Huerta himself proudly says that he is a pure-blooded Aztec. His friends claim for him that he has the virtues of an Indian--courage, patience, endurance, and dignified reserve. His enemies, on the other hand, profess to see in him some of the vices of Indian blood. From what I have seen of General Huerta in the field, in private life, and as a President, I would say that he combines in himself both the virtues and the faults of his race. In battle I have seen him expose himself with a courage worthy of the best Indian traditions; nor have I ever heard it intimated by any one that he was a coward. One of his strong points as a commander was that he was a man of few words. On the other hand, his own soldiers at the front hailed him as a stern and cruel leader; and some of the things that were done to his prisoners of war at the front were enough to curdle any one's blood. It was during a moment of conviviality that General Huerta once revealed his true sentiments toward the United States and ourselves. This was during a banquet given in his honor at Mexico City on the eve of his departure to the front in Chihuahua. On this occasion an Englishman, who had long been on terms of intimacy with Huerta, asked the General what he would do if northern Mexico should secede to the United States and the Americans should take a hand in the fray. This question aroused General Huerta to the following extemporary speech: "I am not afraid of the _gringoes_. Why should I be? No good Mexican need be afraid of the _gringoes_. If it had not been for the treachery of President Santa Anna, who sold himself to the United States in 1847, we should have beaten the Yankees then, as we surely shall beat them the next time. Let them cross the Rio Bravo! We will send them back with bloody heads. "We Mexicans need not be afraid of any foreign nation. Did we not beat the Spaniards? Did we not also beat the French, and the Austrians, and the Belgians, and all the other foreign adventurers who came with Maximilian? In the same way we would have beaten the _gringoes_ had we had a fair chance at them. The Texans, who beat Santa Anna, at San Jacinto, you must know, were not _gringoes_, but brother Mexicans, of whom we have reason to be proud. "To my mind, there are only two real nations in the world, besides our old Aztec nation. Those nations are England and Japan. "All the others can not properly be called nations; least of all the United States, which is a mere hodge-podge of other nations. One of these days England and Japan and Mexico will get together, and after that there will be an end to the United States." WILLIAM CAROL[1] [Footnote 1: Reproduced in condensed form from _The World's Work_ by the kind permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.] In order to understand the situation in Mexico, it is necessary to get firmly in our minds that there are in reality two Mexicos. One may be called American Mexico and the other Mexican Mexico.