"Beneficial Insurrection"

"The insurrection which we -or rather which General Calles has just suppressed -," said President Emilio Portes Gil of Mexico last week, "will prove, I am sure, to have been highly beneficial to the country."

The paradox of a "beneficial insurrection" is readily explained. The revolt was led openly by several Generals of the Army and Governors of Mexican States (TIME, March 11, et seq.), who had machinated secretly against Plutarco Elias Calles when he was President and later against his staunch friend President Emilio Portes Gil. So highly placed were the insurrectos that until they actually broke out their banners of revolt, nothing could be done to check their plotting. Once they chose to take the field, and lost, their power within the Army and State was broken.

President Portes Gil went on to say last week: "The suppression of the insurrection has destroyed all dissident groups and clears the way for realization of the Government's program of Peace, impartial Democracy and vigorous commercial expansion of the State."

Two months ago the insurrectos held the northern half of Mexico. Then they were forced back into their base of operations, the State of Sonora (TIME,, April 22), where U. S. citizens go to get hard drinks and easy divorces. Weeping bitterly last week Governor Fausto Topete of Sonora ordered the insurrecto flag hauled down, then fled across the invisible line which divides Nogales, Sonora, from Nogales, Ariz. The rebel Commander-in-chief, General Jose Gonzalo Escobar, was deserted by the last 1,000 of his original army of 20,000 men and vanished as a hunted fugitive into the mountains along the U. S. border. Without the need of striking a final blow, bull-necked General and War Minister Calles occupied Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora.

Presently President Portes Gil announced that only $7,500,000 had been spent by the Government in putting down the insurrection. Considerably more than this picayune sum is spent by U. S. housewives in a single season on ripe, red Mexican tomatoes.

A tragic figure, seemingly forgotten by all concerned, including correspondents, was Senor Don Gilberto Valenzuela. whom the rebels 70 days ago proclaimed "President of Mexico." Ruined and ignored, poor Don Gilberto must rue the day last December when he resigned his honorable post of Mexican Envoy Extraordinary & Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of St. James's and listened to the sword- handy gentlemen who swore they would make him President.

Notable was the following declaration anent Mexico's Roman Catholics made last week by President Fortes Gil: "In the States of Jalisco, Michoacan and Guanajuato there are under arms servants of the Catholic Church, who, forgetting their Christian morality, dedicate themselves to acts of absolute banditry on the pretext of defending the doctrines of their Church. In contrast with that attitude there are other dignified representatives of Catholicism who counsel respect for law and authority.

"As to accusations that the Catholic Church as an institution was implicated in the revolt, I cannot answer such a charge in the affirmative."

Quickly the exiled Senior Prelate of the Roman Catholic Mexican Episcopate, Archbishop Leopoldo Ruiz y Flores. observed to reporters in Washington, D.C.:

"As an evidence of goodwill, the words of President Portes Gil are most important. The Church and her ministers are prepared to cooperate with him in every just and moral effort made for the improvement of the people.

"Notable in conscience to accept laws that are enforced in my country, the Catholic Church in Mexico, not wilfully, but as a solemn duty, has found it necessary to completely suspend all acts of public worship."

In Mexico City, the President said: "The Catholic clergy can resume services when they desire, the only obligation being that they obey the laws. The official attitude toward the Church will continue the same as now."

The "laws" which the Church is not able to accept, and on which the State continues to insist, chiefly require that members of any clergy before officiating must present themselves at a registry office and subscribe their names and addresses. The Protestant clergy complied with these laws from the first, are officiating unmolested. The Catholics, deeming any obeisance to the existing civil power, however slight, incompatible with conscience, continue to regard themselves as persecuted.

In New York city one Salvador Ateca, gambling concessionaire of Juarez, Mexico, often mentioned as the financial backer of General Escobar's revolution, was arrested as he prepared to sail for Spain. In his possession was a small black handbag, containing $750,000 in bills, securities and gold pieces, stolen, said representatives of the Mexican Government, from looted banks and the State Treasury of Chihuahua.