provide the Mexican people and others, who had given their energy and substance to the development of the great resources of the republic, opportunity to rebuild in peace and security their shattered fortunes.

This Government has waited month after month for the consummation of its hope and expectation. In spite of increasing discouragements, in spite of repeated provocations to exercise force in the restoration of order in the northern regions of Mexico, where American interests have suffered most seriously from lawlessness, the Government of the United States has refrained from aggressive action and sought by appeals and moderate though explicit demands to impress upon the de facto Government the seriousness of the situation and to arouse it to its duty to perform its international obligations toward the citizens of the United States who had entered the territory of Mexico, or had vested interests within its boundaries.

In the face of constantly renewed evidences of the patience and restraint of this Government in circumstances which only a government imbued with an unselfish and sincere desire to respect to the full the sovereign rights and national dignity of the Mexican people would have endured, doubts and suspicions as to the motives of the Government of the United States are expressed in your communication of May 22, for which I can imagine no purpose but to impugn the good faith of this Government, for I find it hard to believe that such imputations are not universally known to be without the least shadow of justification.

In fact, can the de facto Government doubt that, if the United States had turned covetous eyes on Mexican territory it could have found many pretexts in the past for the gratification of its desire? Can that Government doubt that months ago, when the war between the revolutionary factions was in progress, a much better opportunity than the present was afforded for American intervention, if such has been the purpose of the United States as the de facto Government now insinuates? What motive could this Government have had in refraining from taking advantage of such opportunities other than unselfish friendship for the Mexican republic.

I have, of course, given consideration to your argument that the responsibility for the present situation rests largely upon this Government. In the first place, you state that even the American forces along the border, whose attention is undivided by other military operations, find themselves physically unable to protect effectively the frontier on the American side.

Obviously, if there is no means of reaching bands roving on Mexican territory and making sudden dashes at night into American territory, it is impossible to prevent such invasions, unless the frontier is protected by a cordon of troops.

No Government could be expected to maintain a force of this strength along the boundary of a nation with which it is at peace for the purpose of resisting the onslaughts of a few bands of lawless men, especially when the neighboring State makes no effort to prevent these attacks. The most effective method of preventing raids of this nature, as past experience has fully demonstrated, is to visit punishment or destruction on the raiders.

It is precisely this plan which the United States desires to follow along the border without any intention of interfering upon the sovereign rights of her neighbor, but which although obviously advantageous to the de facto Government, it refuses to allow or even countenance. It is in fact protection to American lives and property about which the United States is solicitous and not the methods or ways in which that protection shall be accomplished. If the Mexican Government is unwilling or unable to give this protection by preventing its territory from being the rendezvous and refuge of murderers and plunderers, that does not relieve this Government from its duty to take all the steps necessary to safeguard American citizens on American soil.

The United States Government cannot and will not allow bands of lawless men to establish themselves upon its borders with liberty to invade and plunder American territory with impunity, and when pursued to seek safety across the Rio Grande, relying upon the plea of their Government that the integrity of the soil of the Mexican Republic must not be violated.

The Mexican Government further protests that it has "made every effort on its part to protect the frontier" and that it is doing "all possible to avoid a recurrence of such acts." Attention is again invited to the well-known and unrestricted activities of De La Rosa, Ancieto Piscano, Pedro Vinos and others in connection with border raids, and to the fact that, as I am advised, up to June 4, De La Rosa was still collecting troops at Monterey for the openly avowed purpose of making attacks on Texas border towns, and that Pedro Vinos was recruiting at other places for the same avowed purpose.

I have already pointed out the uninterrupted progress of Villa to and from Columbus, and the fact that the American forces in pursuit of the Glenn Springs marauders penetrated 168 miles into Mexican territory without encountering a single Carranzista soldier. This does not indicate that the Mexican Government is "doing all possible" to avoid further raids, and if it is doing "all possible" this is not sufficient to prevent border raids, and there is every reason, therefore, why this Government must take such preventive measures as it deems sufficient.

It is suggested that injuries suffered on account of bandit raids are a matter of "pecuniary reparation" but, never the cause for American forces to invade Mexican soil. The precedents which have been established and maintained by the Government of the Mexican Republic for the last half century do not bear out this statement. It has grown to be almost a custom not to settle depredations of bandits by payments of money alone, but to quell such disorders and prevent such crimes by swift and sure punishment.

The de facto Government finally argues that "if the frontier were duly protected from incursions from Mexico there would be no reason for the existing difficulty"; thus the de facto Government attempts to absolve itself from the first duty of any Government, namely, the protection of life and property. This is the paramount obligation for which governments are instituted, and governments neglecting or failing to perform it are not worthy of the name.

This is the duty for which General Carranza, it must be assumed, initiated his revolution in Mexico and organized the present Government and for which the United States Government recognized his Government as the de facto Government of Mexico. Protection of American lives and property, then, in the United States is first the obligation of this Government and in Mexico is, first, the obligation of Mexico, and second, the obligation of the United States.

In securing this protection along the common boundary, the United States has a right to expect the co-operation of its neighboring republic; and yet, instead of taking steps to check or punish the raiders, the de facto Government demurs and objects to measures taken by the United States.

The United States Government does not wish to believe that the de facto Government approves these marauding attacks, yet as they continue to be made, they show that the Mexican Government is unable to repress them. This inability, as this Government has had occasion in the past to say, may excuse the failure to check the outrages complained of, but it only makes stronger the duty of the United States to prevent them, for if the Government of Mexico cannot protect the lives and property of Americans, exposed to attack from Mexicans, the Government of the United States is in duty bound, so far as it can, to do so.

In conclusion the Mexican Government invites the United States to support "assurances of friendship with real and effective acts," which "can be no other than the immediate withdrawal of the American troops." For the reasons I have herein fully set forth, this request of the de facto Government cannot now be entertained. The United States has not sought the duty which has been forced upon it of pursuing bandits who, under fundamental principles of municipal and international law, ought to be pursued and arrested and punished by Mexican authorities.

Whenever Mexico will assume and effectively exercise that responsibility the United States, as it has many times before publicly declared, will be glad to have this obligation fulfilled by the de facto Government of Mexico. If, on the contrary, the de facto Government is pleased to ignore this obligation and to believe that "in case of a refusal to retire these troops there is no further recourse than to defend its territory by an appeal to arms," the Government of the United States would surely be lacking in sincerity and friendship if it did not frankly impress upon the de facto Government that the execution of this threat will lead to the gravest consequences.

While this Government would deeply regret such a result, it cannot recede from its settled determination to maintain its national rights and to perform its full duty in preventing further invasions of the territory of the United States and in removing the peril which Americans along the international boundary have borne so long with patience and forbearance.

Accept, etc.,

ROBERT LANSING.

ULTIMATUM TO MEXICO

WASHINGTON, June 26, 1916.

The text of the ultimatum to Carranza, given out by the State Department today, follows. This telegram was sent on June 25, 1916, to James Linn Rodgers, Special Representative of the American Government in Mexico City:

Mr. Arredondo yesterday delivered to this Government the following communication:

"I am directed by my Government to inform Your Excellency, with reference to the Carrizal incident, that the chief executive, through the Mexican war department, gave orders to General Jacinto B. Trevino not to permit American forces from General Pershing's column to advance further south, nor to move either east or west from the points where they are located, and to oppose new incursions of American soldiers into Mexican territory.

"These orders were brought by General Trevino to the attention of General Pershing, who acknowledged the receipt of the communication relative thereto. "On the 22d instant, as Your Excellency knows, an American force moved eastward quite far from its base notwithstanding orders and was engaged by Mexican troops at Carrizal, State of Chihuahua. As a result of the encounter several men on both sides were killed and wounded, and seventeen American soldiers were made prisoners."

You are hereby instructed to hand to the Minister of Foreign Relations of the de facto Government the following:

"The Government of the United States can put no other construction upon the communication handed to the Secretary of State of the United States on the twenty-fourth of June, by Mr. Arredondo, under instruction of your Governinent, than that it is intended as a formal avowal of deliberate hostile action against the forces of the United States now in Mexico, and of the purpose to attack them without provocation whenever they move from their present position in pursuance of the objects for which they were sent there, notwithstanding the fact that those objects not only involve no unfriendly intention toward the Government and people of Mexico, but are, on the contrary, intended only to assist that Government in protecting itself and the territory and people of the United States against irresponsible and insurgent bands of rebel marauders.

"I am instructed, therefore, by my Government to demand the immediate release of prisoners taken in the encounter at Carrizal, together with any property of the United States taken with them, and to inform you that the Government of the United States expects an early statement from your Government as to the course of action it wishes the Government of the United States to understand it has determined upon; and that it also expects that this statement be made through the usual diplomatic channels, and not through subordinate military commanders."

EXECUTIVE ORDER

LANSING.

[Providing for the Payment of Interest on Deposit Money Orders Issued in the Canal Zone.]

By virtue of the authority vested in me by law, it is hereby ordered:1. That deposit money orders issued by the Canal Zone Postal Service shall bear interest at the rate of one-half of one percentum for each period of three full calendar months, from August 21, 1916, or subsequent date of issue. Interest shall be payable when the order is paid but shall not accrue on any order for more than three years.

2. The Governor of The Panama Canal is authorized to prescribe such detailed rules and regulations as may be necessary to carry out this order. WOODROW WILSON.

THE WHITE HOUSE, October 22. 1016.

NEUTRALITY PROCLAMATIONS

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

[Neutrality-France, Great Britain, Italy, Servia, and Bulgaria.]

WHEREAS a state of war unhappily exists between France, Great Britain, Italy and Servia on the one side and Bulgaria on the other; And Whereas the United States is on terms of friendship and amity with the contending powers, and with the persons inhabiting their several dominions;

[Here follows the identical preamble and warning against violation of quoted law as in the proclamation of neutrality in the case of hostilities between AustriaHungary and Servia, Germany and Russia, and Germany and France. See pages 7969, 7970, 7971, 7972 and 7973.-Ed.]

DONE at the City of Washington this eleventh day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fifteen [SEAL.] and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and fortieth.

By the President:

Robert LansinG, Secretary of State.

WOODROW WILSON.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

[Neutrality-Germany and Portugal.]

WHEREAS a state of war unhappily exists between Germany and Portugal; And Whereas the United States is on terms of friendship and amity with the contending powers, and with the persons inhabiting their several dominions;

[Here follows the identical preamble and warning against violation of quoted law as in the proclamation of neutrality in the case of hostilities between AustriaHungary and Servia, Germany and Russia, and Germany and France. See pages 7969, 7970, 7971, 7972 and 7973.-Ed.]

DONE at the City of Washington this thirteenth day of March in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and sixteen [SEAL.] and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and fortieth.

By the President:

ROBERT LANSING, Secretary of State.

WOODROW WILSON.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

[Neutrality-Germany and Italy.]

WHEREAS a state of war unhappily exists between Germany and Italy; And Whereas the United States is on terms of friendship and amity with the contending powers, and with the persons inhabiting their several dominions;

[Here follows the identical preamble and warning against violation of quoted law as in the proclamation of neutrality in the case of hostilities between AustriaHungary and Servia, Germany and Russia, and Germany and France. See pages 7969, 7970, 7971, 7972 and 7973.-Ed.]

DONE at the City of Washington this thirtieth day of August in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and sixteen [SEAL.] and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-first.

By the President:

ROBERT LANSING, Secretary of State.

WOODROW WILSON.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

[Neutrality-Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, Turkey, and Roumania.] WHEREAS a state of war unhappily exists between Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, and Turkey on the one side and Roumania on the other; And Whereas the United States is on terms of friendship and amity with the contending powers, and with the persons inhabiting their several dominions;

[Here follows the identical preamble and warning against violation of quoted law as in the proclamation of neutrality in the case of hostilities between AustriaHungary and Servia, Germany and Russia, and Germany and France. See pages 7969, 7970, 7971, 7972 and 7973.-Ed.]

DONE at the City of Washington this eighteenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and [SEAL.] sixteen and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-first.

By the President:

ROBERT LANSING, Secretary of State.

WOODROW WILSON.