Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 149, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1920 — Mexicans Tire of Fighting [ARTICLE]

Mexicans Tire of Fighting

American Newspaper Man Picks Up Interesting Information in Mexico. CHANGE TOWARD_AMERICANS Correspondent Is First American to Visit Revolution—Slashed Republic After Fall of Carranza— People Want Peace. Chicago. — Sidney M. Sutherland writes to the Chicago Tribune from Monterey, Mex., what he calls a disjointed tale of a journalistic pilgrim in quest of data in Mexicp. It treats of the entry of the first American Into the revolution-slashed republic since the roads were cut. With passport in hand, I approached one Monahan, the guardian for Uncle Sam atAhe Laredo international bridge —that is, the Rio Grande —there’s no bridge. Somebody burned the six-span steel structure ten days ago. They have built a pontoon nearly across the 200-yard-wide .stream. Just now you’re poled across in skiffs. Monahan looked at my passport and me, and told me to forget the Mexican consul’s vise, as there are as many consuls in Laredo as there are factions in Mexico, and to proceed and to pray God to give mercy to my immortal soul.

__ I stepped from, civilization to five centuries ago, to old shacks, narrow, filthy streets, to crawling, fly-dotted beggars, to meh In tatters, women in rags, ' and children in less than fig leaves. There is one tram of oriemule power, dozens of 111 smelling, make-shift dirty saloons, and hanging like a pall over all the people and businesses, the “wish-to-God this thing would stop and we could get back to work” feeling. Every human expresses more confidence In this regime than In any since old Porfirio Diaz departed. And there is a new spirit, toward Americans. Somebody—and one ventures to credit General Obregon with the Idea—passed the order everywhere to defer to things American and cut out the nonsense. Obregon visited several American camps during the war and the Great Lakes to see. the United States when we meant business and had stifled the pacifists. Everybody on both sides of the river told me no one could go South. So I jumped Into a coach and was driven to the barracks where Col. J. F. Borquez commands the border between Eagle Pass and Brownsville and south to Monterey. I told him who I was and what I wanted. After officially Informing me of Monterey’s fall, he promised to comply with all my requests. Obtains Safe Conduct. Telling me to return at 10 a. m. Friday, he dictated a safe conduct pass. It is the most complete document I ever saw and has worked wonders — I only hope I don’t present It to the opposing faction and get shot during the confusion. Borquez, voicing what all the other rebel generals have told me since, said solemnly and 8 earnestly: “We’re tired of fighting. Ten years of strife have sapped us until the last Mexican virtues —patience and forbearance —have been exhausted. Carranza would have had us in trouble with America, and we can’t stand for that We want peace and a chance to work. That Is all. To get it we must be at peace at home and abroad. The rebel chieftains all rally to us because Carranza meant trouble, and our plan means the simplest program of all —peace and work. What Carranza Stood For. “Carranza represented pro-this and political autocracy, personal frigidity, private revenge and pure graft Tou will notice the revolution swept most of the republic without a hundred shots being fired. That shows at once that Carranza was not what they wanted and what our plan Is. Please be good enough to send dnly one message to your people—have a little patience and we will make the grade.” I was at the station at ten Friday. There was a water tank car, a flat car and a cabooea made of a converted

Borquez and the director general of railways In the North J. D. Rodriguez —were deaf to all suggestions to buy a ticket.. But did we start at ten? We did not. We left at three sh the afternoon. They had just one engine at Neuvo Laredo, the most Important northern port of Mexico, and that one engine would not work. They filled it with water oil and surrounded it with profanity and finally with twenty sandaled native workers secured by a local and an improvised draft act we limped away. I use the word limped advisedly. There is not a wheel In northern Mexico that has not been dilapidated by Old Father Time and Kid Revolution. , ’ Burned Bridge Stops Him. After ten miles of horrible jolting and fearful heat we stopped. A bridge had been burned. Incidentally the Obregonistas who burned ten between Laredo and Monterey were trying to delay Carranzista reinforcements to various towns and did not w’ant to destroy more than necessary. This was evidenced by the fact that they wrecked only little culverts and not large spans. Most revolutionists 4:hink they are Germans in Belgium. We alighted. Instead of tearing In and removing the charred ties and twisted rails and building a new culvert the entire outfit sat down to think. They thought and thought , They la/ first on one hip and smoked corn shuck cigarettes, and then smoked and lay on the other hip, thinking rapidly all the while. I took a picture then, mentioning that I thought they might do something. They thought that a snappy Idea and Immediately fixed the bridge and went on, only losing an hour. Another Bridge Burned. Fifteen miles further we stopped again. This time it was a burned bridge, and a temporary track was laid beside It over the shallow creek bed. Heavy rain of the night before had softened the creek bottom, so that the track like Palmer’s May day Red uprising. The crew got jacks, picks, and shovels and ran some big timbers lengthwise under the ties. I took a picture, smoked a cigarette, and thought: “What a long way to Mexico City and real news.” They gave the signal to start —the Mexicans cheered for their favorite president, favorite bull fighter, patron saints, and favorite brand of beer. I stood a hundred feet to one side, watching the train through the camera and waiting for it to turn over. It didr not, and my watchful waiting produced nothing. Finally we advanced. That la, we

advanced 15 miles to a place where they had removed rails and by burning had twisted them. We laid new ones on new ties and proceeded. When we reached Rodriguez, 55 miles from Laredo, it was seven o’clock. There we found an engine which had been derailed and overturned the day before. It had righted Itself, and it hooked onto our train And took It back north, our engine and tank car continuing south. I climbed on the narrow platform in the rear of the tank cai* and we went on. We reached Lampasos at nine. I was Immediately surrounded by armed rebels in a bewildering variety of raiment and escorted before Gen. Juan M. Garcia, governor-elect of Neuvo Leon and commandant of the army of the North. * My letter from Borquez produced the proper effect and I was told T might go south on the military train at dawn. There were no hotels nor restaurants, and I was famished. The town Is five miles from the station. I saw a lighted doorway several hundred yards away. I went over, found some women, and asked for food and shelter. *• “It’s American—and Young." The women held a lantern up to my face and, exclaiming in Spanish, “It’s an American, and young,” they said they would do their best. By the light of a smoky lantern they prepared and gave me. the starboard thigh of a young goat boiled in grease, onions', and chill hotter than the hinges of the inferno. I gobbled it down with the appetite of a starved coyote and ate several flat cakes of corn pone and drank a glass of goat’s milk. Meanwhile a wrinkled, withered old relic of nine matrimonial engagements —and willing to go further —had prepared the war correspondent’s couch. This consisted of one blanket spread on a narrow sidewalk outside the house. I looked it over and scratched my head, in which the “young visitors” already yad found breeding place. His Bed Chamber Furnished. I asked for a pillow and they gave me a small sack of corn in a pillowslip. I asked for a sheet and they gave me a tablecloth. I gave up—took off the Bill Hart puttees and shoes and lay down.

Just as I was about to doze off I was startled by a wild fusillade at the station. The women screamed and moaned. I rolled into a near-by gutter. It turned out to be only rebels at their third bottle of mezcal. I dozed off, only to be reawakened by a “caballito de gas”—a little horse of gasoline —as the Mexicans call a railroad velocipede. “El consul Americano 1” screamed several rebels. 7 I dressed and rushed over to meet Randolph Robertson, the liveliest wire Sn the American consular service in Mexico. He has taken dozens of Americans and British out slrtce the last trouble began. He has smoothed over a dozen “causes of war” in the last two years. His station at Nenvc Laredo has more friends than any in Mexico.* • He was bringing in two Americans They ate fried goat and went on north, and I returned to bed and to sleep at twelve, with the stars close down ovamy bed. Breakfast Is Served. One of the native women wakened me jat five with a cupful of coffee placed on the sidewalk by my pillow. I turned to get a cigarette and turned back to find thfc family parrot perched on the rim of the cup drinking my coffee and swearing at me fluently in Lampasos Spanish. At noon the military train with General Garcia started for Monterey. He kindly consented to let me ride. 1 crawled in the caboose and went to Vlllaldama, where the first passenger from the North fn ten days overtook us and we switched, arriving here at five with Robertson, who is on his fifth trip guarding American interests and who is taking this message North. On both sides of the road for a hundred miles to here are evidences of ten years’ revolutions’ destructions. Houses have been burned, fields are in weeds, there are no cattle, no land is cultivated, people are apathetic, dumb, dazed, and hopeless. But all have hope in this new crowd, saying, “If they cannot straighten it out, who is left r The answer is. nobody of Mexican blood.