Quite recently our country was merely a pupil at the Hague, a student of the Science of Peace. In her studies she manifested a little more zest, and evidently progressed much more rapidly than her companions. For, when a very significant test came from Mexico, she passed the examination gloriously. Her answer to the great Mexican question was implicitly this: no matter how great a grievance may be, it is less a grievance than war, since war includes all grievances. The world admired her wisdom. The Hague smiled approval. True, to preserve peace with Mexico, we had to leave Mexico at war with herself. The malodorous moral vapors from that civil seethe are still filling our country with nausea. But if we allow our laudable and just indignation to be tempered with reflection, we shall have to confess that war would only enrage our illiterate neighbors to even grosser excesses; at best, could finally quell their restlessness for only a time; at worst, would create for us more difficulties than it would solve. Besides, to add to Mexico’s crimes the ravages of our weapons would be to increase the world’s woes; to increase them at a time when all hell seems to be conspiring against the human race. Grievances, better than anything else, bear postponement. They are proved by the test of time. If real, they endure. Mexico is now in the throes of liberty-birth. She is painfully working out her destiny, just as we and other nations have done before her. She has a right to be let alone. There will be time enough for us to settle with her when she has settled with herself. There is honor for us in the waiting. In the interim, humanity, the universal law, demands that we do our diplomatic and charitable utmost to win the innocent sufferers in Mexico from torment. Our country’s attitude toward Mexico has won for her a unique distinction. From pupil, she has become teacher of peace. Europe’s agonized eyes are now appealingly fixed on her. Naturally, such a sudden and unexpected elevation has somewhat dazed her. She doubts that her voice will be heard, or, if heard, be heeded, in the unearthly clangor of arms. She is apprehensive that stray shots from the war-zone may ricochet across the Atlantic and inflict wounds upon her which it would be dishonor not to redress. This nervousness, forsooth, is a kind of stage-fright. She is much like a player, possessed of all such requisites as talent, memory, and trappings, but timorous of throat difficulties and gallery missiles at the première. We are a people of energy, hence of nerves, hence of imagination, hence of fears. But let us compose ourselves. Poor performers are deservedly criticized. The world is our audience; it is expecting great things; shall we give it disappointment? No, of course not! But are we not making a bad début?