The foreign press could not understand why Carranza did not hasten at once to Mexico City after the flight of Huerta. Carranza could not leave a single State between Mexico City and the border unorganized, that is to say, without placing Constitutionalist officials in charge. Otherwise the Huerta officials would later have created local strife. The first Chief had to put new wine in new bottles, in order to succeed in any future reform which might be enacted by Congress. With Carranza it was not only a question of conquest. His idea was to rebuild, reconstruct Mexico, not merely conquer it. [Illustration: DON RAFAEL ZUBÁRAN CAPMANY Minister of Foreign Affairs with Carranza, also Representative of Carranza in Washington] CHAPTER VIII DIPLOMATIC WORK IN WASHINGTON From the inception of the Constitutionalist revolution, Carranza appreciated the necessity of having a representative in Washington. Alberto Pani and Roberto V. Pesqueira organized a junta which would counteract the campaign waged against the Constitutionalists by the Huerta agents in conjunction with the American interests, in the vain hope of a recognition of the Huerta régime by the Democratic administration. Pesqueira paid the expenses of the office out of his own pocket until Carranza was able to devote some of the money at the disposal of the revolution, to other purposes besides the buying of arms and ammunition. The intelligent and effective work done by the two constitutionalist ambassadors concentrated the attention of the American public upon a struggle which had appeared one-sided and hopeless. After a succession of defeats by the federal generals in the north, Huerta recognized that the great army at his disposal was swiftly crumbling to pieces, and the three divisions under the Constitutionalist generals were determinedly closing in upon him, he became afraid, and with the same unscrupulousness of former reactionary despots in Mexico, he plucked a leaf from the history of Mexico, attempting to repeat the feat successfully carried out by the clericals in 1847, when American intervention was forced, and in 1861 when French intervention was deliberately invited, to save clericalism from utter annihilation. Carranza foresaw the move, as the members of Huerta’s cabinet had openly boasted to bring about American intervention to save their interests and their lives. With Carranza in Hermosillo was a Mr. Rafael Zubáran Capmany, a young Mexican lawyer from Campeche, who acted as his Secretary of the Interior in the Provisional Cabinet. Carranza picked out Mr. Zubáran as the one man in Mexico to play the diplomatic game in Washington which would ward off American intervention, even after the American troops had occupied Vera Cruz.