Part 19
In the second trial, Mexico advanced a wholly different theory from that developed in the diplomatic discussions between the first and second trials. Mexico now maintained that the boundary treaties of 1848 and 1853 had laid down a "fixed line" between the two countries in the centers of the channel of the river as surveyed at that time by Commissioners Emory and Salazar, which boundary line remained immutable irrespective of any subsequent change in the course of the river, whether erosive or avulsive, until this was changed for the future by the treaty of 1884. Mexico contended this latter treaty was not retroactive but applied only to river changes taking place after 1884.
Driven to concede that in this view the treaty of 1884 had really no meaning, Mexico insisted the two governments were under a misapprehension when this treaty was negotiated, that it was inoperative and that the general rules of international law governing river boundaries had no application because the Rio Grande was in a technically legal sense not a river at all, but merely an intermittent torrential stream.
The United States denied that the boundary treaties of 1848 and 1853 established a fixed line, and contended the treaty of 1884 was retroactive in any event, and applied to the Chamizal dispute, and that this treaty was merely declaratory of the general rule of international law. Furthermore, the United States claimed the Chamizal tract by prescription.
The case was argued during sessions of the Commission extending over a month. The presiding Commissioner, Mr. Lafleur, rendered an opinion holding squarely against the Mexican contentions with respect to a fixed line and the non-retroactivity and non-applicability of the treaty of 1884. His discussion of these subjects is detailed and masterly. After holding against the American claim based on prescription, he appeared to assume that the treaty of 1884 contemplated some _tertium quid_ aside from erosion and avulsion, which might perhaps be called "violent" erosion and which had the same effect as an avulsive change, namely, to leave the boundary line in the abandoned bed of the river. Applying this latter doctrine he found the erosion at the Chamizal tract from 1852 to 1864 had been gradual within the meaning of the treaty of 1884, and therefore the boundary during this period had followed the river, but that the floods of 1863 brought about a violent erosion, whereby the boundary line was left in the middle of the bed of the river "as it existed before the flood of 1863." He therefore awarded that portion of the tract between the channel of 1852 and the channel of 1864 before the flood, to the United States, and the remainder to Mexico.
The Mexican Commissioner filed a separate opinion dissenting from that part of Mr. Lafleur's opinion relating to the fixed line and the retroactivity and applicability of the treaty of 1884. Overruled on these points, Mr. Puga felt himself justified in joining with the Presiding Commissioner in construing the treaty of 1884 and therefore united in the award dividing the Chamizal tract between the two countries along the line of the river bed as it existed before the flood of 1864.
I filed an opinion dissenting from that portion of the Presiding Commissioner's opinion construing the treaty of 1884. I held the Commission was not empowered by the two governments to divide the Chamizal tract but was called upon to render a clean-cut decision in favor of one or the other government. I recorded my conviction that it would be "as impossible to locate the channel of the Rio Grande in the Chamizal tract in 1864 as to re-locate the Garden of Eden or the lost continent of Atlantis." And finally I pointed out, as I had in 1896, the impossible situation which would arise if any attempt were made to apply the principles of the majority opinion in other cases, concluding as follows:
"The American Commissioner does not believe that it is given to human understanding to measure for any practical use when erosion ceases to be slow and gradual and becomes sudden and violent, but if this difficulty could be surmounted, the practical application of the interpretation could not be viewed in any other light than as calamitous to both nations. Because, as is manifest from the record in this case, all the land on both sides of the river from the Bosque de Cordoba, which adjoins the Chamizal tract, to the Gulf of Mexico (excepting the canyon region), has been traversed by the river since 1852 in its unending lateral movement, and the mass, if not all of that land, is the product of similar erosion to that which occurred at El Chamizal, and by the new interpretation which is now placed upon the Convention of 1884 by the majority of this Commission, not only is the entire boundary thrown into well-nigh inextricable confusion, but the very treaty itself is subjected to an interpretation that makes its application impossible in practice in all cases where an erosive movement is in question.
"The Convention of 1910 sets forth that the United States and Mexico, 'desiring to terminate * * * the differences which have arisen between the two countries,' have determined to refer these differences to this Commission enlarged for this purpose. The present decision terminates nothing; settles nothing. It is simply an invitation for international litigation. It breathes the spirit of unconscious but nevertheless unauthorized compromise rather than of judicial determination."
Of course, I dissented from the award. When the award and the opinions of the three Commissioners were presented at the final session of the Commission, the United States agent made a formal protest on substantially the same grounds I had taken. My dissenting opinion and the protest of the American agent were sustained by the Department of State and the United States has declined to admit the validity of the award. The whole matter has therefore become the subject of diplomatic negotiations, which it is believed are progressing satisfactorily.
It is as much to the interest of Mexico as of the United States to reach an arrangement whereby the Chamizal tract divided from Mexico by the channel of the Rio Grande as it now runs, shall be definitively admitted to be American territory, because it forms an integral part of El Paso, upon which thousands of citizens have their homes.
During my service as Commissioner, Mexico was represented by four Commissioners: Mr. Canalizo, whose death has already been noted; Mr. Osorno, who participated in the first trial of the Chamizal case, and who subsequently resigned; Mr. Jacobo Blanco, who died after serving seven years, and Mr. Fernando Beltran y Puga, who sat at the second trial of the Chamizal case and remained with the Commission until our activity was suspended and he removed from office by the Madero government, leaving me the sole survivor of the four Mexican Commissioners.
These gentlemen were all equal in legal and judicial attainments to similar officials of our own government. They sought always to attain righteous decisions, and I think succeeded in the many cases that came before us.
Of my associates on the American section of the Commission, Messrs. J. A. Happer and Wilbur Keblinger, Secretaries, and P. D. Cunningham and W. W. Follett, Consulting Engineers, deserve special mention. Mr. Cunningham unfortunately lost his life in the service of the Commission through the overturning of his boat in the rapids of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass in July, 1901. Messrs. Happer, Keblinger and Follett rendered invaluable service during many years, Mr. Follett in spite of a painful illness which would have incapacitated most men for work. Mr. Happer resigned to go into business in El Paso, where he has become a leading citizen. Mr. Follett died shortly after retiring from the Commission. Mr. Keblinger is serving with distinction as United States Consul at Malta.
Our proceedings were published in both languages, and the evidence, maps, plans and monuments were explained not only in scientific but in popular language, so that officials, surveyors, lawyers and judges of each country could readily understand the location of the boundary. (See Volumes 1 and 2, Proceedings Boundary Commission, Treaties of 1884 and 1889, and Equitable Distribution of the Waters of the Rio Grande, Roma to the Gulf, reports and maps, and many other reports on the same subject.)
I have presented copies of all my printed reports and maps and all proceedings published by both governments with respect to the Chamizal Arbitration, to the El Paso Carnegie Library, together with many reports and maps of the Barlow Commission and the Emory Survey, with the understanding that they will be kept as reference books subject to the examination of all interested.
During the sixteen years of our active service (the revolution in Mexico in 1911 having put an end to our activities), the Commission tried over one hundred cases of all kinds, disagreeing only in the Chamizal case, and preserved the peace and quiet of the entire Rio Grande border for these long years to the satisfaction of both governments and the people of the two nations.
Late Saturday afternoon, January 31, 1914, without any previous warning, I received by messenger a letter from Mr. Bryan, the Secretary of State, peremptorily dismissing Mr. Wilbur Keblinger, the Secretary of the American Section of the Commission, and appointing as his successor John Wesley Gaines, a discarded member of Congress, the bare mention of whose name to his former colleagues proved "a source of innocent merriment."
Mr. Gaines presented his appointment as secretary to me on Monday morning, stating he had been appointed associate Mexican boundary commissioner with me, and that he had been directed by Mr. Bryan to act as chairman.
He suggested I turn my books over to him, after the manner of a policeman who seizes a suspected culprit in the hope of finding stolen goods in his possession.
I informed Mr. Gaines that, while I recognized the legality of his appointment as secretary, I had theretofore been allowed to choose the American secretary of the Commission. As I had not asked for him, I told him he could go home and I would send for him when I wanted him in that capacity. I would not acknowledge him as an associate commissioner, as I was the only commissioner authorized by treaty, and told him he could inform the Secretary of State I would have nothing to do with him in that connection or his attempted authority over me as chairman.
Mr. Keblinger and I had already been summoned to appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House at ten a.m. that day. I telephoned the Secretary of State for permission to take Mr. Keblinger with me as the official secretary. Mr. Bryan sent for me (it was the first time I ever saw him) and stated that there was no objection to my taking Mr. Keblinger as an individual, but I could not take him in an official capacity. I protested he had always appeared with me and greatly assisted me in my explanations to the committee; he was an honorable man and I felt the Secretary could not be aware of the great injustice he had done him. I told Mr. Bryan that Keblinger was too proud to appear voluntarily while under such unjust humiliation.
Finally the Secretary announced he might go with me temporarily in an official capacity. He turned upon me, and, "by questions dark and riddles high," charged me with prostituting my high public trust for purposes of private gain.
I told him I had served my government for fifty years as an army officer and in various capacities and in different departments of the government, and under eight of his successive predecessors in office--Secretaries Gresham, Olney, Sherman, Day, Hay, Bacon and Knox--without ever receiving from any one such language, and that I would not submit without resenting it. I invited him to put his best sleuths on my trail. While I was anxious to separate myself from official connection with him, I had been taught in the army it was not honorable to resign under charges. I told him I would not resign until he was able to state that his investigation found nothing wrong in my twenty years' administration under the State Department. I did not believe he could induce the President to dismiss me, and I told him I believed he had been deceived by such men as Dr. Boyd, who, during the administration of nearly all of his eight immediate predecessors had persistently made charges against me verbally, in writing and in published pamphlets. None of the Secretaries under whom I had served had thought it worth while even to notify me officially of these charges. I only learned about them in detail during the latter part of Secretary Knox's administration, when I found Dr. Boyd had several times been investigated by competent officers of the Department. Chief Wilkie, of the Secret Service, had reported him a dangerous man, when he had threatened in writing to horsewhip Secretary Hay. Thereafter he was denied the privilege of personal conferences with the Department.
Notwithstanding these explanations, Mr. Bryan appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee, with Mr. Gaines, on the 5th. After a two days' hearing, in which I was questioned and cross-questioned regarding all my transactions for twenty years as Commissioner, my hearing closed with the following, which is quoted from the official report of the hearing:
_"Gen. Mills: Mr. Chairman, I crave about three minutes, in which I hope to clarify this whole subject._
_"I have met you here for the last twenty years. I have met also the committee in the Senate. And I have always been treated with such courteous consideration by the Department of State that I was encouraged to believe that my work was satisfactory, and it was desired that I should continue, especially so as after about sixteen years' service I was selected without solicitation by the Department as a member of a high commission to arbitrate the Chamizal case, and also that my dissenting opinion from a majority of the judges in that case was approved by the Department and by the President in his message, and I believe it is still maintained by the Department that kept me here. Had I considered my own personal convenience I would have resigned long ago. For obvious reasons I intend now to separate myself, if I can do so with honor, from this commission, and shall not have the personal pleasure of meeting you again. I thank you very kindly personally, and as I can not anticipate or hope to meet you again officially, I bid you adieu._
"_The Chairman: Gen. Mills, I want to say for the committee that nothing has been done or said by the committee to tend to reflect upon either the character of your work or your intentions in disbursing the funds in your hands._
"_Gen. Mills: I appreciate that, sir._
"_The Chairman: We all realize that you have done a valuable work down there, and you have done it splendidly, but certain matters developed here that we were not aware of, and that you had been led into by the State Department, and we thought it our duty to investigate them and right them, and no reflection was intended upon you or Mr. Keblinger._
"_Gen. Mills: Mr. Chairman, I want to say to one and all of you that I have been treated with the utmost fairness in all of my intercourse. My troubles are not here, but in another direction._" (See printed report of the committee, containing sixty-five pages.)
Notwithstanding this absolute acquittal by an American jury--there were twelve members of the committee present, all intensely interested--Dr. Boyd's old charges, rehabilitated by Mr. Bryan's apparent support, led Senator Thomas, of Colorado, to deliver a two days' speech on the floor of the Senate. (See Congressional Record of March 23 and 24, pages 5984 to 6006, inclusive.) He mentioned my name fifty-two times, including such references as "this man Mills," charging me with the most disgraceful conduct with which an American officer can be charged. Called to my attention several days after its delivery, I brought it to Senator Root's notice, asking him to confer with Senator Thomas and see if an amicable adjustment could not be had by Senator Root's explaining I had served under him while he was Secretary of State, and could not be guilty of such misconduct.
Senator Thomas stated he had his information from reliable authority, whereupon Senator Root had my rejoinder published in the Congressional Record. (See pages 13424 to 13426, inclusive, of the Record of July 18, 1914.)
Mr. Thomas replied on the floor of the Senate (see Record, July 20, pages 13479 to 13480, inclusive), admitting he obtained much of his information from Dr. Boyd. He added, "My information comes, however, from the State Department and, until I am satisfied of its incorrectness, I shall insist that my statements are in accord with the facts."
I asked the State Department what their records showed upon the point in question. The matter was handled in the Department by the Honorable John E. Osborne, Assistant Secretary of State. He could have informed himself by a telephone conversation with an accounting officer of the Department. But he referred my letter to Mr. Gaines, who was absent. Followed delay, evasion, equivocation and confusion of the issue, the giving of unsought information about matters not in dispute, and withholding information needed for my defense, which it was the duty of the Department to give.
When finally cornered, after a four months' correspondence, Mr. Osborne wrote me the Department did not know the source of Senator Thomas' information. Mr. Osborne may have deceived himself into thinking that there was technical justification for his statements, but no one who reads the correspondence can have any more doubt as to the real situation than Senator Thomas, or as to the complicity of State Department officials in Senator Thomas' attack upon me.
When I sent the correspondence to the Senator he wrote me as honorable a letter of apology as could be expected, doing his best to let the State Department down easy, presented all the correspondence upon the floor of the Senate and asked for its publication, which will be found on pages 272 to 275, inclusive, of the Record of December 16, 1914.
I cheerfully acquit the Senator of everything except bad judgment. He felt justified by the information he received from officers of the Department to which he, perhaps not unnaturally, gave a credence proportionate to their official status rather than to their actual knowledge.
Mr. Bryan, however, has never offered any explanation. I am reconciled to the situation, believing he could write me nothing I would value in that connection.
The President accepted my resignation on June 24th, to take effect July 1st, on the conditions I stated, that the Department had found no evidence of neglect or wrong-doing on my part.
The President soon restored Mr. Keblinger to official favor. He suspended the regulations governing the Consular Service by executive order, in order to appoint this man, whom Secretary Bryan had summarily dismissed for alleged cause, as United States Consul at Malta, where he is serving with distinction, and where he was recently promoted. His defamers, Bryan, Osborne and Gaines, have returned, voluntarily or otherwise, to private life, while the Department of State is once more in the hands of gentlemen qualified by their training and ability to guide the foreign affairs of a great nation.
WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE
From what has gone before readers will understand that Nannie and I were always fervent advocates of woman's suffrage throughout our lives, and, as far as we could with respect to the popular prejudices of the day, tried to advance it.
Because of my diplomatic service under Secretary of State Gresham, the president of Indiana University, Dr. William Lowe Bryan, honored me with an invitation to the commencement of 1911, and showed me marked courtesy. My friend, Norman Walker, of El Paso, president of the class of 1906, accompanied me from El Paso and introduced me to members of the various classes.
The Indiana University is coeducational; of the 975 students, 231 were young women. Diplomas were given the graduates in the open air in a large sugar tree orchard in the presence of five thousand persons. When the president called the first name, a young lady in graduating garb presented herself. When several more young ladies followed I asked the president if he was calling women first out of courtesy to the sex. "Oh, no," he said, "they are honor graduates." Of the five highest graduates three were women. Asked how this was accounted for, the president said, "Because they are the best students. No one should suspect any partiality is shown them by their instructors. They deserve everything given them." This reinforced me in my lifelong opinion that women, if given an equal chance, were the equal of men in all the essentials of life's successes. I could but think how my mother would have felt if she could have survived to witness that scene, and when I returned home and told Nannie, it encouraged her to take a more prominent part in the cause of woman's rights generally, and especially woman's suffrage.
In February, 1913, a meeting of suffragists was held in Washington. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt was our guest, and a very interesting, well informed and courageous advocate of her cause we found her, as well as a most charming woman.
We attended several of their meetings in Washington and aided them materially. The association decided to hold a parade March 3, 1913. Nannie and I were members of the advisory committee, and about ten days before the date set Miss Paul, who had charge of that parade, told me that she was having difficulty in getting permission to march on the avenue. As I was personally acquainted with Mr. Rudolph, General Johnston and Colonel Judson, the District Commissioners, I introduced her to them. They treated her with the greatest courtesy; the chairman, Mr. Rudolph, both encouraged her and expressed his sympathy with her attempt to get permission and secure protection during the march, as did Colonel Judson. General Johnston was a little lukewarm; reasonably so, however, because he was not in favor of woman's suffrage. But they did not grant the permission.
General Johnston objected to the selection of the day before the Presidential inauguration, but others thought if permission was to be granted at all, it was better to have the two parades as near together as possible.
I advised Miss Paul to ask the Secretary of War for military protection from Fort Myer. Judson agreed, and, in his presence, Miss Paul made the application through the District Commissioners to the Secretary. Later she showed me a letter from the Secretary of War, declining to furnish the escort. Although the committee feared the parade would not be protected, most people believed the police would not so disgrace themselves as to fail to protect them from insult and humiliation, or to allow their parade to be broken up, as it practically was. Failing to get the permit from the Commissioners, Miss Paul applied to Congress, and the day before the parade Congress authorized it and made an appropriation for extra policemen. The parade was organized as systematically, as brilliantly and as efficiently as any parade of men ever held.
I believe that on that 3d day of March, 1913, woman's suffrage won its fight. Some of its members have acted foolishly since, as members of reform movements often do, but the day is won, and nothing but absolute reversion to barbarism can prevent women, as long as this country remains a republic, from having some voice in its government.