OIL INTERESTS FOR WAR WITH MEXICO
Oil Interests for War With Mexico March 10, 1916, Senator La Follette addressed the United States Senate on the '"Right of Congress to an Authoritative Voice in Declaring and Prescribing the...
...I especially regret that Senator Norris' amendment to the effect that it was the sentiment of the senate that there should be no armed intervention in Mexico, without the consent of Congress, failed to receive consideration...
...No senator voiced opposition on the floor of the senate...
...He has been no more scrupulous in his methods of acquiring "titles" in neighboring countries than in the United States...
...But the oil gang lias the ear of the president...
...Shall we in this crisis of the world'a history fail to assert our constitutional rights and by our negligence and defauh pervrtiEt the establishment in this country of that exclusive executive control over foreign affairs that the people of Europe are now repenting amid the agonies of war...
...An agreement to arbitrate would, of course," says this high authority on international law, "show that they (representation and pacific negotiations) had been exercised...
...diplomacy, Columbia University, in an article in the New York Times of recent date...
...There can be no doubt that the pressure of an aroused public opinion has done much to check the headlong course upon which President Coolidge and his Secretary of State were launched...
...Together with other senators of the Progressive group, I should have been glad to vote for a much more vigorous statement o£ policy than was expressed by the Robinson resolution...
...ON JANUARY twenty-fifth the Robinson resolution declaring it to be the duty of the United States government to protect the lives and property of nationals in foreign countries, but at the same time declaring it to be the sense of the senate that the differences between this country and Mexico over certain features of Mexico's constitution and land laws should be -submitted to arbitration, was passed unanimously...
...To this end...
...In contrast with the position of President Coolidge, President Calles has announced that he accepted the arbitration principle...
...Churches, universities, men's and women's organizations throughout the country have used every agency to express the indignation and the fear which exist everywhere because of threatened war with Mexico...
...The questionable titles of American oil companies in Mexico are more likely to be validated by the state department under Secretary Kellogg than in a court of justice...
...Seventy-nine senators voted for it...
...This commission as suggested by Dr...
...President Coolidge must be made to realize that the country is forty to one against war with Mexico and for settlement of the dispute by arbitration...
...His maintenance of that policy together with Secretary Kellogg's Bolshevik nightmares threaten to precipitate this country into war with Mexico...
...Outstanding conservative as well as Progressive newspapers throughout the land protested against the dangerous course pursued by Secretary Kellogg in most vehement and unmistakable language...
...Sp long as congress remains in session and the folks continue to thunder their disapproval of war with Mexico we are reasonably safe...
...For every one who voted "Yes," forty voted "No...
...Democratic control of foreign policies is a basic principle of all organized effort looking for the future establishment of permanent world peace...
...In an announcement to the newspapers he conveyed the impression that the senate did not know what it was doing when it advised arbitration of our differences with Mexico...
...Overwhelmed by the unexpected denunciation of his policy, Secretary Kellogg hastened to endorse the Robinson resolution...
...He took the amazing position that property rights were at stake and that there was "nothing to arbitrate...
...In closing his speech at that momentous time, heWid: "Mr...
...Our treaty with Mexico of 1848 still in force promises in the event of disagreement "to settle the differences so arising and to preserve the state of peace and friendship in which the two countries are now placing themselves, using for this end mutual representations and pacific negotiations...
...Hyde constitutes one of the agencies that might be employed to carry out our promise of "mutual representations and pacific negotiations...
...I believe it to, be vital to the safety and perpetuity of this Government that Congress should assert and maintain its right to a voice in declaring and prescribing the foreign policy of the United States...
...Manifestly oil is back of the President's stubborn stand that American property rights involved in Mexican land Jaws can not be arbitrated...
...President Coolidge would not yield...
...President, I have been moved by my convictions to submit these observations at this time...
...Hyde suggests further tfiat the secretary of state might ask the Mexican government to submit the entire controversy to a court of arbitration on terms which, in his judgment, adequately safeguard American interests...
...Such scientific expression of the judgment of the senate would go far to prevent usurpation of executive power that may all too easily result in war after the expiration of the life of the Sixty-ninth Congress, March 4. The resolution passed the senate because Secretary of State Kellogg's amazing policy in Mexico and Nicaragua was creating deep-seated alarm...
...Charles Cheney Hyde, professor of international law and...
...President, there never was a time in history when it was more fundamentally important that we preserve intact the essential principle of democracy on which our Government is founded—that the will of the people is the law of the land...
...President Coolidge's record on Teapot Dome shows unmistakable sympathy for Fall and Doheny...
...Charles Beecher Warren and John Barton Payne represented our government in these negotiations...
...throughout the world, leagues of earnest, determined men and women, animated by a common purpose, are formulating plans, based on the provisions by which, in this country, one or both of the legislative branches of Government have a share in the control of international affairs...
...Even in Texas where feeling against Mexico was presumed to be more intense, the majority of votes against war was overwhelming...
...Mr...
...True, Doheny is reported to have sold his Mexican interests to Standard Oil for a hundred and fifty million dollars, but with the agreement to guarantee the titles...
...The resolution carries great weight as the unanimous expression of the desire of the senate for arbitration, and in the final analysis expresses the almost equally unanimous determination of the people of the United States not to go to war with Mexico over the settlement of titles to oil lands...
...Over a short period of time twenty-five Scripps-Howard newspapers well distributed over the country carried a coupon containing this question: "On the basis of the reasons presented to date by President Coolidge and Secretary of State Kellogg, do you think the government is justified in assuming a position that may lead to war with Mexico...
...Some of the most recent treaties of European states arrange in such an event for the use of commissions of conciliation," he says...
...The Scripps poll was but one phase of the expression of public opinion...
...The President's position that there fa "nothing to arbitrate" is untenable and indefensible...
...Mexico with whom our diplomatic relations had long been severed was i-eeog-nized, friendly relations resumed, and a general claims commission created, supposedly for the very purpose of settling differences that might arise under the convention with Mexico of 1923...
...The phrase 'mutual representations and pacific negotiations' means much," says Dr...
...Arbitration of the dispute between Mexico and the administration ib supported by many high authorities on international law...
...They must Qontinue to voice their opposition to war...
...The returns were large, indicating remarkable public interest...
...The Coolidge pronounciamento that property rights in Mexico do not admit of arbitral settlement is not only in conflict with the good common sense of the people of the United States and the expressed will of the United States senate in the Robinson resolution, it is contrary to the opinion of the highest authorities on international law...
...Hyde cites the example of the grave Alaskan boundary dispute between the United States and Great Britain in 1903, which was referred to a joint commission composed of three representatives of each nation, whose decision was favorable to the United States because Lord Alverstone, president of the commission, was convinced of the soundness of the American case...
...At the advent of the Harding administration in 1921, Secretary of State Hughes let it be known quite frankly that recognition of the Obregon government was to hinge on the safeguarding of the property rights of United States citizens in Mexico...
...Dr...
...Furthermore, he suggests "that states do not give up hope of amicable adjustment even when arrangements for arbitration fail...
...After the Fourth of March, when congress adjourns sine die, there is imminent danger that the bellicose attitude of the administration will once more make the situation grave.' The millions of citizens in this country who want a peaceable settlement of the dispute between our oil exploiters and t!iv Mexican government must be on the alert...
...Nothing to arbitrate" is a logical sequence in that record...
...The President must be made to umfer-stand that if he continues his "nothing to arbitrate" policy another poll will be taken, not in the newspapers but at the ballot box...
...After two years of negotiations and conference an accord was reached...
...Oil Interests for War With Mexico March 10, 1916, Senator La Follette addressed the United States Senate on the '"Right of Congress to an Authoritative Voice in Declaring and Prescribing the Foreign Policy of the United States...
...Edward L. Doheny, who secured title to untold millions in oil land in the United States by corruption and fraud, has also been a large "investor" in Mexican lands...
Vol. 19 • January 1909 • No. 2
