John Kenneth Turner

“ It is universally assumed, in the propaganda for the aggressive foreign policy to which Big Business is seeking to commit the nation, that the protection of the foreign enterprises of any American citizen is to the interest of all American citizens. It is assumed that foreign investments are in some way national institutions, monuments to the patriotism of their founders, as sacred as the very Stars and Stripes themselves. The assumption is the legitimate offspring of another assumption—that what is best for the nation's multi-millionaires is best for the nation. ”

“ A man may have committed grave crimes, yet if he has brought more joy to the world than sorrow, he should be judged kindly. On the other hand, he may be credited with laudable deeds, yet if he has locked the wheels of progress for a time to feed his own ambition, history will not acquit him of the crime. It is the balance that counts; it is the scales that decide. Will not Porfirio Diaz, when weighed in the balance of his good and evil deeds, be found wanting—terribly wanting? ”

“ Mexico is a country without political freedom, without freedom of speech, without a free press, without a free ballot, without a jury system, without political parties, without any of our cherished guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ So long as intervention in Mexico is advocated, whether under that name or any other, there is every reason and necessity to quote and quote again the solemn assurances of principle upon which American armies were sent overseas.
The basic principles of the democracy for which America professed to fight were universally declared to be absolute equality among nations, great and small; equal and absolute independence of all in their domestic affairs; the self-determination of peoples; the absolute inviolability of sovereignty which is and always has been the corner-stone of international law. ”

“ Assuming that England would consider it practicable to take military action in Mexico, does it follow that we would be justified in entering upon a war of conquest simply to prevent some other nation from entering upon a war of conquest? Would the presence of England in Mexico be a menace to the United States? Is Canada a menace? Or, if we must have a war over Mexico of some kind, why not fight to save Mexico from aggression by others, instead of fighting a war of aggression upon her ourselves? ”

“ Porfirio Diaz is giving to Americans the lands of Mexico; the people he is permitting them to enslave; therefore he is the greatest living statesman, hero of the Americans, the maker of Mexico! A wonderful man, that he is intelligent and far-seeing enough to appreciate the fact that, of all nations, the American is the only one with virtue and ability enough to lift Mexico out of its Slough of Despond! As for the Mexican, let him die. He is only fit to feed the grist mill of American capital, anyhow! ”

“ General Porfirio Diaz, the "greatest living peace-maker," "prince of peace!" It is a sacrilege!
That the Mexican dictator has not fallen a victim to the physical debaucheries that sometimes over-tempt men suddenly risen to great power is undoubtedly true. But what of it? Certainly no one will argue that, since a man keeps clean physically, he has a right to misgovern a country and assassinate a people. Personal cleanliness, physical temperance and marital virtue do not in the least determine the standing a man deserves as a statesman. ”

“ There can be no more important issue than the issue of war with Mexico; for all other issues are tied up with it. The forces of progress will have to gather swift strength or they will feel the crunch of the Iron Heel. The disaster to America will hardly be less than that to Mexico. Intervention in Mexico has been determined upon by Wall Street and the Wilson Administration. The plan is to put it over before the forces working for real democracy, disorganized during the war and still on the defensive, have had a period of legal peace in which to reorganize and expose the crimes of the past. ”

“ An evident principle runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. ”

“ And to this end false reports of outrages upon Americans, or danger to American women and children, will be deliberately circulated in order to arouse the nation to justify the crime of invasion. That will be the time for decent Americans to make their voices heard. They will expose, in no uncertain terms, the conspiracy against democracy and demand that, for all time, our government cease putting the machinery of state at the disposal of the despot to help him crush the movement for the abolition of slavery in Mexico. ”

“ For the worst thing that can be said of the Wilson Mexican policy is that it unerringly operates to bring about every condition which the most violent of the interventionists desire.
I do not charge that any party to the intervention conspiracy wants war merely for the sake of war. What is wanted is protection of a highly benevolent character to those who are interested in the exploitation of Mexican resources for their own private profit. Wall Street wants war only because it despairs of procuring the kind of protection it wants without war. ”

“ The Yucatan slave gets no hour for lunch, as does the American ranch hand. He goes to the field in the morning twilight, eating his lump of sour dough on the way. He picks up his machete and attacks the first thorny leaf as soon as it is light enough to see the thorns and he never lays down that machete until the twilight of the evening. Two thousand of the big green leaves a day is his "stint," and besides cutting, trimming and piling them, he must count them, and he must count the number of leaves on each plant and be sure that he does not count too many nor too few. ”

“ To maintain a chattel slavery more cruel than ever existed in our Southern states. To uphold a political tyranny a hundred times more unjust than the one against which our men of Seventy-Six revolted. ”

“ On one occasion he declared: "Our first and primary obligation is the maintenance of our own sovereignty." Repeatedly he asserted that we were under an equally binding obligation to respect the sovereignty of others, and pronounced in most sweeping terms for the Golden Rule in international affairs. "There is not a privilege that we enjoy that we would dream of denying to any other nation in the world." "We ask nothing that we are not willing to accord." ”

“ Are the American people as enslaved in spirit as the Mexicans are in body? In Mexico the only protest possible is a protest of arms. In the United States there is still a degree of freedom of press and speech. Though by tricks and deceits innumerable the rulers of America succeed in evading the will of the majority, the majority yet may protest, and if the protest be long enough and loud enough, it is still capable of making those rulers tremble. ”

“ As we are bound to maintain our own sovereignty, so are we bound, by every consideration of international law and ethics, scrupulously to respect the sovereignty of our neighbors.
We have no right whatever to go in and kill a lot of Mexicans because some Americans have unfortunately been killed. We possess no super-authority which makes us the judge as to whether the Mexican Government is using its best efforts to protect Americans. If an American citizen is determined to remain in dangerous places, he must seek other means of protection than an army of his countrymen. ”

“ In Mexico there are some public schools in the cities and almost none in the country districts. But even if they were there, can a hungry baby learn to read and write? What promise does study hold out for a youth born to shoulder a debt of his father and carry it on to the end of his days?
And they say the Mexican is happy! "As happy as a peon," has come to be a common expression. Can a starving man be happy? Is there any people on earth—any beast of the field, even—so peculiar of nature that it loves cold better than warmth, an empty stomach better than a full one? ”

“ So long as American industry is in neeed of capital, so long as American railroads are crying for a billion dollars a year more capital with which to make necessary improvements, so long as our western states plead for capital to come and develop their natural resources, no American dollar that runs into foreign countries, looking for cheaper labor and bigger profits, demanding "preparedness" to protect it, agitating for war to make its profits good, can claim to be a patriotic dollar. ”

“ It is a land where there has been no contest for the office of president for more than a generation, where the executive rules all things by means of a standing army, where political offices are sold for a fixed price. I found Mexico to be a land where the people are poor because they have no rights, where peonage is the rule for the great mass, and where actual chattel slavery obtains for hundreds of thousands. ”

“ Not only would the Mexican people pay, but the American people would pay—in blood, taxes, higher living costs, in the friendship of our neighbors, in the Constitutional liberties of which peoples are invariably robbed in war-time, in our own character, in all the elements that make for a higher civilization and for world peace.
In the cause of the Mexican "problem" is found its solution. As our meddling has been a decisive factor in creating and prolonging the disorder, and in subjecting Americans to danger, so an opposite policy would tend to produce the opposite result. ”

“ Why do citizens of the United States, who profess a reverence for the principles for which their forefathers of '76 fought, who claim to revere Abraham Lincoln most of all for his Emancipation Proclamation, who shudder at the labor-baiting of the Congo, at the horrors of Russia's Siberia, at the political system of Czar Nicholas, apologize for and defend a more cruel slavery, a worse political oppression, a more complete and terrible despotism—in Mexico? ”