Concerning Mexico

From the depths of a plump arm chair at the Hotel Plaza, Manhattan, James R. Sheffield, vacationing U. S. Ambassador to Mexico, frankly confessed to newsgatherers last week his bafflement by the Mexican crisis: "None of us is able intelligently to diagnose the condition between the Church and State in Mexico. . . . No foreigner can understand the Mexican nature. Even men who have lived for twenty-five years in the nation do not understand the mental processes of the people."

Able Ambassador Sheffield referred of course to the "mental process" by which Mexicans, a people nominally nine-tenths Roman Catholic, have embarked upon the extermination of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. Turning from this psychological paradox to a concrete fact--the apprehension of onetime Mexican Secretary of War Enrique Estrada in California with an "army" of 174 men bound for Mexico (TIME, Aug. 30) --Mr. Sheffield said with emphasis:

"The Estrada fiasco in California, suppressed before it had taken life, is of greater import than is generally believed. It is folly to believe that Estrada planned to go into Mexico and lead a revolt with only the pitiful little army that was halted in California. He must have had support awaiting him in Mexico. That support is still there. Whether it will pick up the fight and carry on without Estrada is not known. The developments of the next few weeks should be interesting."

Throughout Mexico the deadlock between Church and State continued total. Bishop Pascual Diaz of Tabasco, active generalissimo for the Mexican Episcopate, said: "We can see no hope of betterment of the situation. . . . Perhaps months and years may pass, but we are disposed to wait patiently and to work through whatever legitimate means we can employ."

The week's concrete developments consisted merely in a continuance of the Roman Catholic economic boycott (TIME, Aug. 23) and the arrest and release on bail of groups of Roman Catholic "society girls" who distributed pro-Roman Catholic leaflets in the principal Mexican cities and pinned "boycott buttons" upon many a manly chest.