people that we know how to serve them without first thinking how we
shall serve ourselves.

But we are not the only friends of Mexico. The whole world desires her
peace and progress; and the whole world is interested as never before.
Mexico lies at last where all the world looks on. Central America is
about to be touched by the great routes of the world's trade and
intercourse running free from ocean to ocean at the Isthmus. The future
has much in store for Mexico, as for all the States of Central America;
but the best gifts can come to her only if she be ready and free to
receive them and to enjoy them honorably. America in particular--America
north and south and upon both continents--waits upon the development of
Mexico; and that development can be sound and lasting only if it be the
product of a genuine freedom, a just and ordered government founded upon
law. Only so can it be peaceful or fruitful of the benefits of peace.
Mexico has a great and enviable future before her, if only she choose
and attain the paths of honest constitutional government.

The present circumstances of the Republic, I deeply regret to say, do
not seem to promise even the foundations of such a peace. We have waited
many months, months full of peril and anxiety, for the conditions there
to improve, and they have not improved. They have grown worse, rather.
The territory in some sort controlled by the provisional authorities at
Mexico City has grown smaller, not larger. The prospect of the
pacification of the country, even by arms, has seemed to grow more and
more remote; and its pacification by the authorities at the capital is
evidently impossible by any other means than force. Difficulties more
and more entangle those who claim to constitute the legitimate
government of the Republic. They have not made good their claim in fact.
Their successes in the field have proved only temporary. War and