Times—and various smaller publications, as well as many private individuals and a book publisher or two took up the work of defending their friend Diaz.
As to the book defense against "Barbarous Mexico," little has appeared so far, doubtless because of the shortness of time, but there are reports that several books are on their way. One of these, it is said, is to be by James Creelman, who left the employ of Pearson's Magazine at the call of Diaz, hurried to Mexico from Turkey, and spent several weeks going over the route I described in my articles, in order that he might be able to "refute" me with verisimilitude, no doubt.
The book "Porfirio Diaz," written by Jose F. Godoy, whom Diaz recently appointed as his minister to Cuba, though it does not refer to my exposures in any way, was quite likely hurried out because of them. Here is a very expensively printed book, containing nothing that has not been printed repeatedly before, except—seventy pages of endorsements of Diaz written by prominent Americans. Here we have the case of a man, Mr. Godoy, who actually went about—or sent about—among senators, congressmen, diplomats and cabinet officers, soliciting kind words for President Diaz. And he got them. In looking over this book it seems to me that almost any discriminating persons would be moved to inquire what moved G. P. Putnam's Sons to issue that book. Surely it was not entirely the hope of profitable sales to the general public.
I know of only one book of criticism of the Diaz system that was put out by a regular American publisher, and the criticism in that book was so veiled and so interspersed with flattery that the American reviewers took it for one of the old adulatory sort. Only one of
