ans apparently preferred was to be left alone,
some of them to mind their own business, others to mind their neighbor's
affairs.

Of all the Central American countries Honduras was, perhaps, the one
most afflicted with pecuniary misfortunes. In 1909 its foreign debt,
along with arrears of interest unpaid for thirty-seven years, was
estimated at upwards of $110,000,000. Of this amount a large part
consisted of loans obtained from foreign capitalists, at more or less
extortionate rates, for the construction of a short railway, of which
less than half had been built. That revolutions should be rather
chronic in a land where so much money could be squandered and where
the temperaments of Presidents and ex-Presidents were so bellicose,
was natural enough. When the United States could not induce the warring
rivals to abide by fair elections, it sent a force of marines to overawe
them and gave warning that further disturbances would not be allowed.

In Nicaragua the conditions were similar. Here Zelaya, restive under the
limitations set by the conference at Washington, yearned to become the
"strong man" of Central America, who would teach the Yankees to stop
their meddling. But his downfall was imminent. In 1909, as the result of
his execution of two American soldiers of fortune who had taken part in
a recent insurrection, the United States resolved to tolerate Zelaya no
longer. Openly recognizing the insurgents, it forced the dictator out of
the country. Three years later, when a President-elect started to assume
office before the legally appointed time, a force of American marines
at the capital convinced him that such a procedure was undesirable. The
"corrupt and barbarous" conditions prevailing in Zelaya's time, he was
informed, could not be tolerated. The United States, in fact, notified
all parties in Nicaragua that, under the terms of the Washington
conventions, it had a "moral mandate to exert its influence for the
preservation of the general peace of Central America." Since those
agreements had vested no one with authority to enforce them, such an
interpretation of their language, aimed apparently at all disturbances,
foreign as well as domestic, was rather elastic! At all events, after
1912, when a new constitution was adopted, the country became relatively
quiet and somewhat progressive. Whenever a political flurry did take
place, American marines were employed to preserve the peace. Many
citizens, therefore, decli