BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

6 PREFACE.
the laws. But the civil authorities are cowed, the people
are cowed, and the victims, Mexican or American, seem
to have no redress. By fiat of the exccutiz'c law and
civil authority have been subverted and, as far as the
Mexican situation is concerned, the United States has
been turned into a military dictatorship as sinister and
irresponsible as that of Diaz himself.
And why has this thing been done? To maintain a
chattel slavery more cruel than ever existed in our
Southern states. To uphold a political tyranny a hundred
times more unjust than the one against which our men
of Seventy-Six revolted. If the policy of the Taft administration
be permitted to continue these purposes will
be attained. Already the revolution has received such a
set-back that, though it win in the end, many good and
brave men must die who otherwise might have lived.
The purpose of this book was to inform the American
people as to the facts about Mexico in order that they
might be prepared to prevent American intervention
against a revolution the justice of which there can be no
question..
So far "Barbarous Mexico" has failed in this purpose.
Will it fail in the end? Are the American people as enslaved
in spirit as the Mexicans are in body? In Mexico
the only protest possible is a protest of arms. In the
United States there is still a degree of freedom of press
and speech. Though by tricks and deceits innumerable
the rulers of America succeed in evading the will of the
majority, the majority yet may protest, and if the protest
be long enough and loud enough, it is still capable of
making those rulers tremble. Protest against the Crime
of Intervention. And should it become necessary, in
order to make the rulers heed, to raise that protest to a
threatof revolution here, so be it; the cause will be
worth while.
JOHN KENNETH TURNER.
Los Angeles, Calif., April 8, 1911.