Mexico last week had its first lesson in the cost of abandoning neutrality. The 4,000-ton tanker Potrero del Llano, the former Italian Lucifero, which Mexico had grabbed a year ago, was nosing along off the Florida coast, her colors illuminated, when she was torpedoed with a loss of 14 of her 35-man crew. The very next day Foreign Minister Ezequiel Padilla sent a note, demanding "complete satisfaction, and a guarantee of damage reparations," not only to Germany and Italy, but even to Japan.
Meanwhile in Mexico City, student demonstrators were smashing windows...
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