Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1915 — CHAOS RULES IN CITY OF MEXICO [ARTICLE]

CHAOS RULES IN CITY OF MEXICO

Bandit Villa Prepares to Leave Capitol and Enter Upon Another Northern Campaign. "Watchful waiting” put Carranza and then Villa in charge of wartorn Mexico. Cbnditions are today worse in that country than ever before and the fact that production of the prime necessities of life during the past three years has been curtailed by the war puts the country in a deplorable condition at this time and many unwilling persons are compelled to attach themselves to one or another of the bandit armies to procure a living. The mortality during the long war has not been very great. Strangely the Mexican bullets have failed to result fatally in many cases, apparantly due to bad marksmanship, but armies of a few hundred, under leaders who have no object except their own welfare, have tramped the country over and,over and growing fields have been devastated, cattle ranches raided, banks and stores robbed, women outraged, mining industries destroyed by dynamite and a state of anarchy has existed from which there will probably never be any relief except it comes from a protectorate established by the United States. A firm hand might have restored peace in Mexico a long time ago, but the feeble warnings that have eminated. from President Wilson and Secretary Bryan have failed of results in Mexico and have not secured respect any place in the world.* There was never a doorstep of a great power so bloody with revolution as Mexico where in the interest of humanity and for the protection of the subjects and investments of the people from other countries intervention was not the policy. . Now Villa has issued an order to the national railway to move its offices from Mexico City to some point north. At the same time the records of the capital have been packed apparently for the evacuation of the capital and removal of the property to some northern city. Villa plans a campaign in northern Mexico, which has c been the scene of the greatest disturbance for a long time. A Washington dispatch says that the confusion is greater than ever and the various warring factions seem to have no prospect of getting together for peace because of their personal ambitions and because the leaders and profit In their plundering warfare. Knowing the purpose of bandit leadership new and ambitious leaders are asserting themselves with a handful of half starved, poorly armed and untrained men. They can rob and destroy and persecute and they assume the title of "general” arid become factors in the imbroglia. A country rich in natural resources in which people from the United States and England and other countries had established 'Homes and made investments has been and is being ravished by Indians and half breeds and a great nation looks on and approves it. Confident that progress and opportunity and health and happiness follow the American flag and believing that in Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines the justice of our course has been proved by the happy conditions that have resulted from the chaos of many years, we can not believe that the United States is right in failing to do a duty to civilization in Mexico.