ust come other things that were far more important,
such as popular education, scientific agriculture, sanitation, public
highways, railroads, and the development of the resources of nature. If
the backward peoples of the world could be schooled in such a
preliminary apprenticeship, the time might come when the intelligence
and the conscience of the masses would be so enlightened that they could
be trusted with independence. The labour of Leonard Wood in Cuba, and of
other Americans in the Philippines, had apparently pointed the way to
the only treatment of such peoples that was just to them and safe for
mankind.

With the experience of Cuba and the Philippines as a guide, it is not
surprising that the situation in Mexico appealed to many Americans as
opening a similar opportunity to the United States. The two facts that
outstood all others were that Mexico, in her existing condition of
popular ignorance, could not govern herself, and that the twentieth
century could not accept indefinitely a condition of disorder and
bloodshed that had apparently satisfied the nineteenth. The basic
difficulty in this American republic was one of race and of national
character. The fact that was constantly overlooked was that Mexico was
not a Caucasian country: it was a great shambling Indian Republic. Of
its 15,000,000 people less than 3,000,000 were of unmixed white blood,
about 35 per cent. were pure Indian, and the rest represented varying
mixtures of white and aboriginal stock. The masses had advanced little
in civilization since the days of Cortez. Eighty per cent. were
illiterate; their lives for the most part were a dull and squalid
routine; protection against disease was unknown; the agricultural
methods were most primitive; the larger number still spoke the native
dialects which had been used in the days of Montezuma; and over good
stretches of the country the old tribal regime still represented the
only form of political organization. The one encouraging feature was
that these Mexican Indians, backward as they might be, were far superior
to the other native tribes of the North American Continent; in ancient
times, they had developed a state of society far superior to that of the
traditional Redskin. Nevertheless, it was true that the progress of
Mexico in the preceding fifty years had been due almost entirely to
foreign enterprise. By 1913, about 75,000 Americans were living in
Mexico as miners, engineers, merchants, and agri