Revolutions are the maladies of nations, they cannot be arrested in their course with impunity, for then the disease will crop out in a more virulent form. Mexico at the end of the Diaz régime was as feudal as France under Louis XVI. Mexico had the aristocratic landowner, the political clergy and the military chiefs as well as in France. They will have to be eradicated as thoroughly as noxious weeds from a field before cultivation. After a while order will come out of chaos. Meanwhile the peon is slowly coming into his own. CHAPTER XVIII BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE CARRANZA-VILLA IMBROGLIO To make the story very short we could say that Mexican and American reactionary interests were behind Villa, in an endeavor to exclude Carranza as a factor in Mexican politics. But the story will be more interesting and revealing if we point out some of the methods used to engineer the conspiracy. During the first six months of the revolution against Huerta (1913), few authentic stories were published about the revolution. Most of the news came from Mexico City. There was no other political personage who could get more space in the first page of the newspapers than Victoriano Huerta. In Europe, the oil interests very effectively silenced the press as to the progress of the revolution; in Paris the press was bought outright. [Illustration: GENERAL BENJAMIN HILL (Defender of Naco), under General Obregon] Although the American press cannot be bought, there are ways of circumventing it and cheating it of the truth. The Huertista press agents knowing the curiosity of the American people, fed them with stories about Huerta, and with details of his official and unofficial actions, and more than once his very thoughts were reported and published. The refrain was always: No matter how bad Huerta may be, he is nevertheless President de facto,--he is the strongest man in Mexico and he should be recognized. A Mexican and a foreign newspaperman spent four thousand dollars a week on publicity work, while another supporter of Huerta is known to have spent ten thousand dollars for the same purpose. The Huerta agents came in contact with the felicista and científico agents, and they put their heads together to devise a means of breaking up the successful revolution. The reactionary junta watched the events with keen interest. As soon as Villa had proved his ability as a general, he was chosen at once as the easiest and most convenient tool to break up the harmony between the revolutionists.