Diaz has been hurled from power in his eighty-first year!  The rising against him in Mexico has the character of a national revolutionary movement, the aims of which, perhaps, Madero himself has not clearly understood.  One thing the nation wanted apparently was the stamping out of what the party considered political immorality, fostered and abetted by the acts of what they called the grupo cientifico, or grafters, and by the policy of the Minister of Finance, Limantour, in particular.  Therefore, when Madero stood up as the chieftain of the revolution, inscribing on his banner the redress of this grievance, with some Utopias, the people followed him without stopping to measure his capabilities.  His promises were enough.

It is one of the saddest episodes in the history of great rulers, and at the same time one of the most important in the history of a country.  Mexico, which has pushed so brilliantly ahead in finance, industry, and agriculture, has still lagged behind in political development.  The man who made a great nation out of half-breeds and chaos was so sure of his own position, his own strength, and I may say his own motives, that he did not encourage antagonism at the polls, and “free voting” remained a name only.

A German author has said that all rulers become obsessed with the passion of rule.  They lose their balance, clearness of sight, judgment, and only desire to rule, rule, rule! He was able to quote many examples.  I thought of him and his theory when following, as closely as one is able to do six thousand miles away, the recent course of events in Mexico.  Would he in a new edition add General Diaz to his list?

Diaz has reached a great age.  On the 15th September, 1910, he celebrated his eightieth birthday.  He has ruled Mexico, with one brief interval of four years, since 1876.  For thirty-five years, therefore, with one short break, the country has known no other President; and Madero, who has laid him low, was a man more or less put into office by Diaz himself.  A new generation of Mexicans has grown up under the rule of Diaz.  Time after time he has been reelected with unanimity, no other candidate being nominated—­nor even suggested.  Is it to be wondered at that, by the time his seventh term expired in 1910, he should have at last come to regard himself as indispensable?

That he was so persuaded permits of no doubt.  “He would remain in office so long as he thought Mexico required his services,” he said in the course of the first abortive negotiations for peace—­before the capture of the town of Juarez by the insurrectionists, and the surrender of the Republican troops under General Navarro took the actual settlement out of his hand.

It was a fatal mistake, and it has shrouded in deep gloom the close of a career of unexampled brilliancy, both in war and statesmanship.  The Spanish-American Republics have produced no man who will compare with Porfirio Diaz.  Simon Bolivar for years fought the decaying power of Spain, and to him what are now the Republics of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru owe their liberation.  But Diaz has been more than a soldier, and his great achievement in the redemption of modern Mexico from bankruptcy and general decay completely overshadows his successes in the field during the ceaseless struggles of his earlier years.