File No. 812.00/9310.
The American Ambassador to Great Britain to the Secretary of State.
London, October 21, 1913—4 p.m.
78. Your October 14, 7 p.m. Last night Sir Edward Grey said his Government would wait till October 26 before deciding its next step and that then he would inform me what they would do. He expressed hope that there was no truth in the newspaper rumor that the President would raise embargo on arms to the “rebels in the north.”
I again explained at length the President’s policy find reasons therefor, saying that if he used the power of the United States in favor of one adventurer in Mexico or any other Latin American state merely because he seemed at any given moment stronger than his opponents no progress toward stable government could ever be made and that there must be some moral foundation for our approval. I explained how we could not consider financial interests except as secondary to moral interests. I expressed my own belief that the President would never intervene for mere financial interests, however great or insistent, and that merely to restore order by force would not mean progress toward stable government by Mexicans, but would be only another name for conquest, which was abhorrent.
Sir Edward expressed sympathy with this view and remarked that the trouble with intervention was the trouble of getting out.
I reminded him that Mexico was only a part of Latin America and that the investments made there under Díaz did not change the fundamental problem.
He granted that the problem of the United States with Mexico was very different from the problem of any other Government. His direct comment was meager, but the general impression he made on [Page 847] my mind very distinctly was his appreciation of the difficulties and an increasing respect for the President’s policy