The world outside largely persists in taking Mexican professions at their face value, and in solemnly accepting the beautiful Mexican laws and the beautiful Mexican arguments as literally true. On this point I have quoted elsewhere the words of a great Mexican publicist, who has written: “The carpet baggers of Mexico have traditions rooted as far back as colonial times. They combine the shrewd and subtle wit of the Indian with the grandiose words of modern civilization, with which they have gained the sympathy of uninformed outsiders.” Our own State Department has answered the “Carranza Doctrine” in no uncertain terms and once wrote that “the Department is of the opinion that ... an attempt is being made to coerce American companies ... to admit in advance ... the correctness of the contention of the Mexican government in the matter of ownership of oil deposits, against which the American government has made solemn protest as threatening confiscation of rights legally acquired by American citizens.”

In fact, there is no reason to doubt that virtually all of the oil decrees of Carranza, all the rulings of his ministers, all the regulations which have been enforced with such insistence on petty details have been, first, appeals to sentimentalism abroad and, second, childish expedients to force recognition by the foreigners of some sort—any sort—of superiority in the Mexicans. In the last, so well set forth in the State Department message quoted just above, lies the basic cause of the failure of the companies to reach an agreement with the Mexican government. Every willingness to discuss a point, every slackening of their demands, has been accepted, not as an approach to a solution, but as a weak concession to Mexican “national pride” and personal dignity.

There are two remaining reasons why the oil question remains unsettled. They are extremely practical,—loot and incompetence. Of the former, George Agnew Chamberlain, the novelist, recently American Consul General in Mexico City, has written in his book, “Is Mexico Worth Saving?” that:

The oil companies are the ripest prey for loot in all Mexico. Their individual employees pay graft of certain kinds—of that I have no doubt, although there is vigorous and official denial. The companies themselves, however, pay a tribute, through the channels of astonishing taxation and contributions to public works, which is no less than the buying of the privilege of doing business. Another phase appears in the gossip which is general that one of the English companies materially aided the Obregon revolution—certainly every moneyed interest in Mexico had ample opportunity to do so. The American companies were, after Obregon’s occupation of Mexico City, “shaken down” for about $1,000,000 which was credited against taxes—and the taxes afterwards proportionately increased!

As a whole, the companies have resisted the temptation to ease their way along the broader paths of high government by the voluntary use of money—they have generally confined their expenses to the ample totals of taxes and assessments. It is for this reason that one of the most serious phases of the Mexican congressional discussion of petroleum legislation is that practically every member of the Mexican congress expects “his,” and when it is not forthcoming, will see to it that nothing favorable to the foreign companies finds its way to the statute books.

Lastly, incompetence. Perhaps the most appalling factor of the whole Mexican situation is the utter and profound ignorance of the men in control of the national affairs, men to whom the culture, the very procedure, of modern civilization are as a closed book. I believe that the oil problem is made serious chiefly because the Mexicans who might otherwise be willing to solve it are so uneducated, so limited in viewpoint and understanding, that they cannot conceive of the vast sums of money which must be invested in pipe lines, storage tanks, pumping stations, wharves and ships and refineries before the oil taken from their country’s soil becomes the fabulous treasure of which they hear so much. They seem utterly incapable of grasping the fundamentals of their national problems; the pity of the condition almost obscures the significance of the fact. It has not been easy for me to explain the oil problem in its simplest phases to Americans, yet in this chapter you who have read it have learned more than the floor leaders of the Mexican congress will ever know.

It is through this forest of ignorance, this slime of graft, that the foreign oil companies are making their way. They have committed many mistakes in their handling of the situation, selfish mistakes, mistakes of ignorance, but the struggle has been against forces whose depravity has been literally unbelievable. Personally, I am no fire-eater, but I have seen much of Mexico and I have seen something of the psychology of depravity, and I believe that the last lingering hope of Mexican adaptability to world conditions lies in Mexican recognition of the need of grasping truth rather than theory, of facing facts with manly faith in Mexico and in Mexican ability to solve her problems as other nations solve theirs, by honesty and patriotism and not by graft and personalism. This attitude the oil companies have nurtured, and in this their policy has been a policy of weakness. Seeking here an outlet for the day, there a hope for the morrow, they have put a premium on Mexican dishonesty, given a prize for Mexican argumentative skill. I know some of the problems the companies have faced, I know the need for oil during the war, I have written here something of the magnificence of their achievement, but for all that, I hold that they have had much to do with the vacillation, the inefficiency, the watery, grafting policy of the Mexican governments from Carranza to Obregon. They have had a large part in making such a policy successful by not refusing unjust demands firmly and directly, by not challenging Carranza to close the oil fields, by not taking a mighty loss to save the endless leak of graft and taxes and cynical legislation which is their heritage to-day. Even yet their policy is one of conciliation to Obregon, the newest president; still they are offering compromise, still giving the subtle Mexican mind to understand that perhaps they might agree to Article 27, perhaps they might accept a little higher taxation, perhaps they would like a few concessions, perhaps they might be counted on to get the hopefully predicted Mexican loan.

All this is the last phase of the complicated problem. We have said, in days gone by, that this is the problem of the oil companies, that theirs is the gain and theirs should be the cost. But if I have succeeded here I have conveyed an idea of the breadth of the oil problem. It is no longer a question of whether the American State Department is making the proper moves to support honest and industrious American investors and workers abroad. It is no longer the academic problem of whether the oil companies are handling their business in an intelligent and efficient manner. The problem is ours, yours and mine, of you in Kansas, of me in New York, of our cousins in England and China. It is the problem of the chap who runs a Ford and of the man who is cutting our freight bills by renting us a truck, of the steamship company which is carrying our goods, of the captain of the battleship which keeps us safe from near and distant enemies.

The problem is not merely whether the white peoples of the world are to have the right to develop the riches of the backward nations for the benefit of the world, but of how they are to do it. So far, even in forward-looking lands, it has been impossible to eliminate private ownership and colossal private fortunes from the wheel of oil production; in Mexico, to-day, it would be disaster beyond understanding to turn the right of concession and oil privileges over to corrupt and inept government. The battle of the oil companies in Mexico is to save, first themselves from such a fate, and second to save all the unopened oil resources in the world from the strangling hold of such governments and such peoples everywhere. The oil industry can no longer carry the burden of such conditions, for the prices of your gasoline and your ship’s fuel oil are reflections not of a world scarcity, but of the uncertainty, the colossal artificial difficulties of oil production in the backward lands.

Commerce has fashioned the world into one brotherhood, and the Great War, for all its appearances, has welded us all into a mightier machine of civilization than history has ever known. Oil is the fuel of that machine, and oil must come to its engine, though all the power of politicians and bandits combine to keep it in the soil. The backward countries are swept into the forefront of commercial importance when oil begins to flow from their soil. The process is going on all over the world. In Mexico it is at its zenith. The oil must come, and from Mexico before all others, for Mexico lies in the heart of the world, her shores touched by more waters in proportion to her area than any other continental nation. And her stores of oil are the greatest man has yet found or dreamed of.

To-day the world’s need of oil threatens the life of Mexico. It is eating out her body by revolutions, by bandit governments, by colossal graft which feeds on the ever growing river of gold from the oil fields. The world’s need for Mexico’s oil threatens her with intervention, not because of capitalistic machinations, but because of the crass and wicked injustices which the wealth has tempted her to wreak upon her foreign residents, because wealth has undermined her government and given her over to demagogues.