In 1909, as the result of his execution of two American soldiers of fortune who had taken part in a recent insurrection, the United States resolved to tolerate Zelaya no longer.

Openly recognizing the insurgents, it forced the dictator out of the country.

Three years later, when a President-elect started to assume office before the legally appointed time, a force of American marines at the capital convinced him that such a procedure was undesirable.

The "corrupt and barbarous" conditions prevailing in Zelaya's time, he was informed, could not be tolerated.

The United States, in fact, notified all parties in Nicaragua that, under the terms of the Washington conventions, it had a "moral mandate to exert its influence for the preservation of the general peace of Central America." Since those agreements had vested no one with authority to enforce them, such an interpretation of their language, aimed apparently at all disturbances, foreign as well as domestic, was rather elastic! At all events, after 1912, when a new constitution was adopted, the country became relatively quiet and somewhat progressive.