The cycle of destructions insists upon showing itself as the round from the materialism of Diaz on to the destructions of an era of profaned utopian idealism and now to an era of materialism again. But this time it is an era of materialism which differs from the Diaz time, and is more potent, at the moment, for good and for ill. For to-day, in the high places of government, controlling through their greed the very minions of government, is an animating power which is not the idealism nor the self-sacrifice of devoted rulers, but the worship of wealth alone. That power is mighty for destruction, but at the very moment that it functions thus, another form of wealth, “capitalism” if you will, is working slowly for the saving of such of Mexico as is being saved. For “capitalism,” in foreign guise, in such enterprises as even the mad radicals of the day point to as the signs of their “progress”--here capitalism is giving Mexico her only surcease from the destructions of her rulers. Wealth is the one power which men recognize in Mexico. It is to-day above government, for it dominates government and destroys government by the very temptation which it holds out to successful revolution. It rules to-day in Yucatan, even as it ruins the individuals of Yucatan. Yet, too, it rules in the oil fields, for it makes the vast production of oil possible, because it alone has the power and the foresight to develop oil’s potentialities. And there, in the oil fields, it is being turned, ever so slightly, to the beginnings of its ultimate destiny, which must be, I believe, the saving of Mexico. Strange tales I have told of the oil fields, and yet it is a far stranger tale which I have now to tell. For I would point out the vast opportunity which awaits that wealth of oil for the saving of Mexico. In the light of that possibility, the mighty stream of oil which in a thousand ships pours from Mexico into the industries of the globe, is a helpless Niagara, childishly unconscious of its own power. The constitutions and laws and decrees of the Mexican revolutionaries still hold the wealth of oil in their grip. There has been, in the summer months of 1921, a mild effort to break that grip, to stay the hand of strangulation which is at the throat of the oil industry, but this is still self-defense. There is a yet more persistent force than mere taxation or even than mere confiscation at work in the oil fields of Mexico. This force savors of elements mightier than mere industry; it seems to be taking the form of a sinister elaboration of the vital principles of bolshevism--the bolshevism which rules in Russia and is a battle cry in Mexico. Among these principles of bolshevism, enunciated by Lenin himself a year ago, was the setting of the capitalistic powers at each other’s throats, such powers as Japan and America, that they might destroy one another.