LATIN AMERICA: Mexico Simmering

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Bishops Pasquale Diaz of Tabasco and Jose Zarrate of Hidalgo constitute with Archbishop Leopoldo Ruiz y Florez of Michoacan, as everyone knows, the Triumvirate of pure blooded Mexican Indians chosen by the Papacy to direct actively the struggle of Catholicism against the anti-religious Calles régime in Mexico.

Last week Archbishop Ruiz arrived at Mexico City, galvanized the indignation of even callous newspapermen with news of an atrocity. Five Catholic priests, declared Archbishop Ruiz, had been seized in the state of Michoacan by troops under command of General Mange. The priests were charged with inciting the populace to riot, were marched without trial to the Hacienda La Gua Yaba, were lined up against a stone wall and shot down by a firing squad.

The Archbishop estimated that 17 civilians had been similarly exeuted without trial.

Cartoon. Cartoonist McCutcheon of the Chicago Tribune pondered well this atrocity, drew a cartoon in which an Arrow-collared, tortoise-spectacled, straw-hatted "American Newspaper Reader" was shown winnowing the chaff of rumor from a hopper full of "Reports of the Mexican Religious Controversy." Next day the Calles Administration categorically denied that any Catholic priests whatsoever have been executed or shot down since the inception of the religious crisis.

(TIME, July 12 et seq.).

Since the number of priests supposed to have been executed varied in different accounts between two and five, the "atrocity" was thereupon deemed unsubstantiated.

Controversy. A week of doubtful sport was afforded readers of the World and Times of Manhattan by an open quarrel between those august news organs as to whether a certain written interview obtained "exclusively" by the World had actually been drafted by the venerable Archbishop of Mexico, the Very Reverend Jose Mora y del Rio. The Times contended that the real author was the Archbishop's vigorous field generalissimo, Bishop Diaz. The World repudiated this aspersion with indignation. Readers of both newspapers grew weary of the controversy. Finally a rumor, subsequently squelched, spread that the Archbishop would be prosecuted for sedition on account of the interview and might even be executed. The World's correspondent, Mr. Arthur Constantine, then proudly cinched his interview by obtaining from the 72-year-old prelate two huskily whispered sentences of touching import: "Si me toca morir en este conflicto, esta, den. Morire con gloria." ("If it be my turn to die in this conflict, very well, I shall die with glory.")

"The gentle shepherd of his flock," wrote Mr. Constantine with unction, "(is) all spirituality."

Meanwhile the interview which occasioned so much recrimination achieved oblivion. It consisted merely of a resume of Catholic indignation at the anti-Catholic Mexican Constitution and enforcement statutes.