President Diaz Hero of the Americas (1908)

[James Creelman, President Diaz: Hero of the Americas, Pearson's Magazine, March 1908]

Photographed by Caboni, Mexico

PRESIDENT PORFIRIO DIAZ, THE CREATOR AND HERO OF MODERN MEXICO, AS HE WAS A FEW WEEKS AGO AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY-SEVEN YEARS

PEARSON'S MAGAZINE

VOL. XIX MARCH, 1908 NO. 3

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Photographed by Percy Cox, Mexico

THE MEETING OF TWO CIVILIZATIONS IN MEXICO TO-DAY

PRESIDENT DIAZ

Hero of the Americas

By JAMES CREELMAN

In this remarkable article the greatest man of the continent speaks fully to the world through Pearson's Magazine. By previous arrangement Mr. Creelman went to Mexico and was received at Chapultepec Castle. He had unusual opportunities for conversation with President Diaz and has brought out with great dearness the dramatic and impressive contrast between his stern, autocratic government and his stirring tribute to the democratic idea. Through Mr. Creelman the President announces his unchangeable intention to retire from power, and predicts a peaceful future for Mexico under free institutions. The story of a nation-maker.—EDITOR.

FROM the heights of Chapultepec Castle President Diaz looked down upon the venerable capital of his country, spread out on a vast plain, with a ring of mountains flung up grandly about it, and I, who had come nearly four thousand miles from New York to see the master and hero of modern Mexico—the inscrutable leader in whose veins is blended the blood of the primitive Mixtecs with that of the invading Spaniards—watched the slender, erect form, the strong, soldierly head and commanding, but sensitive, countenance with an interest beyond words to express.

A high, wide forehead that slopes up to crisp white hair and overhangs deep-set, dark brown eyes that search your soul, soften

into inexpressible kindliness and then dart quick side looks—terrible eyes, threatening eyes, loving, confiding, humorous eyes—a straight, powerful, broad and somewhat fleshy nose, whose curved nostrils lift and dilate with every emotion; huge, virile jaws that sweep from large, flat, fine ears, set close to the head, to the tremendous, square, fighting chin; a wide, firm mouth shaded by a white mustache ; a full, short, muscular neck; wide shoulders, deep chest; a curiously tense and rigid carriage that gives great distinction to a personality suggestive of singular power and dignity—that is Porfirio Diaz in his seventy-eighth year, as I saw him a few weeks ago on the spot where, forty years before, he stood—with his besieging army surrounding the City of Mexico, and the young Emperor Maximilian being shot to death in Queretaro, beyond those blue mountains to the north—waiting grimly for the thrilling end of the last interference of European monarchy with the republics of America.

It is the intense, magnetic something in the wide-open, fearless, dark eyes and the sense of nervous challenge in the sensitive, spread nostrils, that seem to connect the man with the immensity of the landscape, as some elemental force.

There is not a more romantic or heroic figure in all the world, nor one more intensely watched by both the friends and foes of democracy, than the soldier-statesman whose adventurous youth pales the pages of Dumas, and whose iron rule has converted the warring, ignorant, superstitious and impoverished masses of Mexico, oppressed by centuries of Spanish cruelty and greed, into a strong, steady, peaceful, debt-paying and progressive nation.

For twenty-seven years he has governed the Mexican Republic with such power that national elections have become mere formalities. He might easily have set a crown upon his head.

Yet to-day, in the supremacy of his career, this astonishing man—foremost figure of the American hemisphere and unreadable mystery to students of human government—announces that he will insist on retiring from the Presidency at the end of his present term, so that he may see his successor peacefully established and that, with his assistance, the people of the Mexican Republic may show the world that they have entered serenely and preparedly upon the last complete phase of their liberties, that the nation is emerging from ignorance and revolutionary passion, and that it can choose and change presidents without weakness or war.

It is something to come from the money-mad gambling congeries of Wall Street and in the same week to stand on the rock of Chapultepec, in surroundings of almost unreal

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Photographed by Percy Cox, Mexico

THIS REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPH, MADE EXPRESSLY FOR PEARSON'S MAGAZINE, SHOWS THE POWER, COURAGE AND ENERGY IN PRESIDENT DIAZ'S COUNTENANCE. WHEN HE IS AROUSED HIS EYES OPEN WIDE AND DEEPEN IN COLOR AND HIS NOSTRILS SPREAD. YET, IN SPITE OF THE TERRIFIC FORCE WHICH HE SUGGESTS AT SUCH A MOMENT, HIS SIMPLE DIGNITY IS ALWAYS APPARENT

THE MEXICAN NATIONAL PALACE. PRESIDENT DIAZ'S OFFICE IS IN THE RIGHT-HAND CORNER. SECRETARY OF FINANCES

grandeur and loveliness, beside one who is said to have transformed a republic into an autocracy by the absolute compulsion of courage and character, and to hear him speak of democracy as the hope of mankind.

This, too, at a time when the American soul shudders at the mere thought of a third term for any President.

The President surveyed the majestic, sunlit scene below the ancient castle and turned away with a smile, brushing a curtain of scarlet trumpet-flowers and vine-like pink geraniums as he moved along the terrace toward the inner garden, where a fountain set among palms and flowers sparkled with water from the spring at which Montezuma used to drink, under the mighty cypresses that still rear their branches about the rock on which we stood.

" It is a mistake to suppose that the future of democracy in Mexico has been endangered by the long continuance in office of one President," he said quietly. "I can say sincerely that office has not corrupted my political ideals and that I believe democracy to be the one true, just principle of government, although in practice it is possible only to highly developed peoples."

For a moment the straight figure paused and the brown eyes looked over the great valley to where snow-covered Popocatapetl lifted its volcanic peak nearly eighteen thousand feet among the clouds beside the snowy craters of Ixtaccihuatl—a land of dead volcanoes, human and otherwise.

" I can lay down the Presidency of Mexico without a pang of regret, but I cannot cease to serve this country while I live," he added.

The sun shone full in the President's face but his eyes did not shrink from the ordeal. The green landscape, the smoking city, the blue tumult of mountains, the thin, exhila-

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LIMANTOUR OCCUPIES THE LEFT-HAND CORNER. THESE ARE THE TWO GREAT ADMINISTRATORS OF THE NATION

rating, scented air, seemed to stir him, and the color came to his cheeks as he clasped his hands behind him and threw his head backward. His nostrils opened wide.

"You know that in the United States we are troubled about the question of electing a President for three terms?"

He smiled and then looked grave, nodding his head gently and pursing his lips. It is hard to describe the look of concentrated interest that suddenly came into his strong, intelligent countenance.

" Yes, yes, I know," he replied. " It is a natural sentiment of democratic peoples that their officials should be often changed. I agree with that sentiment."

It seemed hard to realize that I was listening to a soldier who had ruled a republic continuously for more than a quarter of a century with a personal authority unknown to most kings. Yet he spoke with a simple and convincing manner, as one whose place was great and secure beyond the need of hypocrisy.

" It is quite true that when a man has occupied a powerful office for a very long time he is likely to begin to look upon it as his personal property, and it is well that a free people should guard themselves against the tendencies of individual ambition.

"Yet the abstract theories of democracy and the practical, effective application of them are often necessarily different—that is when you are seeking for the substance rather than the mere form.

"I can see no good reason why President Roosevelt should not be elected again if a majority of the American people desire to have him continue in office. I believe that he has thought more of his country than of himself. He has done and is doing a great work for the United States, a work that will

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236 PRESIDENT DIAZ

cause him, whether he serves again or not, to be remembered in history as one of the great Presidents. I look upon the trusts as a great and real power in the United States, and President Roosevelt has had the patriotism and courage to defy them. Mankind understands the meaning of his attitude and its bearing upon the future. He stands before the world as a statesman whose victories have been moral victories.

"In my judgment the fight to restrain the power of the trusts and keep them from oppressing the people of the United States marks one of the most important and significant periods in your history. Mr. Roosevelt, has faced the crisis like a great man.

"There can be no doubt that Mr. Roosevelt is a strong, pure man, a patriot who understands his country and loves it well. The American fear of a third term seems to me to be without any just reason. There can be no question of principle in the matter if a majority of the people of the United States approve his policies and want him to continue his work. That is the real, the vital thing—whether a majority of the people need him and desire him to go on.

"Here in Mexico we have had different conditions. I received this Government from the hands of a victorious army at a time when the people were divided and unprepared for the exercise of the extreme principles of democratic government. To have thrown upon the masses the whole responsibility of government at once would have produced conditions that might have discredited the cause of free government.

"Yet, although I got power at first from the army, an election was held as soon as possible and then my authority came from

Photographed by Waite, Mexico

DIAZ, THE SOLDIER, IN THE FIELD

Photographed by Percy Cox, Mexico

HERE ARE OLD MEXICO AND NEW MEXICO FACE TO FACE

the people. I have tried to leave the Presidency several times, but it has been pressed upon me and I remained in office for the sake of the nation which trusted me. The fact that the price of Mexican securities dropped eleven points when I was ill at Cuernavaca indicates the kind of evidence that persuaded me to overcome my personal inclination to retire to private life.

" We preserved the republican and democratic form of government. We defended the theory and kept it intact. Yet we adopted a patriarchal policy in the actual administration of the nation's affairs, guiding and restraining popular tendencies, with full faith that an enforced peace would allow education, industry and commerce to develop elements of stability and unity in a naturally intelligent, gentle and affectionate people.

" I have waited patiently for the day when the people of the Mexican Republic would be prepared to choose and change their government at every election without danger of armed revolutions and without injury to the national credit or interference with national progress. I believe that day has come."

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238 PRESIDENT DIAZ

Again the soldierly figure turned toward the glorious scene lying between the mountains. It was plain to see that the President was deeply moved. The strong face was as sensitive as a child's. The dark eyes were moist.

And what an unforgetable vision of color, movement and romance it was!

Beneath the giant trees still surrounding the rock of Chapultepec—the only rise in the flat valley—Montezuma, the Aztec monarch, used to walk in his hours of ease before Cortes and Alvarado came with the cross of Christ and the pitiless sword of Spain, to be followed by three hundred terrible years in which the country writhed and wept under sixty-two Spanish viceroys and five governors, to be succeeded by a ridiculous native emperor and a succession of dictators and presidents, with the Emperor Maximilian's invasion between, until Diaz, the hero of fifty battles, decided that Mexico should cease to fight, and learn to work and pay her debts.

Here, on the hillside of Chapultepec, were red and white roses blooming in December, passion flowers, daisies, strange splashes of scarlet blossoms; white jessamine wreathing itself over rocks sculptured by the Aztecs; stretches of blue myrtles that made the heart leap with an emotion born of color; violets, poppies, lilies, laurels.

To the rear was the pink-walled, crumbling mill where Winfield Scott stood with his artillery in 1847, when swift lines of American bayonets came through the swamp, the cypresses and the laurels, and the American flag was borne to the summit of Chapultepec over the dead bodies of the gallant young Mexican cadets whose white monument is decorated once a year by American veterans.

As we paced the castle terrace we could see long processions of Mexican Indians, accompanied by their wives and children, with monstrous hats, bright-colored blankets and bare or sandaled feet, moving continuously from all parts of the valley and from the mountain passes toward Guadalupe; and two days later I was to see a hundred thousand aboriginal Americans gather about that holiest of American shrines, where, under a crown of emeralds, rubies, diamonds and sapphires that cost thirty thousand dollars merely to fashion, and before a multitude of

Photographed by Waite. Mexico

GENERAL DIAZ IN FULL UNIFORM

Photographed by Waite, Mexico

THERE HANGS ON THE FRONT OP THE NATIONAL PALACE, THE CHURCH BELL WHICH THE PRIEST HIDALGO RANG ON THE NIGHT OF SEPTEMBER 15TH, 1810, AS THE SIGNAL FOR THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK ON EACH ANNIVERSARY NIGHT PRESIDENT DIAZ APPEARS ON A BALCONY, RINGS THIS BELL AND GIVES A CHEER FOR FREE MEXICO. THE ABOVE PICTURE SHOWS THE SCENE AN INSTANT AFTER THE BELL IS HEARD

blanketed Indians, kneeling with their wives and babies, holding lighted candles and flowers, and worshipping with a devotion that smote the most cynical spectator into reverence, the resplendent Archbishop of Mexico celebrated mass before the altar-enclosed

240 PRESIDENT DIAZ

blanket of the pious Indian, Juan Diego, upon whose woven surface the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared in 1531.

We could faintly see the little chapel on the hill where the holy blanket originally hung.

PRESIDENT DIAZ HUNTING IN THE MOUNTAINS, AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS. MARK THE ERECTNESS AND VIGOR OF THE FIGURE, THE STRENGTH AND BEARING OF THE MAN, COMPARED WITH HIS YOUNGER COMPANIONS! THIS SNAP-SHOT WAS MADE THROUGH THE CAMERA OF HIS SON

Before its door Santa Anna, the dictator, who overthrew the native emperor, Iturbide, ceded to the conquering forces of the United States, for fifteen million dollars, California, Nevada, Utah, part of Colorado and most of New Mexico and Arizona, which, with Texas, brought about eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles of Mexican territory under the Stars and Stripes—and this, nine days after gold was discovered in California.

In the little cemetery beside that chapel is the neglected grave of the dictator Santa Anna, and in the jumble of the city we could discern the roof of the church in which, with glittering pomp, he buried his amputated leg, which was afterward torn from its tomb by a jeering mob, who tied it to a rope and dragged it joyously through the streets.

"It is commonly held that true democratic institutions are impossible in a country which has no middle class," I suggested.

President Diaz turned, with a keen look, and nodded his head.

" It is true," he said. " Mexico has a middle class now; but she had none before. The middle class is the active element of society, here as elsewhere.

"The rich are too much preoccupied in their riches and in their dignities to be of much use in advancing the general welfare. Their children do not try very hard to improve their education or their character.

"On the other hand, the poor are usually too ignorant to have power.

"It is upon the middle class, drawn largely from the poor, but somewhat from the rich, the active, hard-working, self-improving middle class, that a democracy must depend for its development. It is the middle class that concerns itself with politics and with the general progress.

JAMES CREELMAN 241

"In the old days we had no middle class in Mexico because the minds of the people and their energies were wholly absorbed in politics and war. Spanish tyranny and misgovernment had disorganized society. The productive activities of the nation were abandoned in successive struggles. There was general confusion. Neither life nor property was safe. A middle class could not appear under such conditions."

"General Diaz," I interrupted, "you have had an unprecedented experience in the history of republics. For thirty years the destinies of this nation have been in your hands, to mold them as you will; but men die, while nations must continue to live. Do you believe that Mexico can continue to exist in peace as a republic? Are you satisfied that its future is assured under free institutions?"

It was worth while to have come from New York to Chapultepec Castle to see the hero's face at that moment. Strength, patriotism, warriorship, prophethood seemed suddenly to shine in his brown eyes.

"The future of Mexico is assured," he said in a clear voice. "The principles of democracy have not been planted very deep in our people, I fear. But the nation has grown and it loves liberty. Our difficulty has been that the people do not concern themselves enough about public matters for a democracy. The individual Mexican as a rule thinks much about his own rights and is always ready to assert them. But he does not think so much about the rights of others. He thinks of his privileges, but not of his duties. Capacity for self-restraint is the basis of democratic government, and self-restraint is possible only to those who recognize the rights of their neighbors.

"The Indians, who are more than half of our population, care little for politics. They are accustomed to look to those in authority for leadership instead of thinking for themselves. That is a tendency they inherited from the Spaniards, who taught them to refrain from meddling in public affairs and rely on the Government for guidance.

"Yet I firmly believe that the principles of democracy have grown and will grow in Mexico."

"But you have no opposition party in the Republic, Mr. President. How can free institutions flourish when there is no opposition

PRESIDENT DIAZ STANDS ON THE RIGHT. BEHIND HIM HANG THE DEER KILLED BY HIM, AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS, IN TWO DAYS' HARD HUNTING. THE SNAP-SHOT WAS MADE BY HIS SON

242 PRESIDENT DIAZ

to keep the majority, or governing party, in check ?"

"It is true there is no opposition party. I have so many friends in the republic that my enemies seem unwilling to identify themselves with so small a minority. I appreciate the kindness of my friends and the confidence of my country; but such absolute confidence imposes responsibilities and duties that tire me more and more.

"No matter what my friends and supporters say, I retire when my present term of office ends, and I shall not serve again. I shall be eighty years old then.

"My country has relied on me and it has been kind to me. My friends have praised my merits and overlooked my faults. But they may not be willing to deal so generously with my successor and he may need my advice and support; therefore I desire to be alive when he assumes office so that I may help him."

He folded his arms over his deep chest and spoke with great emphasis.

" I welcome an opposition party in the Mexican Republic," he said. " If it appears, I will regard it as a blessing, not as an evil. And if it can develop power, not to exploit but to govern, I will stand by it, support it, advise it and forget myself in the successful inauguration of complete democratic government in the country.

" It is enough for me that I have seen Mexico rise among the peaceful and useful nations. I have no desire to continue in the Presidency. This nation is ready for her ultimate life of freedom. At the age of seventy-seven years I am satisfied with robust health. That is one thing which neither law nor force can create. I would not exchange it for all the millions of your American oil king."

His ruddy skin, sparkling eyes and light, elastic step went well with his words. For one who has endured the privations of war and imprisonment, and who to-day rises at six o'clock in the morning, working until late at night at the full of his powers, the physical condition of President Diaz, who is even now a notable hunter and who usually, ascends the palace stairway two steps at a time, is almost unbelievable.

" The railway has played a great part in the peace of Mexico," he continued. " When I became President at first there were only two small lines, one connecting the capital with Vera Cruz, the other connecting it with Querétaro. Now we have more than nine-

PRESIDENT DIAZ DINING WITH HIS HUNTING COMPANIONS IN THE FOREST

THE MASTER OF MEXICO IN HIS OFFICIAL CHAIR

244 PRESIDENT DIAZ

teen thousand miles of railways. Then we had a slow and costly mail service, carried on by stage coaches, and the mail coach between the capital and Puebla would be stopped by highwaymen two or three times in a trip, the last robbers to attack it generally finding nothing left to steal. Now we have a cheap, safe and fairly rapid mail service throughout the country with more than twenty-two hundred post-offices. Telegraphing was a difficult thing in those times. To-day we have more than forty-five thousand miles of telegraph wires in operation.

"We began by making robbery punishable by death and compelling the execution of offenders within a few hours after they were caught and condemned. We ordered that wherever telegraph wires were cut and the chief officer of the district did not catch the criminal, he should himself suffer; and in case the cutting occurred on a plantation the proprietor who failed to prevent it should be hanged to the nearest telegraph pole. These were military orders, remember.

"We were harsh. Sometimes we were harsh to the point of cruelty. But it was all necessary then to the life and progress of the nation. If there was cruelty, results have justified it."

The nostrils dilated and quivered. The mouth was a straight line.

" It was better that a little blood should be shed that much blood should be saved. The blood that was shed was bad blood; the blood that was saved was good blood.

"Peace was necessary, even an enforced peace, that the nation might have time to think and work. Education and industry have carried on the task begun by the army."

He moved slowly along the terrace, sweeping the scene below with his glances, as though the old days were upon him again—the slaughter and victory at Puebla, the march on Mexico City; the visit of the stately Princess Salm-Salm to his lines and her vain pleadings for the life of the Emperor Maximilian, preparing to die at Querétaro ; the stealthy interview of Maximilian's priest-secretary; the pale Señora Donna Luciana Arrozola de Baz, wife of Maximilian's war minister, who came out to offer the surrender of the capital if Diaz would abandon the re-

Photographed by Percy Cox, Mexico

CHAPULTEPEC CASTLE

WALK IN THE SHADOW OF MONTEZUMA'S OLD CYPRESSES, WHERE PRESIDENT DIAZ HAS FOR MORE THAN A QUARTER OF A CENTURY TAKEN HIS DAILY EXERCISE AND PLANNED THE DESTINY OF HIS COUNTRY

public ; the attempts of traitorous generals, here on Chapultepec rock, to betray the young Emperor to save themselves—all, heroines, heroes, priests and soldiers, sent back hopeless, and the lines of sharp steel, already glorious with the blood of the foreign oppressors, strengthened and tightened about the doomed city. And then, the white flag flying from the towers of yonder gray cathedral, the end of the bastard empire and the entry of the dusty republican army, Diaz at its head, between multitudes of great-hatted, blanketed, barefooted peons, weeping for gratitude.

"And which do you regard as the greatest force for peace, the army or the schoolhouse ?" I asked.

The soldier's face flushed slightly and the splendid white head was held a little higher. " You speak of the present time ?"

" Yes."

"The schoolhouse. There can be no doubt of that. I want to see education throughout the Republic carried on by the national Government. I hope to see it before I die. It is important that all citizens of a republic should receive the same training, so that their ideals and methods may be harmonized and the national unity intensified. When men read alike and think alike they are more likely to act alike."

" And you believe that the vast Indian population of Mexico is capable of high development ?"

" I do. The Indians are gentle and they are grateful, all except the Yacquis and some of the Myas [sic]. They have the traditions of an ancient civilization of their own. They are to be found among the lawyers, engineers, physicians, army officers and other professional men."

Over the city drifted the smoke of many factories.

" It is better than cannon smoke, " I said.

" Yes," he replied, " and yet there are times when cannon smoke is not such a bad thing. The toiling poor of my country have risen up to support me, but I cannot forget what my comrades in arms and their children have been to me in my severest ordeals."

There were actually tears in the veteran's eyes.

"That," I said, pointing to a hideously modern bull-ring near the castle, "is the only surviving Spanish institution to be seen in this landscape."

" You have not noticed the pawnshops," he exclaimed. " Spain brought to us her pawn-shops, as well as her bull-rings."

The terrace on which the great American stood still bears the ugly Pompeian decorations which the doomed Emperor Maximilian and the beautiful Empress Carlotta

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HALL IN MEXICO CITY WHERE THE FAMOUS CALENDAR AND SACRIFICIAL STONES STAND AMONG THE AZTEC SCULPTURES

caused to be painted to gratify their Austrian tastes. The patriot who crushed the imperial invader, and in whose blood is to be found the tide ripple of Spanish ancestry and a native American civilization whose ancient monuments are still the wonder of the continent, will not have the gaudy memorials of the crowned adventurer against whom he fought, and whose bribes he scorned, altered or even touched.

Below us, and reaching from the castle gardens to the city, was the wide and beautiful boulevard which the young Empress Carlotta gave to Mexico, she who went mad while pleading with the Pope to save her husband after Napoleon III deserted him, and who to-day, a gray-haired woman, is still shut up in a Belgian castle.

Here in the carriage-way is a monument to Guatemoc, the last of the Montezumas, erected by President Diaz. There is an equestrian monument to Carlos IV, the largest bronze casting in the world, whose maker killed himself when he realized that the horse and its imperial rider were without stirrups.

Away to the right, among the trees of Coyoacan, is the garden in which Cortes strangled his wife and the spot on which he roasted the feet of Guatemoc in a vain attempt to make the monarch reveal the hiding place of the Aztec treasures.

Still farther away in the valley is the picturesque house and garden of Alvarado, Cortes's cruel captain, which was the home of an Aztec chief before the Spaniards came, and is now occupied by Mrs. Nutall, the charming California woman who is searching out the mystery of the original Americans in the majestic ruins of Mexico.

To the left is the road over which Cortes and his cut-throats retreated from Montezuma's capital, when the Aztecs rose up against his murderous oppression, and the still living tree under which he wept on the "Dismal Night" as he saw his defeated forces file before him.

And throughout the valley moves a wonderful system of electric cars, for even the crumbling house of Cortes is lit by electricity, and an electric elevator runs through the shaft in Chapultepec hill by

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JAMES CREELMAN 247

which the Montezumas used to escape from enemies.

It is hard to remember that this wonderful plain was once a lake and that the Aztecs built their great city on piles, with causeways to the mainland. President Diaz bored a tunnel through the eastern mountains and the Valley of Mexico is now drained to the sea through a system of canals and sewers that cost more than twelve million dollars.

Is there a real foundation for the Pan-American movement ? Is there an American idea that can bind the peoples of this hemisphere together and distinguish them from the rest of the world ?"

The President listened to the question and smiled. Only a few weeks before, the American Secretary of State had been the guest of Mexico, lodged in Chapultepec Castle like a king, with its hill turned into a fairyland, and the nation, from President to peon, exerting itself to show that, in all the American republics he had visited, none could equal the land of the Montezumas in the grandeur of its welcome.

"There is an American sentiment and it is growing," said the President. But it is useless to deny a distinct feeling of distrust, a fear of territorial absorption, which interferes with a closer union of the American republics. Just as the Guatemalans and other peoples of Central America seem to fear absorption by Mexico, so there are Mexicans who fear absorption by the United States. I do not share this fear. I have full confidence in the intentions of the American Government, yet "—with a sudden twinkling of the eyes " popular sentiment changes and governments change and we cannot always tell what the future may bring.

"The work done by the Bureau of the American Republics at Washington is a good one and it has a great field of usefulness. It deserves hearty support. All that is needed is that the peoples of the American nations shall know one another better. The Bureau of the American Republics is doing a great deal in that direction."

He spoke with marked confidence of the Pan-American usefulness of the Bureau under the management of Director Barrett.

" It is important that the leading men of the hemisphere should visit one another's countries. The visit of Secretary Root to Mexico and the words he spoke here have already been fruitful. Ignorant Mexicans have been led to think that their enemies live on the other side of our northern frontier. But when they see a distinguished American statesman and Cabinet officer like Mr. Root entertained in Mexico, and

Photographed by Waite from painting

THE TORTURE OF THE LAST OF THE MONTEZUMAS BY CORTES. THIS PICTURE APPEALS POWERFULLY TO THE AZTEC PEONS WHO CROWD THE NATIONAL ART GALLERIES OF MEXICO

248 PRESIDENT DIAZ

learn the words of friendship and respect he spoke, they cannot be misled again. Let the leaders of the Americas see more of one another and the Pan-American idea will grow rapidly, as the republics understand that they have nothing to fear and much to hope for from one another."

"And the Monroe Doctrine?"

"Limited to a particular purpose the Monroe Doctrine deserves and will receive the support of all the American republics. But as a vague general claim of power by the United States, a claim easily associated with armed intervention in Cuba, it is a cause of profound suspicion. There is no good reason why the Monroe Doctrine should not be made a general American doctrine, rather than a mere national policy of the United States. The American nations might bind themselves for self-defense, and each nation agree to furnish its proportion of means in case of war. They might even provide a penalty for a failure to fulfil the agreement. Such a Monroe Doctrine would make each nation feel that its national self-respect and sovereign dignity was not compromised, and would secure the American republics forever against monarchical invasion or conquest."

"How does the present tendency of national sentiment in the United States strike you at this distance, Mr. President ? You have as the leader of the Mexican people studied us for more than thirty years."

How strong he seemed, how frank, simple and sane, as he stood there in the sunlight on the ground where civilization began in the Western World—he whose boyish arm was too weak to serve Mexico when she was stripped of half her territory by American bayonets—he who since that unhappy day has trodden fifty battlefields and has defended his country against all enemies, internal or external!

"The people of the United States are distinguished by public spirit," he said. "They have a singular love of country. I meet thousands of Americans every year, and I find them to be, as a rule, intelligent workers and men of great energy of character. But their strongest characteristic is love of country. In my opinion, when war comes this spirit will change into a military spirit.

" In taking the Philippines and other colonies you have set your flag far from your shores. That means a great navy. I have no doubt that if President Roosevelt remains in office four years more, the American navy will equal the British navy in power."

A PIOUS PEASANT WOMAN ASCENDING THE SACRED HILL OF AMECAMECA, WEARING A CROWN OF THORNS. THE CROWD IS SOFTENING HER PENANCE BY THROWING SHAWLS AND BLANKETS UNDER HER BLEEDING KNEES

ONE OF THE RELIGIOUS SPECTACLES WHICH STIR THE BLANKETED PEONS OF MEXICO

"But, Mr. President, Cuba is to he given back to its people, and it is well understood in the United States that the people of the Philippines will receive their political and territorial independence as soon as they are fitted to govern themselves."

Listening soberly and with an expressionless face, he looked toward the snowy volcanoes, beyond which lay the scene of the bloody struggle in which he smashed forever the power of Europe in Mexican affairs and made imperialism a word of contempt among his countrymen.

" When the United States gives independence to Cuba and the Philippines," he said slowly and with some show of feeling, "she will take her place at the head of the nations and all fear or distrust will disappear from the American republics."

It is impossible to convey an accurate idea of the gravity and earnestness with which the President spoke.

" While you hold the Philippines you will be compelled not only to keep a great navy, but your army will increase in size."

" We are trying to make American school teachers take the place of soldiers in the Philippines," I ventured.

"I appreciate that, but I feel satisfied that in the end the people of the Philippines will gain more than the people of the United States and that the sooner you give up your Asiatic possessions the better it will be from every point of view. No matter how generous you may be, the people you govern will always consider themselves a conquered people."

There was a pause. A flock of pigeons wheeled about the castle. From the city came the muffled sound of church bells.

" Men are more or less the same all over the world," he continued. "Nations are like men. They must be studied and their motives understood. A just government is simply the collective ambitions of a people expressed in practical form.

" It all comes down to a study of the individual. It is the same in all countries. The individual who supports his government in peace or war has some personal motive. The ambition may be good or bad, but it is, at the bottom, personal ambition. The beginning of true government is the discovery of that motive, and statesmanship should seek, not to extinguish but to regulate individual ambition. I have tried to follow that rule in dealing with my countrymen, who are naturally a gentle, affectionate people, following their hearts oftener than their heads. I have tried to understand what the individual wants. Even in his worship of God a man expects some return, and how can a human government expect to find anything higher in its units?

" In my youth I had a stern experience that taught me many things. When I com-

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250 PRESIDENT DIAZ

manded two companies of soldiers there was a time when for six months I had neither advice, instructions nor support from my Government. I had to think for myself. I had to be the Government myself. I found men to be the same then as I have found them since. I believed in democratic principles then and I believe in them yet, although conditions have compelled stern measures to secure peace and the development which must precede absolutely free government. Mere political theories will not create a free nation.

"Experience convinces me that progressive government should seek to gratify individual ambition as far as possible, but that it must possess an extinguisher, to be used wisely and firmly when individual ambition burns too brightly for the general good."

"And the trust question, Mr. President ? How is a country like Mexico, with such vast natural resources awaiting development, to protect itself against the oppressions of such alliances of wealth and industrial combination as have grown up in your nearest neighbor, the United States?"

" We welcome and protect the capital and energy of the whole world in this country. We have a field for investors that perhaps cannot be found elsewhere. But, while we are just and generous to all, we are seeing to it that no enterprise shall be an injury to our people.

" For instance, we passed a law providing that no owner of oil-producing lands should have the right to sell them to any other person without the consent of the Government. Not that we objected to the operation of our oil fields by your American oil king, but that we were determined that our oil wells should not be suppressed in order to prevent competition and keep up the price of American oil.

" There are some things which governments do not talk about, because each case must be dealt with on its own merits, but the Mexican Republic will use its powers to preserve to its people a just share of its wealth. We have maintained free and fair conditions in Mexico thus far, and I believe we can maintain them for the future.

"Our invitation to the investors of the world is not to be found in idle promises, but in the way we treat them when they come among us."

And so I left the master of modern Mexico among the flowers and memories of the heights of Chapultepec.

__________

The Spanish-Indian boy who was to make the plundered and degraded Mexican nation a challenge to the statesmen, and a confusion to the political doctrinaires of the world, was born seventy-seven years ago in the town of Oaxaca, among the mountains of southwestern Mexico.

That same valley gave birth to Benito Juarez, the pure-blooded Zapotec Indian

Photographed by Waite from painting

BENITO JUAREZ, A PURE ZAPOTEC INDIAN, WHO INAUGURATED THE "REFORMS" IN MEXICO AND WAS THE COUNTRY'S FIRST CONSTITUTIONAL PRESIDENT

EVERY-DAY SCENE IN THE PLAZA FRONTING THE SPLENDID CATHEDRAL OF MEXICO

lawyer and patriot, "the man in the black coat," who was the first constitutional president of the Republic.

Porfirio Diaz was the descendant of Spaniards who married women of the Mixtec race, an industrious, intelligent, and honest people whose history is lost in the myths of aboriginal America.

He was the son of an inn-keeper. An institution of learning now stands memorially on the site of his birth. Three years after he was born his father died of cholera and his Spanish-Mixtec mother was left alone to support her six children.

When the grown boy wanted shoes, he watched a shoemaker, borrowed tools, and made them himself. When he wanted a gun he took a rusty musket-barrel and the lock of a pistol, and constructed a reliable weapon with his own hands. So, too, he learned to make furniture for his mother's house.

He made things then, as he afterward made the Mexican nation, by the sheer force of moral initiative, self-reliance and practical industry. He asked no one for anything that he could get for himself.

Go from one end to the other of Mexico's 767,005 square miles, on which more than 15,000,000 persons live to-day, and you will see everywhere evidence of this masterful genius. You turn from battlefields to schools, from schools to railways, factories, mines and banks, and the wonder is that one man can mean so much to any nation, and that nation an American republic next in importance to the United States and its nearest neighbor.

MORELOS, THE FIGHTING PRIEST WHO HELPED TO FREE MEXICO FROM SPAIN

251

Photographed by Waite. Mexico

MEXICAN INDIANS IN DANCING DRESS AT THE HOLY FEAST OF GUADALUPE

He found Mexico bankrupt, divided, infested with bandits, a prey to a thousand forms of bribery. To-day life and property are safe from frontier to frontier of the republic. After spending scores of millions of dollars on harbor improvements, drainage works and other vast engineering projects, and paying off portions of the public debt—to say nothing of putting the national finances on a gold basis—the nation has a surplus of $72,000,-000 in its treasury—this, in spite of the immense government subsidies which have directly and indirectly produced 19,000 miles of railways.

When he became President, Mexico's yearly foreign trade amounted to $36,111,600 in all. To-day her commerce with other nations reaches the enormous sum of $481,363,388, with a balance of trade in her favor of $14,636,612.

There were only three banks in the country when President Diaz first assumed power, and they had a small capital, loaning at enormous and constantly changing rates To-day there are thirty-four chartered banks alone, whose total assets amount to nearly $700,000,000, with a combined capital stock of $158,000,000.

He has changed an irregular and ineffective pretense of public instruction, which had 4,850 schools and about 163,000 pupils, into a splendid system of compulsory education, which already has more than 12,000 schools, with an attendance of perhaps a million pupils; schools that not only train the children of the Republic, but reach into the prisons, military barracks and charitable institutions.

And from one end of the country to the other —with $800,000,000 (gold) of American capital alone invested—it is the invariable testimony of both foreign and native investors that the Government is honestly administered and that business enterprises are dealt with fairly, intelligently, and without the slightest suggestion of blackmail, where before all was corruption, oppression and confusion.

The slender, dark-eyed Oaxacan boy, with the Spanish-Mixtec blood in his veins, who

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JAMES CREELMAN 253

was to do these wonderful things for his country, and change Mexico from a weakness and a shame to an honor and a strength among the American nations, could not foresee the mighty part he was to play in history. He wandered much as a child among the ruins of Mitla, those vast remains of a native civilization that reaches back beyond Cortes, beyond the Mayflower pilgrims, beyond Columbus, beyond even the Aztecs, to a time when the Zapotecs and Mixtecs reared their courts and altars, lived their theocratic and socialistic lives out on their own continent and dreamed not of the Spaniards who were to come with dogmatic theology and gunpowder.

Here among the extinct altars of his aboriginal American ancestors he learned to love his native soil with a love and strength that has thrilled into life the national spirit cowering under the blanketed, barefooted ignorance of Mexico, made a man capable of standing erect out of the gentle, starved, beaten Mexican peon, and set the Republic among nations to be respected and trusted.

It is difficult to realize that the white-haired President with whom I walked and talked at Chapultepec Castle in December—the hero and leader of his people—is the Porfirio Diaz who played among the ruins of Mitla, destined by his poor mother to be a priest.

__________

No man may say how old are the people who were yet to be made a nation by Diaz. Before the birth of Christ Mexico had cities, temples, courts and laws. Her sculptures, her potteries, her gardens and her gold, silver and copper mines are ancient beyond human knowledge.

In Yucatan and in Oaxaca are the remains of wonderful buildings made by the original American civilizers. Not far from the City of Mexico is the mighty pyramid of Cholula, larger than any pyramid in Egypt, on the summit of which stood the rich temple of Quetzalcoatl, the "fair god." About this pyramid, now a desolation, Cortes, the conqueror, counted four hundred temple towers before Spanish Christianity laid the city waste and destroyed its records. Yet the scientists who are to-day digging around the pyramid say that it was old and its origin unknown even before the ancient Aztecs discovered the plain of Cholula.

A TYPICAL MEXICAN PEON AND THE MAGUEY PLANT WHICH FURNISHES PULQUE, THE INTOXICATING CURSE OF THE REPUBLIC

THIS VIEW, OVERLOOKING AMECAMECA, GIVES A GOOD IDEA OF THE GRANDEUR OF MEXICAN LANDSCAPES. IT SHOWS THE TWO DEAD VOLCANOES—IXTACCIHUATL, TO THE LEFT ; POPOCATAPETL, TO THE RIGHT.

THROUGH A PASS ON THE RIGHT OF IXTACCIHUATL THE VICTORIOUS AMERICAN ARMY FORCED ITS WAY INTO THE VALLEY OF MEXICO, IN 1847. THIS IS PART OF THE SCENE SPREAD BEFORE MR. CREELMAN WHEN HE WALKED THE TERRACE OF CHAPULTEPEC CASTLE WITH PRESIDENT DIAZ

When the heathen King Penda was fighting to maintain the religion of Woden against the religion of Christ in England, and when Theodore I was Bishop of Rome, the Toltec race reigned in Mexico. The Aztecs appeared in the twelfth century when Richard the Lion-hearted was attempting to rescue the Holy Sepulcher from the Saracens. They settled in the Valley of Mexico and built their capital on piles in the middle of a shallow lake, now the City of Mexico.

The empire of the Montezumas began, it is said, about the year 1460, and when Cortes, the murderous and greedy Spanish invader, landed among the Aztecs, Montezuma II was on the throne. The death of that generous and amiable monarch by the arrows of his own warriors when Cortes compelled him to appear before his infuriated people in the hope of quieting them; the torture and death of Guatemoc, his royal successor and last of the Montezumas; the destruction of the native temples and records by Christian Spain—these were incidents in that great and thrilling spectacle of an entire civilization extinguished by force.

Throughout Mexico to-day you may see millions and millions of the descendants of the ancient Mexicans, in gaudy blankets, preposterously wide and tall hats, trousers so tight that you wonder how they are removed, sandaled or bare feet—a brown-skinned, straight-haired people, with large black eyes and indolent ways, an affectionate, gentle, polite, grateful people.

It is enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American to see these wronged peons, their wives and children, poor, patient, eager to be loved, responding instantly to every kind word or look, clinging to religion with a simple earnestness that adds a new holiness to the crumbling Christian shrines of their country; to see humble men and women everywhere holding hands, caressingly, even on the highways; to see the poor constantly giving to the poor; to see the solemn pride of the most wretched outcast when he speaks of Mexican independence—and to think of the three hundred years of unspeakable horror through which their ancestors passed under Spanish domination, robbed, tortured and degraded almost to the level of beasts.

There are fifty-five native tongues in Mexico and, even now, great multitudes speak only the Aztec language.

And to these original Americans, Porfirio Diaz is something less than a god, something more than a man. If he has shed blood freely, if he has governed with an iron hand, if he has seemed to deny the democratic principles for which he fought on the field, if he has retained office when he yearned for retirement, it was principally for the sake of the down-trodden peons; that through long peace, industry and education, even though the conditions were imposed by armed force, the trampled and stripped heirs of the first American civilization, the real children of its soil, might rise and remain forever a free and enlightened people—for, after all, when every vote in the Mexican Republic is cast and counted the country will be ruled by its aboriginal inhabitants.

Again and again during my talks with President Diaz in December he expressed his confidence in the ultimate rise of these wonderful tribes to the highest plane of civilization. He seemed to tower up with a new dignity when he spoke of them. His plan for nationalizing education is born of faith in them and their future.

Yet, in spite of the lovable and improvable qualities of the aboriginals, when you see them everywhere loafing in the sunlight against their little adobe huts—inert, content, procrastinating, lazy—it seems a miracle that one man could have changed the most corrupt, confused and helpless country on earth into modern Mexico. Perhaps it was this very transformation that confirmed the master of the nation in his dem-

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Photographed by Waite, Mexico

THE BEAUTIFUL AND STATELY YOUNG WIFE OF FRESIDENT DIAZ

ocratic principles and makes him look confidently to the final complete rule of the common people.

With the downfall of the Aztec empire the Spanish monks swept away every vestige of original civilization, and the annihilation of the great native temple on the spot where the present cathedral stands in the City of Mexico was merely a single event in a fierce vandalism that lost to the world the key to one of its oldest and most interesting civilizations.

It is not necessary to tell the appalling story of three hundred years of Spanish

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Photographed by Waite, Mexico

THE POWERFUL AND SUGGESTIVE PROFILE OF MEXICO'S GREAT PRESIDENT

viceroys in Mexico. They stripped the land and enslaved the people. With the reign of Phillip II—he whose religious bigotry made the Netherlands revolt; he who sent the Armada against England—the dread Inquisition was established in Mexico, and as recently as 1815 heretics were publicly burned to death on the ground where now you may walk in the capital among flowers and trees to the sound of a military band.

Before the Spaniards came the natives cut the hearts out of living human sacrifices in their worship of the gods, but the Christianity that followed Cortes seemed at times to trample the very souls out of its victims.

Dominican, Franciscan and Carmelite monks overran the country. The monastic

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orders became enormously rich. Their monasteries were fortresses. They got possession of the richest lands. Millions and millions of dollars were spent in the decoration of churches. Even to-day you may see evidence of the almost unbelievable extravagance that accompanied the cruel arrogance of monastic rule, while the mass of the people, beaten and cowed, sank into lower and lower depths of poverty and ignorance.

Yet that people produced the two greatest men in the history of Mexico—Benito Juarez and Porfirio Diaz, both with Indian blood.

It was a priest,—oh, marvelous wheel of Justice!—a priest of Spanish blood, who struck the first strong blow for Mexican independence, in September, 1810. Miguel Hidalgo was sixty years old when he ascended his primitive pulpit in the small town of Dolores, proclaimed the revolution in a loud voice, and, with a cotton banner bearing the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, followed by a handful of patriots, armed with knives and clubs, he roused a part of the country, stormed and captured Guanajuato, San Miguel and Celaya and marched against the capital.

The white-haired patriot-priest was defeated, captured and promptly shot to death with three of his companions.

Hidalgo's venerable head was stuck on a pike and exhibited for eleven years on the fortress wall of Guanajuato. It now rests in the splendid Cathedral of Mexico.

Another priest, Jose Maria Morelos, carried on the struggle begun by Hidalgo. He turned out to be a good soldier, and the story of his war for freedom is one of the most picturesque pages in history. But in 1815 he was taken prisoner, condemned by the Inquisition as "an unconfessed heretic, a traitor to God, to the King and to the Pope," and was shot.

It was Agustin de Iturbide, once a colonel in the Spanish forces, who won the tremendous fight attempted by Hidalgo and Morelos.

But Iturbide had himself proclaimed emperor, lived in a great palace—now a hotel swarming with American company promoters—and established the church as a monopoly.

Then arose General Santa Anna, a dashing, vulgar, brave adventurer, whose forces were finally scattered by American volleys. This picturesque and tyrannical rogue proclaimed a republic, banished the Emperor Iturbide, and, when the fallen Emperor returned to Mexican soil, had him shot.

Santa Anna was a brilliant political gambler who alternately governed the country through puppet presidents and played at being president or dictator himself. He won bat-

PRESIDENT DIAZ, WITH ONE OF HIS DAUGHTERS AND A GRANDSON

JAMES CREELMAN 259

ties, massacred prisoners, tried to crush the Texan revolution, was captured by the Texans and released, lost a leg in defending Vera Cruz against the French and had the limb buried with royal pomp; was twice exiled and twice recalled, and was again driven into exile by a revolution, only to return and die in obscurity. It was this many-sided but

Photographed by F. L. Clarke, Mexico

MAJOR PORFIRIO DIAZ, JR., SON OF PRESIDENT DIAZ. HE IS AN ARCHITECT-ENGINEER AND HAS DISTINGUISHED HIMSELF AS A SCIENTIFIC FARMER

unprincipled soldier who commanded in the disastrous war with the United States.

__________

While his country was gradually wrecked by successive wars and political intrigues, until bandits took possession of its highways and its blackmailing, perfidious officials were the scandal of the age, young Porfirio Diaz was studying in a Roman Catholic seminary in Oaxaca.

The news that an American army had invaded Mexico set his soul on fire. He walked two hundred and fifty miles across the rough country to the capital to offer himself as a soldier. But it was too late; Mexico had already surrendered nearly half of her territory to the conquering Americans.

The boy went back to his mother with a new look in his face. His godfather, the Bishop of Oaxaca, told him that he was to be a priest. He refused to accept the decision. He had made up his mind to be a soldier. A terrible scene followed, but he withstood the reproaches of his mother and the bishop.

In that hour the seed of modern Mexico was germinating unconsciously in the heart and brain of the Spanish-Mixtec lad of seventeen years.

Having renounced the career of a priest, he studied law and, in time, was able to earn his tuition fees by taking law pupils.

Through one of his professors, Don Marcos Perez, he met Benito Juarez, the illustrious Indian lawyer, then governor of the State of Oaxaca. Juarez, who was to begin the work of Mexican reform completed and

PORFIRIO DIAZ THE THIRD. HE IS THE SON OF THE PRESIDENT'S SON

VIADUCT OF METLAC, BETWEEN MEXICO CITY AND VERA CRUZ. AN EXAMPLE OF IMPORTANT ENGINEERING WORK WHICH IS TO BE SEEN THROUGHOUT MODERN MEXICO

unified by Diaz, took much notice of the youth and had him appointed librarian of the college. These two are the greatest names in Mexican history.

Suddenly Don Marcos Perez was arrested and confined in the turret of the local Convent of Santo Domingo as a conspirator against the dictatorship of Santa Anna. That kind of thing usually ended in an ignominious death.

It was important that the prisoner should have means of communication. His life depended on it.

Young Diaz did not desert his benefactor. With his brother he scaled the walls of the convent at night, swung from a rope in front of the prisoner's window, talked with him, escaped the dictator's sentinels, and twice returned to repeat the thrilling adventure. There is nothing in fiction more exciting than the tale of these three nights, when the

PRESIDENT DIAZ PRESENTING THE NATIONAL FLAG TO A MEXICAN BATTALION

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JAMES CREELMAN 261

future President of Mexico, hung on the end of a rope, planned in the darkness, almost within arm's-reach of the sentries, the safety of the Mexican patriot who had been his friend.

I thought of the pale youth swinging in the midnight air fifty-three years ago, when I saw him looking down from Chapultepec Castle in his old age, the maker of his nation, the most interesting and impressive figure of his time.

The revolt against Santa Anna's tyrannies in 1854 was led by General Alvarez, a pure Indian, who had fought for independence against Spain. The dictator audaciously called for a popular vote to sustain him.

It meant death or imprisonment to vote against Santa Anna. In Oaxaca the dictator's troops and cannon were drawn up in the plaza where the votes were recorded. The professors of the law institute—Diaz was now a professor—were commanded to vote as a body for Santa Anna.

The young professor, now only twenty-four years old, went to the scarlet-covered dais where the professors were tremblingly writing their names in favor of the dictator, and asked to be excused from voting.

He was taunted with cowardice. Without another word he went to the opposition book, where none had dared to write, and recorded

GUANAJUATO, THE WONDERFUL AND PICTURESQUE OLD CITY WHERE SO MUCH AMERICAN MONEY IS INVESTED IN MINING

his vote openly for General Alvarez, leader of the revolution against Santa Anna.

In the uproar which followed this daring act Diaz disappeared in the crowd, and, by the time his arrest was ordered, he had mounted a horse, and, rifle in hand, he rode down all who opposed him, reaching the town of Mixteca, where he put himself at the head of barefooted peons armed to overthrow the dictatorship, and scattered the troops sent to pursue him.

That was Porfirio Diaz at the age of twenty-four years.

After the fall of Santa Anna, General Alvarez became President, and he appointed Juarez minister of justice and ecclesiastical relations. Juarez drafted a law subjecting soldiers and the clergy to civil trial. This

262 PRESIDENT DIAZ

MONUMENT TO GUATEMOC, THE LAST OF THE MONTEZUMAS, TORTURED AND MURDERED BY CORTÉS, WHICH PRESIDENT DIAZ CAUSED TO BE ERECTED IN MEXICO CITY

aroused the clericals to opposition and the church preached resistance. General Alvarez resigned and Ignacio Comonfort formed a provisional government, announcing that the clergy must submit to the laws.

There was a clerical revolt in Puebla, which was promptly suppressed, and the cost of the operation was defrayed by a government sale of church property.

The war between the Church and the Republic had begun, and it did not end until the soil of Mexico was wet with blood.

The Republic forbade church corporations to possess lands, except what were actually necessary for church purposes; and directed the sale of all other church lands. Then a constitution abolishing all ecclesiastical or military privileges, providing for universal instruction and guaranteeing freedom of speech and of the press, the right of petition and association and the bearing of arms, was adopted. This was the cause of a great civil war.

Diaz became a captain in the National Guard, and in July, 1857, he led an attack on the clerical and conservative revolutionists near the village of Ixcapa. The battle became a hand-to-hand fight. The young captain, then- -twenty-seven years old, was hit in the side by a bullet, which made a large hole. He fell, but a moment later, white-faced and with blood streaming from his side, he rose and threw himself into the fight with his cheering soldiers until the battle was won. Nearly two years afterward an American naval surgeon removed this bullet.

While still suffering from his wound he was called upon to help to recover his native town, Oaxaca, from the fierce revolutionary leader, Cobos. With a squad of men he led a desperate attempt to break into the enemy's position. Later on, when his wound had re-opened and he was too ill to buckle a sword about him, his courage and leadership won the bloody fight for possession of Oaxaca.

Comonfort, having proclaimed the new constitution, had declared himself dictator, and then fled to the United States.

Juarez became President, pledging himself to maintain the constitution and to work for the destruction of the political power of the Church and the confiscation of its vast properties. The clericals and conservatives established General Miramon as President in

THE EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN

Mexico City—the handsome, courtly Miramon who was afterward executed by the side of the Emperor Maximilian.

War raged throughout Mexico. The marks of this terrific struggle are visible everywhere to-day.

It was a war in which priests appeared, crucifixes in hand, at the head of charging troops; a war in which the curse of the Church was thundered from hundreds of altars; a war in which the treasures of centuries were roughly stripped from walls, altars and sacristies, armed peon patriots roughly breaking: into dim interiors gleaming with gold: silver, jewels, priceless old carvings, embroideries, painted and sculptured Christs and Madonnas, gilded saints, robes encrusted with gems, shrines beautiful and soft with the dust and tarnish of ages— and tons of solid silver altar railings, gold vessels, embroideries woven of precious metals and all manner of costly accoutrements were melted down to pay the cost of soldiers.

Diaz had become governor of a state and military commander of a district. He had the rank of colonel.

The United States recognized President Juarez; but the enemy had him besieged in Vera Cruz, where he issued a proclamation confiscating the lands of the Church, followed by proclamations secularizing marriages and guaranteeing religious toleration.

Even against the whole force of the Church and its political allies, against ecclesiastical anathemas and against the accumulated influence of tradition, added to a desperate soldiery, backed by an intelligent aristoc-

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264 PRESIDENT DIAZ

A TYPICAL TEHUANTEPEC BEAUTY

racy, the black-coated Indian President and his army won steadily.

When the capital had been taken and Juarez was seated in authority, Diaz went back to Oaxaca and was elected to the Congress.

General Marquez, a remorseless slaughterer of prisoners, succeeded to the place of Miramon, and he advanced with his troops to attack the capital. When the firing was heard Diaz arose and asked the Congress to let him join the forces of the Republic.

The young colonel, by a night attack, led by him in person, defeated Marquez, capturing seven guns and seven or eight hundred prisoners. That made him a general.

It is useless to recount all the battles of Diaz. The record shows that he served Mexico as a soldier for fifty-four years.

__________

In 1862 President Juarez suspended payment on Mexican government bonds. There was no money. War had emptied the national treasury.

England, France, and Spain demanded payment for their bondholders and, failing to get more than promises, formed an alliance and sent an allied fleet to the Mexican coast.

The Republic was exhausted and the allies were permitted to land and occupy Vera Cruz.

Then the weak mind of Napoleon III took fire, and he dreamed of conquest. Presently he sent an agent, Don Juan Almonte, to propose a Mexican empire under the suzerainty of France, whereat Spain and England indignantly withdrew their forces.

At once the French proclaimed a military dictatorship under Almonte, and a French army marched inland. Diaz's brother was the first Mexican wounded in this advance.

There was a great battle fought at the City of Puebla. Diaz was second in command under General Zaragosa. Although the Mexicans were outnumbered three to one, they inflicted a terrible defeat upon the invaders, and Diaz is the most slashing, heroic figure in the story of that day's fighting. Mexico celebrates the victory of May 5th as one of her great national anniversaries.

Nearly a year later the French, with a greatly increased army, besieged Puebla,

JAMES CREELMAN 265

and, after weeks of fighting, sometimes from house to house and hand to hand—with Diaz thrilling his comrades by his desperate courage and brilliant methods—the city was starved into surrender.

Diaz was made prisoner, refused to give his parole and, with a peon's blanket covering his uniform, managed by a clever ruse to escape, visit President Juarez in Mexico City and accept command of the eastern army of the Republic, just before Juarez abandoned the capital to the invaders.

When the French had entered the capital the imperial crown of Mexico was offered to the Archduke Maximilian, a brother of the present Emperor of Austria. The young prince and his beautiful young wife, Carlotta, were escorted across the ocean by French and Austrian warships and were crowned Emperor and Empress in the Cathedral of Mexico. That was in 1863, when the Civil War prevented the United States from resisting a direct violation of the Monroe Doctrine.

Maximilian, who was young, handsome and much of a dreamer, set up a resplendent court under the influence of the girlish but intensely ambitious Empress Carlotta. But he continued to enforce the reform laws of Juarez, and that cost him much

Photographed by Cox

CHRISTMAS BOOTHS AROUND THE BEAUTIFUL ALAMEDA, IN MEXICO CITY, WHERE, NINETY-THREE YEARS AGO, THE INQUISITION PUBLICLY BURNED HERETICS

of the clerical support. He also executed several Mexican generals, including Diaz's brother. The Republicans never acknowledged the Empire, but continued to look to President Juarez, who retired, first, to San Luis Potosi, and then to Monterey.

Hard pressed, Juarez crossed into the United States. The Emperor then issued a proclamation declaring that all persons in arms against his Government were bandits and would be shot on capture. It was under

266 PRESIDENT DIAZ

this shameful decree that Maximilian executed the Mexican generals.

Napoleon had sent Field-Marshal Bazaine to support Maximilian in Mexico with something like forty thousand French bayonets.

Bazaine recognized in Diaz the most dangerous and intelligent of his enemies, and on his advice Maximilian tried to win the patriot general over to his cause. He even persuaded General Uraga, an old and beloved commander under whom Diaz had served, to write to him a seductive letter. Diaz answered in brotherly terms, but scorned the proposal, writing:

When a Mexican presented himself to me with the proposals of Luis [ Uraga's messenger], I ought to have brought him to trial according to law, and not to have sent you in reply anything more than the sentence and a notification of the death of your envoy. But the great friendship you invoke, the respect I have for you, and the memories of happier days, which bind me to you and to that mutual friend, relax all my energy and convert it into the weakness of returning him to you safe and sound, without a single word of odious recrimination.

The test to which you have submitted me is a very grave one, because your name and friendship constitute the only influence (if there be one) capable of forcing me to deny all my past, and to tear with my own hands the beautiful flag, emblem of the liberties and independence of Mexico. As I have been able to withstand this test, you may believe that neither the cruelest disillusions nor the greatest adversities will ever cause me to waver. . . .

Neither by myself, nor by the distinguished personnel of the army, nor by the towns of this extensive part of the Republic, can the possibility of an understanding with the foreign invasion be thought of, resolved as we are to fight without truce, to conquer, or to die in the challenge, to bequeath to the generation that succeeds us the same free and sovereign Republic which we inherited from our fathers.

After that letter, written when Diaz was thirty-four years old, when the head of his Government was a fugitive, when France and Austria were supporting Maximilian, and when the Emperor and his distinguished French field marshal were ready to honor the soldier to whom they stretched alluring hands, is it any wonder that, during the long years of his power, with the Republic at his feet and all opposition dissolved, not once has he been tempted to place a crown on his head and that now, at the summit of his authority and glory, he offers himself to the twentieth century and to all the centuries after, as a witness for democracy, a prophet of the ultimate virtue and capacity of his people?

Bazaine assembled an army and moved against Diaz at Oaxaca. The marshal commanded in person in the attack upon the patriot he had failed to corrupt. For weeks besieged and besiegers fought daily and the

JAMES CREELMAN 267

town was constantly under artillery fire. But at last, after losing more than two-thirds of his soldiers, and when all food and ammunition were exhausted, Diaz went on foot at night to Bazaine and surrendered Oaxaca.

The marshal said he was glad that Diaz realized his error—" it was criminal to take up arms against one's sovereign."

Diaz lifted his head and looked his conqueror straight in the eyes.

" I will not join, nor even acknowledge, the Empire," he answered. " I am just as hostile to it as I have been at the cannon's mouth. But further resistance is impossible and further sacrifice useless, as I have neither men nor arms."

HERE YOU HAVE THE ORDINARY SCENE AT A MEXICAN RAILWAY STATION

Then followed a long imprisonment. Diaz once more refused to give his word that he would not take up arms again for the Republic. The Emperor sent messages of warning. The French even threatened death to obdurate prisoners. Diaz said frankly that if he could escape he would take the field against the Empire.

The prisoner spent four or five months digging a subterranean tunnel from the cell of the convent in which he was confined, but before he could finish the work he was moved to another convent, his cell was deprived of light, and his guards were doubled.

Photographed by Percy Cox, Mexico

VENDERS OF TAMALES AND TORTILLAS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO ANNOY RAILWAY PASSENGERS. THEY CANNOT GO BEYOND THE RAIL

During his long imprisonment one of his old generals, who had entered Maximilian's service, came to his cell and said that the Emperor wished to see him and that the imperial carriage was in waiting to take him into the imperial presence. The Emperor desired to give Diaz command of a great part of his army.

The prisoner listened coldly and then, drawing himself to his full height, he said:

"I have no objection to such a meeting. But I will not go in the imperial carriage. The commander of your forces has the right to have me brought before him, but only as his prisoner, and if he is to see me he must see me in the ranks of his prisoners."

It was a fitting answer by the hero of the Americas to the crowned adventurer. Maximilian never forgot it.

It is an extraordinary proof of the energy, courage and resourcefulness of this man that, in spite of the fact that his prison was guarded with unusual vigilance and that a

268 PRESIDENT DIAZ

sentry entered his cell every hour—for he made no secret of his intention to gain his freedom—he contrived by a subterfuge to draw away the attention of his guards and managed to escape alone. Here is his own story of that dramatic night:

"Late at night on the 20th, I rolled into a small ball three ropes which I had surreptitiously obtained to assist me in my escape, putting another into my kit-bag along with a dagger, perfectly pointed and sharpened—the only weapon at my disposal.

"After the bell had sounded for silence in the prison I went out upon an open balcony near the roofs. It overlooked an inner courtyard of the convent. In this place the coming or going of a prisoner would attract little attention from the sentinels, for it was commonly used by us all for exercise.

"The night was particularly dark, but the stars shone clearly overhead.

" I took with me the ropes, wrapped in a gray cloth. Once assured that nobody was about, I flung them up onto the adjacent roof. Then I threw my last rope over a projecting stone gutter above me, which seemed very strong, and secured it with difficulty. The light was too feeble to enable me to see the gutter well.

" I tested the strength of my support, and feeling satisfied, climbed up the rope and onto the roof. Then I untied the rope by which I had ascended, and took possession of the three that I had previously flung up.

"My walk across the roofs to the corner of San Roque, the point I had chosen for my descent to the street, was very dangerous. Opposite me was the roof of a church, at such a height that it overlooked the whole of the convent. Here a sentinel was posted whose duty it was to watch the convent prison. Before I had made many steps I came to a part of the roof where there were many windings, for each of the convent cells was built within a semi-circular arch and corridors ran between these rows of arches. Threading my way along and taking advantage of every bit of shelter, crawling at times on hands and knees, I moved slowly in the direction of the sentinel, while seeking the point from which to effect my descent.

JOSE YVES LIMANTOUR, THE DISTINGUISHED MEXICAN SECRETARY OF FINANCES, WHOSE BRILLIANT POLICIES HAVE ATTRACTED THE ATTENTION OF THE FINANCIERS OF ALL COUNTRIES

"There were two sides of the courtyard square to be traversed. Often I had to stop and carefully explore the ground over which I moved, for many loose pieces of tiles and glass were strewn about the roof, which cracked and made noises under my feet. Moreover, frequent flashes of sheet lightning illuminated the sky, and at any moment might have disclosed my whereabouts.

JAMES CREELMAN 269

"At last I came to the protection of a wall where the sentinel on the church parapet could no longer see me unless he stooped down very low. I walked steadily along and rested, pausing to ascertain if any alarm had been raised. Here I was in great danger, for the stonework sloped and its surface was very slippery after the heavy rains. At one moment my feet slipped helplessly toward some window panes, which could have offered but little resistance; in fact I almost fell to the depths below.

"To get up to the street of San Roque, where I hoped to descend, I had to pass a part of the convent which was used as the chaplain's house. The man had only a short time before denounced some political prisoners who, in an ill-fated effort to escape, had cut a passage toward this dwelling. In consequence of this denunciation they were the next day taken out and shot.

"I needed, therefore, to be very careful not to rouse him.

"Almost breathless, I reached the roof of the chaplain's house, just as a young man who lived there entered by the door. He probably came from the theater, for he was gaily humming an air. I waited until he had reached his room. Shortly afterward he came out with a lighted taper, and actually walked in the direction where I

PRESIDENT DIAZ IN HIS PRIVATE CABINET

was crouching. Fortunately I was well concealed. After an interval, he went back to the house; probably it was only a few minutes, but minutes seemed hours to me in such circumstances. When I thought he had been a sufficient time in his room to have got into bed, perhaps to have fallen asleep, I crept onto the roof, and walked from there to San Roque corner, which at last I reached.

"Exactly at this corner of the roof, there is a stone statue of San Vicente Ferrer, which I had intended to make use of in securing my rope. Unfortunately, the saint tottered when I touched him. However, I thought he probably had an iron support

THE CENTRAL FIGURE, IN CIVILIAN DRESS, IS PRESIDENT DIAZ, WHO IS WATCHING THE TRIALS OF NEW MEXICAN CANNON

somewhere to keep him up; but for greater safety I secured the rope only round the base of the pedestal, which formed the angle of the building and seemed strong enough to bear any weight.

" I was afraid if I descended straight into the street at this corner, I might be seen by some passer-by in the act of climbing down my rope. I therefore determined to go down by the side of the house away from the main street, which gave me the advantage of some shadow. Alas, by the time I reached the second floor my feet missed their grip on the side wall, and slipping down on the garden side I landed in a pigsty.

"My dagger first fell from my belt and dropped among the porkers. Then I tumbled in among them. Alarmed at this intrusion, the pigs set up such a squealing that if any one had run to see what was the matter I should have been discovered at once. I hid again as soon as I recovered my feet, but had to wait until the pigs were pacified before venturing to move away from the garden. Then to reach the street I climbed a low wall. I had to beat a retreat quickly, for a gendarme was just passing on his rounds and examining the fastenings of the door below me. When he had gone I dropped into the street and breathed freely once, more.

"Sweating and almost exhausted with fatigue, I hurried to the house where I expected to find my horse, my servant, and a guide [Diaz had previously managed to communicate with these allies], and reached the place without further mishap.

" Once I was safely inside the house, the three of us looked to the loading of our pistols, mounted our horses and, after avoiding a cavalry patrol, left the city. I was almost certain that we should be stopped at the gate by the guard, and I fully intended to fight my way out, but fortunately the gate was open. There was a light within the lodge and a saddled horse waiting outside.

"We went through at full trot, and once out of the city, to gain time we broke into a full gallop."

Hardly had Diaz begun to organize and fight a series of desperate battles when a messenger from Maximilian came to say that the Emperor was willing to place himself in the hands of the Liberals, and to intimate that if Diaz would change his allegiance he might be commander-in-chief of the armies of the Empire. He sent back word that his one object

JAMES CREELMAN 271

was to make the Emperor his prisoner and subject him to the law of the Republic.

Again and again he swept the imperial forces before him.

Then the close of the Civil War left the United States free to defend the Monroe Doctrine, Napoleon was warned by the American Government that his armed interference in the affairs of the continent would no longer be tolerated, and he withdrew his troops, leaving Maximilian alone in Mexico.

The whole world knows how the Empress Carlotta went to Europe to beg assistance for her husband, how Napoleon turned his back on her, how she visited the Vatican and went mad while pleading with the Pope and how she was shut up in a Belgian castle where she still lives, as yet ignorant of Maximilian's death.

Diaz took Puebla after terrible slaughter, and while he was besieging the City of Mexico, Maximilian was captured in Queretaro by General Escobedo, was condemned by a court martial for his barbarous decree ordering Mexican soldiers to be slain as bandits and was, with his two generals, Miramon and Mejia, shot to death.

HIDALGO, THE PRIEST-PATRIOT WHO LED THE FIRST GREAT REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN AND DIED A MARTYR TO THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM

Then the capital surrendered and Juarez, the Indian President, returned to find the flag of the Republic flying above a sea of Diaz's bayonets. Diaz himself soon retired to become a farmer.

Later on the soldier took the field against Juarez on the ground that he had failed to carry out promised reforms. Juarez died and was succeeded by Lerdo, who attempted to suppress the Diaz revolution by concentrating a large army. Diaz retired to the United States, sailed in disguise for the south of Mexico from New Orleans; was recognized at Tampico, leaped into the sea, was pursued and captured in the water; but escaped again.

Following is the tale as written by one of Diaz's old officers:

While at Tampico the steamer City of Havana took on board Government troops who were going to Vera Cruz, among whom were several officers who recognized him at once, as they were the same men whom General Diaz had but recently defeated and made prisoners at the capture of Matamoras. It was useless for the mysterious passenger to attempt to avoid the inquisitive eyes of his fellow travelers and to refrain from appearing at the table.

From the very first he realized that he had

272 PRESIDENT DIAZ

Photographed by Harris & Ewing, Washington

DAVID E. THOMPSON, THE ABLE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR TO MEXICO, ONE OF PRESIDENT DIAZ'S OLD FRIENDS

been discovered and was being closely watched, and as unexpected bad weather was delaying the loading of the vessel and her departure to sea, he suspected they would seize and shoot him. Rather than run this danger, he decided to make his escape and trust his life to the dangers of the sea and the sharks. To make matters even more difficult, the steamer was anchored a long distance from the entrance to the port. However, his mind was made up. He divested himself of his clothes, and without other weapons than a dagger with which to defend himself against the attacks of sharks, let himself into the sea over the ship's side. He did not provide himself with even a life buoy, so as to be less conspicuous a mark for any one who might sec him and open fire on him in the water.

As it happened, he was seen immediately, because he was watched very closely, and the cry of "man overboard" warned him that he was discovered and would be pursued. Very soon after, he heard the sound of one of the ship's boats which had been lowered.

Then commenced a terrible race; a man hunt, witnessed by hundreds of spectators, in which the destinies of the nation trembled in the balance. The exciting chase was watched by the passengers of the Havana and the crews of two vessels, one American and the other from Campeche, both of which were anchored near the spot.

Assistance was proffered to him from the Campeche boat while he was swimming past her, but he would not accept it.

With all the strength of his powerful lungs and with the skill and daring of an expert swimmer he clove his way steadily through the water, but in an effort to throw his pursuers off his track lost his bearings, and instead of making for the shore, changed his direction by mistake and made for the open sea.

At length, though General Diaz was swimming strongly, his powers began to fail him, and after swimming round and round in a vain endeavor to find the right direction, he was forced to abandon the attempt and was dragged into the boat. There he lay on the bottom of the ship's pinnace, completely worn out by his superhuman efforts and the amount of sea water which he had swallowed, on account of the rough choppy weather, but not unconscious, as some have said. When they were neat the ship's side the postal agent, Gutierrez Zamora, threw him a shirt to put on, as he was naked.

After he had been brought on board, Lieutenant-colonel Arroyo, commanding President Lerdo's troops, at once attempted to take charge of the prisoner and try him by court martial, and thus obtain his promotion to the rank of general in reward for his diligence and zeal ; but the dauntless swimmer protested against this course of action, and, taking his pistol from under the mattress in his state room where it was hidden, called upon the captain of the ship to offer him the protection of the American flag , under which the Havana and her crew were sailing.

Lieutenant-colonel Arroyo was all for executing General Diaz without further ceremony, as thereby he was assured of his promotion to the rank of general, whereas, if he merely took him along prisoner, the Government would not consider this as any particular service, and promotion would be held from him, as had occurred in the case of Teran, who had been taken prisoner and not executed on the spot.

The captain of the ship listened to General Diaz's requests, and his aid was the more willingly given as between him and the prisoner there had passed certain Masonic signs. Moreover, the American sailor was greatly impressed with the daring and courage of a man who had risked his life in such a plucky manner.

It was arranged that he should he left under guard, but was considered at the same time as being on American soil, and the captain stated

JAMES CREELMAN 273

DON ENRIQUE CREEL, THE DISTINGUISHED AMBASSADOR AT WASHINGTON. HE IS ONE OF MEXICO'S RICHEST AND MOST CAPABLE MEN[1]

SEBASTIAN CAMACHO, PRESIDENT NATIONAL BANK OF MEXICO, AND FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT, MEXICAN NATIONAL PACKING CO.

he would not give him up until they reached Vera Cruz. However, he tried to disarm him, whereat General Diaz declared that he would only use his pistol in self-defence, but that they would have to kill him before he would allow any one to deprive him of his only weapon.

The captain ordered that the guard of an officer and five soldiers which had been placed at the door of General Diaz's cabin should be withdrawn ; but Arroyo, with the idea of his promotion still uppermost, made a pretence of putting a guard to watch the store of ammunition, and in this way continued to keep a close watch on the man he looked upon as his prisoner.

The following night was intensely dark and the fact that a storm was brewing made all circumstances favorable ; accordingly General Diaz determined to make another attempt at escape, despite the fact that the captain had offered to transfer him to an American man-of-war anchored near Tampico, an opportunity he did not care to avail himself of as it would have delayed his plans.

He cleverly managed to slip into the cabin of the purser, whose name was Coney, and told him of his plans. This officer, who was a good friend, endeavored to dissuade him from his determination and eventually suggested another way out of the difficulty.

General Diaz agreed to follow his advice. A life buoy was thrown into the sea so as to make the government soldiers think he had jumped overboard. Meanwhile, the prisoner hid himself in the cabin, not under a sofa as common rumor has it, but in a small locker. This ruse proved to be entirely successful, as, soon afterward, the disappearance of the prisoner was noticed, and his captors rushed to the side of the ship and commenced eagerly scanning the sea in the hopes of catching sight of him. What they did find, however, was the life buoy, and, as this was covered with great patches of bright red iron-rust which looked exactly like blood, it was surmised that the fugitive in trying to gain the shore had been eaten up by sharks.

However, as an additional precaution, General Alonso Flores had troops posted all along the beach, so as to capture the prisoner should he succeed in reaching the shore.

Meanwhile, General Diaz was undergoing indescribable torments, cramped as he was within the narrow limits of that tiny cabin locker, or cupboard. He could not stand upright, nor was he able to sit down, and had, besides, to keep his legs wide apart, so that the small doors of the locker could he shut. To add to the trying situation, Purser Coney, as a matter of policy and in order to disarm all suspicion, invited the Lerdist officers into his cabin, where they would often spend hours chatting and playing at cards. One of them who was sitting in front of the cupboard every now and then tilted his chair back, thus pressing the flaps of the door against the unfortunate man hidden within, who suffered agonies while it lasted. In this manner seven endless days of torment were passed on a diet of ship's biscuits and water, until the vessel reached Vera Cruz, where the dangers and difficulties of escape became more serious. The task before him was to escape from the ship without falling into the hands of the Lerdist troops, who were continually on the lookout for him. Colonel Juan Enriquez, who was then chief of the coast guard service at Vera

Cruz, managed to smuggle in to him a dilapidated sailor's suit and a very old pair of boots and at the same time sent him word to say that a rowboat in charge of a man whom he would recognize by certain signals would come alongside for him.

When the ship commenced to unload bales of cotton and the barges came alongside, his boat also appeared among them, and then the man, who every one supposed had been eaten by the sharks of Tampico, made his escape.

Once in the south, his power grew and his army won victory after victory. In November, 1876, with twelve thousand soldiers he triumphantly rode into the capital. A few weeks later he was elected President.

With the exception of four years—1880 to 1884, when General Gonzalez was elected because the constitution, afterward amended, forbade the reelection of a President—Diaz has been President ever since, and he will remain at the head of the nation till he dies or chooses to retire.

__________

Now the soldier became the statesman.

274 PRESIDENT DIAZ

Photographed by F. L. Clarke, Mexico

VICE-PRESIDENT CORRAL

He held the turbulent masses still. He made revolution an impossibility. He organized a police system that swept away the bandits. He built schools. He punished corruption, and made it known that a concession granted by Mexico would never be repudiated. He caused the national finances to be organized and the national revenues collected and spent honestly and intelligently. He began retrenchments by cutting his own salary from $30,000 to $15,000. He made a nation of Mexico, a nation whose laws and whose pledges meant something.

It had been proposed that no railroad should be permitted between Mexico and the United States. The Republic was to be saved from future invasion by an intervening wilderness. Against the bitterest opposition, and in the teeth of accusations against his loyalty to the Republic, Diaz welcomed the great trunk railways built by American capital, and had generous subsidies granted to them.

That was the policy which Diaz set against the cowardly cry, "Between the strong and the weak let there be a desert."

The Harriman interests are now building two immense railway lines through the western part of Mexico, spending about a million dollars a week, and these will connect through existing lines with the Pan-American road, which has been built almost to the Guatemalan frontier.

Among the most remarkable enterprises now being pushed forward is the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient line, which Arthur E. Stillwell is constructing. The road is sixteen hundred miles long and will cost about $30,000,000. It is already half built. The Kansas City, Mexico and Orient railway will cross the new Harriman lines on the way to its outlet on the Pacific.

There are nineteen thousand miles of railways operated in Mexico, nearly all with American managers, engineers and conductors, and one has only to ride on the Mexican Central system or to enjoy the trains de luxe of the National Line to realize the high transportation standards of the country.

So determined is President Diaz to prevent his country from falling into the hands of the trusts that the Government is taking over and merging in one corporation, with the majority stock in the Nation's hands, the Mexican Central, National and Inter-oceanic lines—so that, with this mighty trunk system of transportation beyond the reach of private control, industry, agriculture, commerce and passenger traffic will be safe from oppression. This merger of ten thousand miles of railways into a single company, with $113,000,000 of the stock, a clear majority, in the Government's hands, is the answer of President Diaz and his brilliant Secretary of Finances to the prediction that Mexico may some day find herself helplessly in the grip of a railway trust.

Curiously enough, the leading American railway officials representing the lines which are to be merged and controlled by the Government, spoke to me with great enthusiasm of the plan as a distinct forward step, desirable alike for shippers and passengers and for private investors in the roads.

Two-thirds of the railways of Mexico are owned by Americans, who have invested about $300,000,000 in them profitably.

As it is, freight and passenger rates are fixed by the Government, and not a time table can

JAMES CREELMAN 275

Photographed by Clinedinst, Washington

JOHN BARRETT, DIRECTOR OF THE BUREAU OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLICS, WHOSE WORK IS PRAISED BY PRESIDENT DIAZ

be made or changed without official approval.

It may surprise a few Americans to know that the first-class passenger rate in Mexico is only two and two-fifths cents a mile, while the second-class rate, which covers at least one-half of the whole passenger traffic of the country, is only one cent and one-fifth a mile —these figures being in terms of gold, to afford a comparison with American rates.

I have been privately assured by the principal American officers and investors of the larger lines that railway enterprises in Mexico are encouraged, dealt with on their merits and are wholly free from blackmail, direct or indirect.

Mr. Stillwell, of Kansas City, is not only building a railway from Kansas City through Mexico to the Pacific—in raising capital for which he has taken fourteen hundred American business men on special trains to Mexico within two years—but he has established and controls vast real estate enterprises in the Republic. He has something like seven million dollars invested in Mexico.

"In all my dealings with Mexican officials," he said to me, " I have never been asked to pay one dollar in bribery, direct or indirect. In establishing the American end of my railway I have had to fight politics and graft constantly. Here in Mexico I have been treated not only justly, but with great generosity. President Diaz told me once that if I were ever approached for a dollar of tribute by any Mexican official I had but to disclose the fact and, no matter how high up the official stood, he would lose his post at once."

More than $1,200,000,000 of foreign capital has been invested in Mexico since President Diaz put system and stability into the nation. Capital for railways, mines, factories and plantations has been pouring in at the rate of $200,000,000 a year. In six months the Government sold more than a million acres of land.

In spite of what has already been done, there is still room for the investment of billions of dollars in the Mines and industries of the Republic.

Americans and other foreigners interested in mines, real estate, factories, railways and other enterprises have privately assured me, not once, but many times, that, under Diaz, conditions for investment in Mexico are fairer and quite as reliable as in the most highly-developed European countries. The President declares that these conditions will continue after his death or retirement.

Since Diaz assumed power, the revenues of the Government have increased from about $15,000,000 to more than $115,000,000, and yet taxes have been steadily reduced.

When the price of silver was cut in two, President Diaz was advised that his country could never pay its national debt, which was doubled by the change in values. He was urged to repudiate a part of the debt. The President denounced the advice as foolish-

THE SADDLE ON THIS HORSE COST $5,000. BESIDE THIS TREE MONTEZUMA WEPT OVER HIS DOWNFALL

ness as well as dishonesty, and it is a fact that some of the greatest officers of the government went for years without their salaries that Mexico might be able to meet her financial obligations dollar for dollar.

The cities shine with electric lights and are noisy with electric trolley cars; English is taught in the public schools of the great Federal District; the public treasury is full and overflowing and the national debt decreasing; there are nearly seventy thousand foreigners living contentedly and prosperously in the Republic—more Americans than Spaniards; Mexico has three times as large a population to the square mile as Canada; public affairs have developed

THE ORDINARY MEXICAN PLOW. WHEN AN AMERICAN PLOW APPEARS, THE PEON SAWS OFF ONE HANDLE FOR CONVENIENCE

276

JAMES CREELMAN 277

strong men like Jose Yves Limantour, the great Secretary of Finances, one of the most distinguished of living financiers; Vice-president Corral, who is also Secretary of the Interior; Ignacio Mariscal, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Enrique Creel, the brilliant Ambassador at Washington.

And it is a land of beauty beyond compare. Its mountains and valleys, its great plateaus, its indescribably rich and varied foliage, its ever blooming and abundant flowers, its fruits, its skies, its marvelous climate, its old villages, cathedrals, churches, convents—there is nothing quite like Mexico in the world for variety and loveliness. But it is the gentle, trustful, grateful Indian, with his unbelievable hat and many-colored blanket, the eldest child of America, that wins the heart out of you. After traveling all over the world, the American who visits Mexico for the first time wonders how it happened that he never understood what a fascinating country of romance he left at his own door.

It is the hour of growth, strength and peace which convinces Porfirio Diaz that he has almost finished his task on the American continent.

Yet you see no man in a priest's attire in this Catholic country. You see no religious processions. The Church is silent save within her own walls. This in a land where I have seen the most profound religious emotion, the most solemn religious spectacles—from the blanketed peons kneeling for hours in cathedrals, the men carrying their household goods, the women suckling their babies, to that indescribable host of Indians on their knees at the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

I asked President Diaz about it while we paced the terrace of Chapultepec Castle.

He bowed his white head for a moment and then lifted it high, his dark eyes looking straight into mine.

" We allow no priest to vote, we allow no priest to hold public office, we allow no priest to wear a distinctive dress in public, we allow no religious processions in the streets," he said. "When we made those laws we were not fighting against religion, but against idolatry. We intend that the humblest Mexican shall be so far freed from the past that he can stand upright and unafraid in the presence of any human being. I have no hostility to religion; on the contrary, in spite of all past experience, I firmly believe that there can be no true national progress in any country or any time without real religion."

Such is Porfirio Diaz, the foremost man of the American hemisphere. What he has done, almost alone and in such a few years, for a people disorganized and degraded by war, lawlessness and comic-opera politics, is the great inspiration of Pan-Americanism, the hope of the Latin-American republics.

Whether you see him at Chapultepec Castle, or in his office in the National Palace, or in the exquisite drawing-room of his modest home in the city, with his young, beautiful wife and his children and grandchildren by his first wife about him, or surrounded by troops, his breast covered with decorations conferred by great nations, he is always the same—simple, direct and full of the dignity of conscious power.

In spite of the iron government he has given to Mexico, in spite of a continuance in office that has caused men to say that he has converted a republic into an autocracy, it is impossible to look into his face when he speaks of the principle of popular sovereignty without believing that even now he would take up arms and shed his blood in defense of it.

Only a few weeks ago Secretary of State Root summed up President Diaz when he said:

" It has seemed to me that of all the men now living, General Porfirio Diaz, of Mexico, was best worth seeing. Whether one considers the adventurous, daring, chivalric incidents of his early career; whether one considers the vast work of government which his wisdom and courage and commanding character accomplished; whether one considers his singularly attractive personality, no one lives to-day that I would rather see than President Diaz. If I were a poet I would write poetic eulogies. If I were a musician I would compose triumphal marches. If I were a Mexican I should feel that the steadfast loyalty of a lifetime could not be too much in return for the blessings that he had brought to my country. As I am neither poet, musician nor Mexican, but only an American who loves justice and liberty and hopes to see their reign among mankind progress and strengthen and become perpetual, I look to Porfirio Diaz, the President of Mexico, as one of the great men to be held up for the hero-worship of mankind."

[1] [TNO Ed. Note – This photograph appeared in the original issue of Pearson's Magazine for March 1908. When the article was subsequently re-published by Pearson's for further distribution, this photograph and its caption were removed, and replaced by that of Sr. Camacho, shown immediately below it.]

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