ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT WILSON AT THE BROOKLYN NAVY YARD BROOKLYN, N. Y. MAY 11, 1914. Services in memory of those who lost their lives at Vera Cruz, Mexico

Washington: [Government Printing Office], 1914. First Edition. wraps. Toning to text. Near Fine. Printed wraps, 8 pages, including the covers. SIGNED by the President at the end of the text. The United States occupation of Veracruz began with the Battle of Veracruz and lasted for seven months, as a response to the Tampico Affair of 9 April 9 1914. The incident came in the midst of poor diplomatic relations between Mexico and the United States and was related to the ongoing Mexican Revolution. The Tampico Affair was set off when 9 American sailors were arrested by the Mexican government for entering off-limit areas, a fuel loading station. Although the (truncated) sailors were released, the U.S. demanded both an apology and a 21-gun salute. The apology was provided, but not the salute, prompting Wilson to order the occupation of the port of Veracruz. The Battle of Veracruz resulted in the deaths of 400 Mexican soldiers, 800 civilians, and 19 members of the U.S. military. The battle influenced several artists: a short story and an essay by Jack London, Robert Olen Butler's novel THE HOT COUNTRY, and Warren Zevon's song "Veracruz" on his album EXCITABLE BOY.

"We have gone down to Mexico to serve mankind, if we find out the way. We do not want to fight the Mexicans. We want to serve the Mexicans, if we can, because we know how we would like to be free and how we would like to be served if there were friends standing by in such case ready to serve us. A war of aggression is not a war in which it is a proud thing to die, but a war of service is a thing in which it is a proud thing to die.

"Notice how truly these men were of our blood. I mean of our American blood, which is not drawn from any one country, which is not drawn from any one stock, which is not from any one language of the modern world; but free men everywhere have sent their sons and their brothers and their daughters to this country in order to make that great compounded Nation which consists of all the sturdy elements and of all the best elements of the whole globe. I listened again to this list of the dead with a profound interest because of the mixture of the names, for the names bear the marks of the several national stocks from which these men came. But they are not Irishmen or Germans or Frenchmen or Hebrews or Italians any more. They were not when they went to Vera Cruz; they were Americans, every one of them, and with no difference in their Americanism because of the stock from which they came. They were in a peculiar sense of our blood, and they proved it by showing that they were of our spirit, that no matter what their derivation, no matter where their people came from, they thought and wished and did the things that were American; and the flag under which they served was a flag in which all the blood of mankind is united to make a free Nation." (Inventory #: 015962)