"New and Square Deal"
(See front cover)
As Mexico prepared last week to inaugurate a new President her Government, with a momentous change of heart, was thanking its stars for President Roosevelt and Ambassador Josephus Daniels.
"Roosevelt owes his election largely to Catholics!" was the alarm sounded last year by Mexico City's independent daily El Universal Gráfico. Its editor thought he smelt a Papist in charge of Roosevelt patronage. Belief that the President, impelled by the Church, would crack down on Mexico's counter-clerical government was so strong that the official daily National took time to mourn for "Calvin Coolidge, one of the highest representatives of the human race. . . . Under [his] administration Mexico became better understood. . . . He had the good judgment to send us Mr. Morrow."
When President Roosevelt had the good judgment to send them Mr. Daniels, Mexicans could see at first only that they were expected to receive the Yanqui* who was Secretary of the Navy when it bombarded Veracruz in 1914. Ambassador Daniels was called a "living insult" to Mexico—last year. Today the politicos of Mexico City can scarcely believe they ever were so dumb.
In Ambassador Daniels they have found the weightiest approver of Mexico's radical and anticlerical Six-Year Plan. He has called it roundly "a new deal and a square deal!" Moreover, to the joy of Mexican silver interests, President Roosevelt has raised the price of silver. He has also recognized the Soviet Union, considered by Mexicans the spearhead of all that is Godless.
Professor Raymond Moley returned this autumn from a two-hour conversation with General Plutarco Elias Calles, Chief of the National Revolution and "Mussolini of Mexico." In Today, considered President Roosevelt's mouthpiece by Mexicans, Professor Moley wrote: "It may be taken for granted that Calles will dominate affairs for years to come. . . . After generations of misrule, exploitation and revolution, the federation of 28 Mexican states is on the way toward recovery."
This to the Government of Mexico was as good as a small loan. Last week, sipping grapejuice and fizz-water, Mexican friends of Dry Ambassador Daniels toasted a new era beginning Dec. 1, 1934, with the inauguration of His Excellency General Lázaro Cárdenas as the 45th President of the United States of Mexico. By an appropriate coincidence, grim General Cárdenas stands with genial Ambassador Daniels for grape juice and Prohibition.
The new era is the Six-Year Plan: 1934-40. New President Cárdenas, who must put punch into it, is the pure Indian and highly radical "Left Hand" of Chief Calles. General Abelardo Rodriguez, the outgoing President of Mexico, who this year launched the Six-Year Plan, was Chief Calles' rich, part Spanish and less radical "Right Hand."