, we believe President Wilson will find it out. We also want to keep out of mischief ourselves, and that without neglect of duty. Here is a hard job. Why not put Mr. Brandeis on it? Mellen has re- signed. Maybe if Mr. Brandeis was sent to Mexico, Huerta would resign. OLONEL ROOSEVELT is off in Arizona hunting bob-cats, or something, with his sons, and it has been necessary to worry along with this Mexican problem without the benefit of his counsel. That is one of the disadvantages of his continuanct as an active man in politics instead of retiring and becoming a sage. Our leading «sage is now President Eliot, whose opinion on any subject on which he has one carries more weight, we guess, than that of any other private citizen, He has opinions on every- thing that pertains to education, and has just sent in-one at the request of members’ of the New York School Board on the question of providing for the retention of married women as teachers, to wit: In my opinion the employment of mar- ried women in the schools is not for the interests of the pupils, the teachers, or the community as a whole. Furthermore, I believe that it is not for the interest of the community that young women should comicbooks.com