The flight of several archbishops from Mexico was not due so much to their fear of the persecutions of the Constitutionalists but more to the terror of the retaliations of General Huerta. The Mexican clergy enlisted the sympathy of the American Catholics and of the Pope in Rome, in their appeals for protection. The impression has been given that the Mexican clergy is a victim of the persecutions of the Constitutionalists, who want to destroy religion. What the Mexican liberals, as well as the leaders among the Indians, are after, is the elimination of the clergy from the political arena. The political activities of the clericals will only result in disastrous effects--their abstention from it will only enhance their spiritual supremacy. At Aguascalientes, one of the delegates of Zapata, Paulino Martinez, said before the assembled generals: “The Indian, the peon, the workingman of all the factories, the artisans in the cities, were all exploited by that odious trinity formed by the cacique, the military man and the priest. Carranza never said a more profound truth, than when he stated, at the beginning of the revolution against Huerta-- “WE ARE FIGHTING THE THREE YEARS’ WAR ALL OVER AGAIN.” The religious question in Mexico has to be settled once for all by the Mexicans themselves, and the pernicious interferences by the Mexican clergy, which tries to enlist the sympathy, influence and intervention of the American or foreign Catholics, will only revert to the disadvantage of all the fair thinking, just Catholics, who, if they are sincere in their claims that they do not mix in politics, will find that the safest and most practical thing to do is to keep neutral in a family quarrel. Otherwise they might burn their fingers. CHAPTER XVII ATTEMPTS AT THE SOLUTION OF THE LAND QUESTION Several attempts have been made during the last four years to solve the land problem in the States of Morelos, Tamaulipas, Chihuahua. Other States have followed in the wake in a more or less radical manner according to the conditions of the peons and the necessity for cultivating the land to feed the population. The most interesting of all attempts was initiated by Gen. Lucio Blanco who was fighting under Gen. Pablo Gonzalez in the division of the East. Any one taking the trouble to look up the map of Mexico will observe that the State of Tamaulipas touches the border of the United States from the mouth of the Rio Grande (Matamoros) to Nuevo Laredo. Along the line of that strip, on the most fertile parts which can be irrigated by the waters of the Rio Grande, were lands which belonged to small tenants and in many cases were communal lands “egidos” belonging to Indians.