Cahn in Nicaragua
'T^HE news states that one may now climb the moun••• tains round about Managua without clinging for dear life to a password. In this respect Colonel Stimson's report is encouraging, even though...
...How that will turn out is one question...
...Not only has the actual fighting been so fierce that in many battles the losses of the combatants, in proportion to their number, have been as high as the losses in the great war," declares the Colonel, "but the conduct of the warfare has been brutal beyond expression...
...Nevertheless it is a little disheartening to find him noticeably chilly to the prominent politicos in the field...
...Even the wisdom of upholding Diaz in office until 1928, expedient though that was in view of the salutary effect an established government can exert upon a preelection public, is challenged by the apparent lack of good things to say in favor of Diaz...
...Plainly, however, Mr...
...Impartial spectators of numerous Mexican revolutions have had their say...
...Central America," says one political observer, "must sometime recognize its common responsibilities, and thus discover a greater purpose than individual ambition...
...Toward the correction of this characteristic no progress has been made through our recent expedition...
...Why people should refuse to believe that warfare in Indian America—which extends from the Rio Grande to the Panama Canal—is usually conducted without regard for the rules of civilized fighting, remains a phenomenon we cannot explain...
...Incidentally it makes very little difference whether the soldiers are labeled "liberal" or "conservative...
...That is why one is glad to see peace has been agreed upon until the United States sees Nicaraguan voters safely through a fair election...
...He has been on the scene, and he talks like a prosaic military investigator...
...To that sentence we subscribe...
...One may sincerely hope that neither Diaz nor Sacasa will come before the people as candidates, that, at all events, neither will be elected...
...They handle muskets and bayonets in one monotonous, quite unattractive way...
...The fatal characteristic of interventionary expeditions like the one just brought to a close is that they tend to make the peoples concerned dependent upon the United States rather than upon themselves and upon each other...
...The only reliable safeguard against such activity—unpopular in the United States and intrinsically useless elsewhere—would be the development of a governing public opinion able to enforce democratic order...
...Of what good are governments of change, if they remain utterly without a static purpose...
...Hillis...
...But a great deal of fine work has been done, at any rate...
...When he goes on to list barbarities such as giving no quarter to prisoners and murdering non-combatants, he is in our opinion telling what is likely to be the truth...
...Colonel Stimson returns from a difficult mission with a report creditable to himself and reassui-ing to his fellow-citizens...
...Of course (as the New York World reminds us) stories of a similar character have been told before through a brilliant exercise of the imagination, as in the notorious case of Dr...
...In so far as he and his associates are concerned, the United States has certainly not been imperialistic in Central America...
...Nevertheless one must hope that tasks like his, requiring grim aid from the army and the navy, will not need doing every few years...
...In this respect Colonel Stimson's report is encouraging, even though its summary of what has happened is ghastly enough...
...Stimson is not the same kind of person as Dr...
...What wIU happen afterward is another...
...Talk about other expedients is futile...
...Newell Dwight Hillis versus Germany...
...The history of Central American military afi^airs is not available in complete form, but it is far enough along to give us a fairly reliable impression of how these people fight...
...It was perhaps natural that Colonel Simpson should feel most thoroughly at home with General Moncada, a military man of estimable qualities...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 5
