Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1901 — Mexico and Austria. [ARTICLE]

Mexico and Austria.

The Mexican republic and the Austrian empire, after thirty-five years of real though passive hostility, are about to resume friendly relations. The tragedy of which the unfortunate Maximilian was the central figure nears its final scene. Most of its great actors have passed from the stage. The survivors are about to admit that justice was done and to bury their long quarrel in oblivion. The attempt to set up a European empire in Mexico originated in Louis Napoleon’s desire to distract his people’s attention from his own corrupt government. Mexico’s failure to pay certain bonds was the immediate ex-

cuse. France and England united In a naval demonstration. England knew that her act would be distasteful to the United States, with which country she had for two years been at the point of war. Seeing that it did not provoke us to hostility, England withdrew from the conspiracy. The French troops overthrew Mexico’s weak government. A Mexican faction invited Maxmilian to assume a crown that it had no right to offer. When the civil war permitted, the United States came to Mexico’s rescue. France was warned to withdraw her troops. Sheridan was sent with an army to the Rio Grande. The Mexican patriots were supplied with arms. The French army retired. The deluded Maximilian remained, to be captured, tried, and executed by the people he had attempted to subjugate. That the Emperor Francis Joseph should cherish against the Mexicans resentment for his brother’s death was quite natural, and yet unreasonable. For, while Mexicans held the rifles that ended Maximilian’s life, Louis Napoleon loaded them and the United States pulled the triggers. The Mexicans, though they had suffered the greater injury, were ready to forgive and forget, but the Austrian court long persisted in its rancor. Perhaps the aged Francis Joseph has learned from his many sorrows the Christian duty of forgiveness. He re-

cently caused to be dedicated at Queretaro, with ceremonies in which the Mexican people joined vflth sympathy, but without regret, a chapel to his brother’s memory. Now he is about to welcome the envoy of the people his brother sought to wrong. At last he recognizes the fact that the safety of the people is the supreme law, to which personal griefs must yield. Even the house of Hapsburg at last admits that the only “divine right” is the people’s will.