The European powers foreboded a general conflagration at the end of 1914. Some of them felt that the northern republic should do their police work in Mexico while they would be busy fighting for their own existence in Europe; others more charitably inclined, hoped that the United States might easily get into a wasps’ nest, by intervening in Mexico,--especially as Japan stood on the other side of the Pacific, as a warning of the brown peril, and as a sympathetic, though selfish supporter of Mexican integrity. In spite of contrary assertions, Mexican statesmen and level-headed thinkers dread an American invasion into their country; be it for the purpose of conquest or an unselfish police-work. A military offensive or defensive alliance with Japan is much more dreaded by the Mexicans than an American intervention. The American Colossus, as the United States is called, does not represent the brutal, military, imperialistic methods of the Japanese, but a danger of elimination by military conquest or absorption by political, commercial, and financial attrition and suction. All the Mexican politicians, writers and statesmen fear American meddling in their internal affairs, and although their admiration for the United States and its greatness is unbounded, nevertheless, their patriotism is still greater than their neighborly love. The whole spirit of South America, south of the Rio Grande, is not Spanish nor Indian--the spirit is essentially latin and gallic. The mental attitude of the Zapotec Indian Juarez was neither Iberian nor Aztec, but essentially of the roman type of the republic. The intellectual radicalism of the liberals, Gomez Farias, Melchior Ocampo, Leandro del Valle, was of the same pattern as that of the French revolutionary Jacobins--the clearest, most advanced and progressive ideas in politics have been absorbed from Gallic and Latin sources. The French revolution, the Napoleonic epos, are the text books of the liberals and the ambitious politicians. Roman and French history was admired and unconsciously imitated. The one for the civic virtues, courage and greatness of its citizens,--the other for the daring, patriotism and intellectual clearness of its most prominent men. Spanish history and philosophy is a closed book to Mexican thinkers--for Spanish thought was always in the rear guard of intellectual Europe. The Spanish spirit is found in reactionary types, like Lucas Alaman,--the Don Quixotic characteristic in a Lopez de Santa Ana,--the Castilian cruelty in a Miguel Marquez. As a Mexican writer once said: “Spain has brought us only priests, money-lenders, bull-fighters and dancers.”