Jack London

“ Mexico must be saved from herself. What Mexico really needs is to be saved from the insignificant portion of her half-breeds who are causing all the trouble. They should not form the government at all. And yet they are the very ones who insist on forming it, and they cannot be eliminated by those who should form it, namely, the twelve million peons and the nearly three million peaceably inclined half-breeds. ”

“ There is no popular movement on which such a strong man might depend for support. Nor is there a national cause. The educated Mexicans, the wealthy Mexicans, the business and shopkeeping Mexicans, hail American intervention with delight. The vast majority of the peons ask merely to be let alone, and not to be drafted into the fighting ranks of this leader and of that leader and of the many leaders continually arising. Victories, presidencies, and dictatorships can be only temporary. The handful of anarchs cannot pacify Mexico, because Mexico does not need pacifying. ”

“ The chief cause of our misunderstanding to-day of the Mexicans is that we have created them in our own American image. With a comfortable sense of fairness we have put ourselves inside the Mexicans, along with our morality, our democracy, and all the rest of our points of view, and accepting therefore that the Mexicans should think, feel, and act just as we would under similar circumstances, we are shocked to find out that they won't do anything of the sort. ”

“ The totality of the Mexicans being so incapable of government that a handful of disorderly and incapable "breeds" can play ducks and drakes with the whole land, poor Mexico is in such a situation to-day that, unaided from without, the game of ducks and drakes can be played interminably. There is no other Perfirio Diaz in sight. There is no strong "breed" capable of whipping the rest of the disorderly "breeds" and the country into shape. ”

“ They spout patriotism and valor, liberty, justice, and the square deal—all of which glorious phrases mean nothing of the sort, but are synonymous with loot.
They are not men in a world of men, these half-breed trouble makers. ”

“ Now the foregoing must not be taken as a denial of any right or good in the people of Mexico. On the contrary, the great mass of the Mexicans have nothing to do with the matter at all; but, being different form the American, being unversed and uninterested in the affairs of government, they sit supinely back and let the petty handful of leaders despoil them and the country. ”

“ But when no more than one-fourth of one per cent of the peons have risen to take the land, the feebleness of the peon land hunger is fully told. So another magic phrase means one thing to the American mind and quite a different thing to the Mexican mind. It is impossible to conceive of twelve million Americans, gnawed by the land hunger, arming and sending into the field one-fourth of one percent of their number to fight for the land. Either the peon is different from the American, or land hunger is one thing to the one and another thing to the other. ”

“ Clearly, the Mexicans have demonstrated a penchant for fighting, but what they have not demonstrated is the high ability requisite for governing.
The Turbulent Element
EVEN the deeper read and widely traveled American, able somewhat to refrain from seeing Mexico in his own image and in his image of his own country, is guilty of the error of seeing Mexico in the image of a Latin country. The people of Mexico are not Latins. They are Indians. And they are Indians, only somewhat resembling the Indians of the United States. They are not merely a different tribe. ”

“ Heavens, when it comes to the mere matter of ability to make organized trouble, the very half-breeds themselves are dependent on the peons! The two strongest men to-day in Mexico are the ex-bandit peon and Indian, Villa, in the north, and Huerta, the Tiaxcalan Indian, in the south.
The attitude of the hundred thousand active half-breeds is that the government belongs to them and not to the fifteen millions. It is their government, and, by the Eternal, they are going to do what they please with it. Civilization? They are not interested in civilization. ”

“ THESE child-minded men are playing with the tools of giants. It is like a family of small children playing with sticks of dynamite on the front porch, in the basement, and up in the attic of their dwelling. ”

“ The test of the matter is the whole matter, and the whole matter is that no measure of liberty, justice, and the square deal has been achieved in all Mexico in the last four hundred years.
There is all the difference in the world between fighting and government. Anybody and anything can fight. ”

“ They cannot trust one another. They cannot believe one another. For once, each correctly conceives the next one in his own image. Aware, in his heart of hearts, that he wants nothing less than 100 per cent of the swag, that only by accident could he ever be guilty of telling the truth to a fellow robber, that he is continually bent upon overreaching and double-crossing his fellow comrades of looters, he cannot expect anything else from his fellows.
To paraphrase Kipling, the consistency of these half-breeds is to know no shred of consistency. ”

“ NOT only is this half-caste class but one-fifth of the total population of Mexico, but only a very small portion of this half-caste class is actively engaged in fomenting the anarchy that is destroying the country and merits the harsh strictures applied to it. Educated Mexicans assert that Huerta, Carranza, Villa, and Zapata do not represent more than one hundred thousand people. There is no such thing as a national movement or a popular movement. ”

“ On both sides in Mexico there was an element consisting of honest doctrinaires; but rival military leaders exploited the struggles in their own interest, sometimes taking each side successively; and the instability was intensified by the extreme poverty of the peasantry, which made the soldiery reluctant to return to civil life, by the absence of a regular middle class, and by the concentration of wealth in a few hands, so that a revolutionary chief was generally sure both of money and of men. ”

“ The descendants of the Spaniards in Mexico, interbred with the native Indians, have likewise displayed no genius for government. Facts are facts. What the Spaniards and their descendants have not succeeded in doing in Mexico during the last four hundred years is an eloquent story. ”

“ Her entire family and mine may fail to patch the matter up, and, in the end, a judge, equipped with wisdom of the race embodied in our law, may divorce us because we are different from each other—incompatible, in short. I once knew the dearest, sweetest, and most sympathetic of women, who was unable, when she lacked in appetite, to comprehend that anybody else could be hungry. ”

“ Since such mistakes of understanding are common among groups of people of the same breed and country, it is patent that deeper and more disastrous mistakes may be made among people of different races dwelling in different countries. ”

“ The trouble is, so lacking are they in the ability for government, that they cannot maintain for any length of time the battening government of their dreams. They continually quarrel over the division of the spoils, and fight among themselves for a monopoly of the governmental battening privilege. ”

“ IN THE same way different groups of people, of the same race and country, fail to understand one another. The cowboys of the open range never understood the settler with his barbed-wire fences. The East does not understand California to-day in her attitude on the Japanese question. The East thinks California is like the East and that Californians are like Easterners. In brief, the East recreates California in her own image. ”

“ Instead of having our eyes opened by this cardinal error, we proceed to reason that their conduct should be made to become like our conduct, and that we should treat them and deal with them as if they were still just like us, with a history behind them similar to ours, with institutions similar to ours, and with an ethic similar to ours. ”

“ That even theives' honor did not obtain among these thieves is shown by the numerous revolutions and dictatorships. In a country where a man is legally considered guilty of a crime until he proves himself innocent, justice must mean an entirely different thing from what it means to an American. ”

“ Fighting is a very primitive sort of exercise. Governing is a high achievement, especially governing with peace and honesty and fair dealing, and this is something which the Mexicans have never succeeded in doing from the day they broke away from Spain's palsied grasp. ”

“ They are brave on occasion. But they are not courageous. Their honor and valor reside in their tongues. They are turncoats from moment to moment. They will dine in the homes of their gringo friends one evening, and, before daylight, go gunning for their gringo friends and for the pay rolls and gold watches of their gringo friends. ”

“ If I find vegetarianism provocative of good health in me, ergo, it will be provocative of good health in you. If black coffee produces sleeplessness in me, I am appalled when you drink two cups of black coffee in the evening. ”

“ HE commonest, as well as the gravest, mistake in human intercourse is that very human weakness of creating all other individuals in one's own image. What "I like" I can see no reason but what everybody else should like. What is good for me is good for you. ”

“ When they permit, as they do, by their passivity, the pernicious and anarchic activity of the small group of one hundred thousand of them, they are themselves negatively responsible for the present state of affairs. ”

“ In those forty-seven years over fifty persons succeeded one another as presidents, dictators, and emperors. One authority states that in the same period there were three hundred attempts, more or less important, at revolution. ”

“ Sixty-five per cent of the inhabitants are pure Indians; 15 percent are pure Spanish, Americans, English, and other foreigners. The remaining 20 per cent are mixed Indian and Spanish. It is this mixed 20 per cent that, according to the stay-at-home American notion, constitutes the Mexican, and practically the totality of the Mexican population. ”