The other contention, more general and yet with a stronger appeal to modern radicals, was that such nationalization was in line with the trend of the times, a trend later manifested in the Russian revolution. Candido Aguilar, then Carranza’s foreign minister, gave voice to this phase in his note of August 12, 1918, to the British Foreign Office, where he stated that “the modern conception of property is that it is a social function bound closely to the prosperity of the State.” Both these contentions might in fact be worthy of consideration if the government of Mexico were of a character to be trusted, if it were indeed genuinely devoted to any sincere ideals of social reform, if it were truly interested in the conservation of the nation’s resources for the benefit of the people. But the Mexican governments have been none of these things, truly believe none of these things. The radicalism of Mexico, the socialism of Mexico, are means to an end, not ends in themselves, means to power and position, for loot and for the pelf which goes into private pockets and not even into national coffers. Certainly if government could be depended on, the idea of paying fixed royalties to a national treasury is financially preferable to dickering with individuals, and obviously more businesslike. But since oil has been known, the great organizations which handle the product have been accustomed to dealing with private owners; it is a game they know, a business they understand. In Mexico there is the other factor which one can never lose sight of, and that is that government control means graft, favoritism, chicanery, the meddling of foreigners and big business in the very heart of the councils of government. And those things, until now avoided, must never come into being. In the final analysis, the proposed nationalization of petroleum has never been a conservation measure, the only excuse (to radical or to conservative) for its promulgation. The Mexican governments, from Carranza to Obregon, accepted “denouncements” upon petroleum lands already developed, granted vast concessions for drilling, on a royalty arrangement with the government, in so-called navigable streams and other “federal zones,” and in every way in their power carried on a _redistribution_ of petroleum titles. This single fact of the government acceptance of such denouncements and concessions indicates that the intention is not to conserve, but to get a new deal with somebody besides the Gringoes and the Indians who own the oil lands sitting around the table.