The President's Warning.

New York Times 100 years ago today, March 13, 1913:
    President Wilson addresses words of wisest counsel to the public men, the political chiefs, and the people of the republics of Latin America. The principles he commends to their attention and adoption are held by all the people of the United States to be foundation truths. They are the maxims, the commonplaces of our political theory, averments that would never be called in question here save by the fanatical and the lawless. We respect and uphold "the orderly processes of just government based upon law and not upon arbitrary or irregular force." We know that "there can be no freedom without order based upon law and upon the public conscience and approval"; we know that "disorder, personal intrigue, and defiance of constitutional rights weaken and discredit government and injure none so much as the people who are unfortunate enough to have their common life and their common affairs so tainted and disturbed." Were the people of the republics to the south of us trained as we have been for more than a century in the daily observance of these principles, if they had that instinctive respect for law and constituted authority that prevails among our people, if they had our National habit of peace and good order, they would never for a moment dissent from any of President Wilson's admonitions, and, in fact, the words he addressed to them would not have been necessary.
    The trouble is that these peoples are fundamentally unlike the people of this country or the people of England, of Germany, or of France. The counsel President Wilson gives is what they need, but what they do not heed. We doubt whether many of them will at all understand what the President says when he speaks of the "public conscience." We know what it is, we know what public opinion is, and we understand its power. A very great part of the population of these republics, in some cases a majority part, is hopelessly ignorant, it has no opinions upon public questions, no conception of conscience as applied to political action. Another part of these populations holds itself aloof from public affairs in scorn and contempt of the people, the politicians, and the agitators. There are in all these republics men of high intelligence, often of pure Spanish blood, free from that racial admixture which has been so prolific of evil in Latin America, who distrust and detest the class from which come the men who, chiefly, are concerned with the direction of public affairs, and to which the agitators, conspirators, and revolutionists almost invariably belong. Thus it happens that the political fortunes of these republics are in the hands of a class constituting perhaps not more than 10 per cent, of the population — the estimate is that of native writers of intelligence.
    Nothing could so promote the prosperity of these republics and the happiness of their people as the acceptance in good faith of such counsel as President Wilson gives. It is to be feared that few of them will pay any attention whatever to his words, and many, if not most of' them, will be incapable of understanding his meaning, their point of view, the operation of their minds, their attitude toward national affairs, their patriotism, their sense of duty, their conception of individual right regardless of law, differ radically from our own. In such conditions the outlook is naturally dark. It is not altogether hopeless. In part through industrial development and the expansion of business, in part, and we must recognize the fact, through restraining influences we may legitimately exert, the gradual growth of these nations to the higher state pointed out by President Wilson may be expected.
    It is because this growth must be gradual, very gradual, it is because of some present and ominous signs of disturbance that President Wilson's public statement takes the form not merely of an exhortation, but of a warning. "We shall prefer those who act in the interests of peace and honor, who protect private rights and respect the restraints of constitutional provision," says the President; we seek no advantage in Central and South America save that flowing from personal and trade relationships, but for this and for that friendship which should prevail between nations, mutual respect is "the indispensable foundation," and for conspirators, intriguers, and habitual revolutionists we can have no respect. More than that, should unprincipled adventurers from two or three or more of these republics put their heads together and make a common cause of their revolutionary conspiracies, threatening the peace and prosperity of these peoples whose friendship we desire, it would become necessary for us to consider what measures beyond the giving of counsel it would be our duty to take. The President says that from the principles he sets forth "may be read so much of the future policy of this Government as it is necessary now to forecast." We do not think his meaning will be misunderstood.