Bryan Missed Danger Sign.

New York Times 100 years ago today, March 13, 1913:
Red Card Not on Message to Ambassador When Signed, Perhaps.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON. March 12.— Why William J. Bryan, Secretary of State, signed an official commendatory telegram to Henry Lane Wilson. American Ambassador to Mexico, had not been made clear to-night, and it was said probably never would be told. From the State Department viewpoint, the incident was closed, and there was no intention of making a scapegoat of anybody.
    No evidence had been produced to connect Huntington Wilson, the hold-over Assistant Secretary of State, with the dispatch. Mr. Wilson did not write the highly eulogistic telegram which Col. Bryan signed.
    It was prepared in the course of departmental routine by the chief of one of the State Department divisions and went to Col. Bryan with other papers that required his signature. Exoneration of Mr. Wilson was clinched by the facts that the Secretary of State and Mrs. Bryan were guests of honor at a dinner in the Wilson residence to-night, and that Col. Bryan asked Mr. Wilson to act as Secretary of State during the Colonel's coming visit to Nebraska.

Bryan's Recall Too Late.
    As a Washington dispatch to The New York Times has told, Secretary Bryan signed the message approving Ambassador Wilson's manner of handling the Mexican situation. That much has been established. It seems to be equally well-established that the Secretary did not read the telegram before putting his name to it. When Col. Bryan learned that such a communication had been transmitted to Ambassador Wilson over his signature, he telegraphed to the Ambassador that he desired to recall his eulogistic utterances. But Mr. Wilson had construed the original telegram to be intended as much for other members of the American colony in Mexico City as for himself, and had given copies of it to newspapers there and to American newspaper correspondents, who had telegraphed it to their newspapers in the United States.
    Secretary Bryan began an investigation. He wished to find out how the Secretary of State could have signed such an important document, amounting to an approval of the policy pursued by Ambassador Wilson under the Taft Administralion, without having had his attention called to its vital bearing on the Mexican situation. What he found out was this:
    The telegram had been prepared by an official of the department, who had sent it to Secretary Bryan with other papers. But why had not its importance been called to Co. Bryan's attention? It had — so the explanation ran. When a paper containing statements of consequence is placed before the Secretary of State for his signature there is attached to it a little red card three-quarters of an inch wide and three inches long. That red card is intended as a danger signal. It means "Look out! Here is something that you must examine carefully." The official who wrote the telegram for Secretary Bryan's signature asserted that when the message left his office a little red card was attached to it.
    Col. Bryan had been warned about the little red cards. He had been told he must never overlook one. Any paper that had a red card fastened to it with a clip was to be examined by the Secretory with the greatest care before signing it. The question to be answered in the investigation, therefore, was whether a red card was attached to the telegram of approval addressed "Wilson, American Embassy, Mexico City."
    The clerk in the Secretary's office to whom is entrusted the duty of seeing that the Secretary's mail is presented to him for signature asserted that he had no recollection of seeing the little red card appended to the telegraph form when it lay on Col. Bryan's desk. Certainly Col. Bryan did not notice it. The question of the hour in the State Department — in fact, the question of a good many hours there— is: What became of the little red card? A search under Col. Bryan's desk and in every other part of his big office has failed to reveal it. It has not been found in the room where the telegram was prepared, and nobody has appeared to testify that he picked it up in the State Department corridor.
    Col. Bryan is not disposed to blame anybody for trying to "put one across" on him. Nor is there reason to believe that the Secret Service fund of the State Department, which is used for purposes seldom made public, is to be drawn on to obtain the services of expert detectives to clear up this mysterious occurrence which has clouded the first few bright hours of the Commoner's administration of the foreign relations of the United States.

No Reflection on Wilson.
    According to official records of the State Department Ambassador Wilson stands second to none in the department's estimation.
    A story was printed to-day that Vice President Marshall had taken up the cudgels in Ambassador Wilson's behalf, and was trying to have him retained as the diplomatic representative of the United States in Mexico in the face of a desire on the part of President Wilson and Secretary Bryan to get rid of the Ambassador as quickly and emphatically as possible. When the Vice President recovered from his vexation over that yarn he punctured it as follows:
    "I have never spoken to or addressed the President, the Secretary of State, or any other member of the Administration in reference to Henry Lane Wilson, and there is no earthly basis for the statement published beyond the bare suspicion that because Ambassador Wilson and I were graduated from Wabash College, and his brother, John L.. Wilson, was a classmate of mine, I would attempt to interfere in his behalf. Personally, the relations between Ambassador Wilson and myself are cordial, but the handling of the Mexican situation is the business of the Administration, and not my private and social business."