Sailors Guard Minister.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 29, 1912:
Salvatorean Envoy to Nicaragua Is Rescued with His Daughter.
    MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Tuesday, Aug. 27, (Delayed in Transmission.)— One hundred American marines from Managua, under command of Major Smedley D. Butler, and fifty sailors, under Capt Warren J. Terhune of the gunboat Annapolis, returned here from Leon to-day.
    The American detachment brought with it the Salvadorean Minister to Nicaragua and his daughter, who had been marooned at Leon. The Minister describes the conditions at Leon during the week following the massacre by Liberals of the Government soldiers comprising the garrison as frightful.
    Telegraphic communication with the northern departments still remain uncertain, and the only news reaching here is by couriers. Many rumors are afloat of insurgent victories, but they cannot be confirmed.
    The Government dispatched a force of troops to attack Maraya, the headquarters of the insurgents to the south of the capital, on Saturday.

GEN. MENA CAUSE OF TROUBLE.
Dismissal by President Diaz Starts Revolution in Nicaragua.
    The present Nicaraguan revolt was directly brought about by the dismissal of the Minister of War, Gen. Luis Mena, by President Adolfo Diaz. This action resulted in the shelling of the capital by Mena and the landing of American marines to protect the property and lives of foreigners,
    The President is the nominal ruler of the republic, but Gen. Mena has been in control of the troops. His son and other relatives have commanded the garrison at Granada and the semi-military police force of the capital, Managua, and Gen. Mena himself has lived a stone's throw from the undefended palace of the President in the semi-fortress, where Zelaya, surrounded by bayonets and with machine guns at the angles of the high walls, sent forth his barbarous decrees of confiscation, torture, and death. It required a high degree of courage for President Diaz to send a summons to such a Minister to lay down his power. A former President tried it with Mena and had to leave the country.
    For a long time Mena and President Diaz were boon companions. In the restricted social life of the capital they were often seen in the evening driving out together in quest of the same diversions, and sometimes dropping informally into clubs. Diaz is in almost every particular the opposite of Mena, who has a large infusion of negro blood. He stands more than six feet high, is the idol of his soldiers, and possesses a breadth of view and a grace of manner rare in one whose educational advantages have been so limited.
    Diaz is of white blood, moderate stature, with the polish acquired by a long career on the East Coast. He is the sort of man who lets others do most of the talking while he does the thinking. Knowing English well, he prefers to conduct an interview through an interpreter, his critics say, because it gives him time to consider his reply while the interpreter is translating. He took part in the war of liberation, but it was chiefly as financier and Commissioner General rather than as a fighter. He has made no attempt to tear the laurels of military success from the brow of Mena or Emiliano Chamorro, the two heroes of the war.
    Diaz sits at his desk, thinking, planning, studying the most practicable solutions of his many hard problems. If he decided that he must dismiss Mena from the Ministry of War it was no hasty and immature decision, it is believed, but was turned over in his mind for many months and adopted finally because it was the only escape he saw from a situation growing daily more difficult.
    The third chief actor in the drama, Gen. Emiliano Chamorro, now in command of the Government forces, differs essentially from the others. Descended on his father's side from one of the oldest and most aristocratic families of the country, priding itself on the purity of its Spanish blood, he derives from other sources a touch of the Indian — that vigorous strain from which sometimes springs a great creative mind, like President Porfirio Diaz, the former President of Mexico. Chamorro's field of creation, however, is the battlefield. He does not lay claim to be a profound student of economics or statesmanship.
    It is between these three men, Emiliano Chamorro, the lion-hearted; Gen. Siena, in command of the revolutionary army and the strong places, and Adolfo Diaz, now in possession of executive authority — that the future of Nicaragua has lain. In the meantime it has been the function of the United States to guard against the return of the old conditions of bloodshed, revolution, and anarchy. The United States had already intervened soon after Zelaya fell. When trouble first threatened between the successful leaders of the revolution, the late Thomas C. Dawson, the special representative of the State Department, persuaded the five principal chieftains to sign an agreement by which they were to be bound by the choice of the five as to the conservative candidate for President as soon as a constitution had been formed and it became possible to hold free elections. The five men concerned in this agreement were President Estrada, Gen. Chamorro, Gen. Mona, Don Fernanda Solorzana, and Don Adolfo Diaz.
    In the meantime the new National Assembly of April, 1911, had begun the formation of a Constitution. Into that Constitution was put an article which is the crux of the present difficulties m Nicaragua. This provision is that the decrees of the Constituent Assembly on the appointment of the President and Vice President and of the Magistrates of the courts shall remain in force for the periods respectively set forth. Then the Assembly a few days before the approval of the loan in October, 1913, elected Gen. Mena as President of the republic for the term beginning in 1913 without providing for any popular ratification of this action.
    This promised trouble tor the United States, but no definite action was taken until the beginning of the present year, when a request was submitted by the American Chargé d'Affairs that the constitution should not be promulgated until the arrival of the new American Minister. Violent resentment was shown against this request. Secretary Knox visited Nicaragua in March of this year, but he took no decisive action which has been revealed to the public. In the meantime an attempt has been made to bring about a compromise between Chamorro and Mena so that each might hold the Presidency for a part of the term.
    American interests in Nicaragua are almost wholly represented by J. & W. Seligman & Co. and Brown Brothers & Co. of New York, who several years ago received a charter to establish in that country a national bank in which the home Government was to be a large stockholder. These bankers also offered to loan Nicaragua $15,000,000 subject to the approval of the Nicaraguan Congress and that of the United States. The latter legislative body withheld its approval, whereupon the bankers made a temporary loan of $1,500,000 to meet Nicaragua's more pressing needs. For this loan the bankers received as part collateral the right to collect customs at all Nicaraguan ports, naming their own representatives.
    Shortly after the present revolution broke out it was discovered that some $20,000,000 of Nicaraguan paper money, representing by reason of its debased standard, perhaps $1,000,000 of United States currency, had been issued, presumably by the revolutionists, without the knowledge or consent of the Government.
    There are many claims of various characters pending against Nicaragua, the largest being that of an English banking-syndicate for £3,000,000. Other claims include damages arising from mining, industrial and railroad concessions, most of which are understood to have been revoked by the General now commanding the revolutionary forces.
    The New York bankers interested in Nicaragua declined yesterday to comment on the latest turn of affairs in that country beyond asserting their belief that the situation was grave.