upon one fact—upon his having "encouraged" foreign capital.
"Diaz, the peace-maker, the greatest peace-maker alive, greater than Roosevelt!" chanted an American politician in a banquet at the Mexican capital recently. And the chant was only an echo of louder voices. I remember seeing, not long ago, a news item stating that the American Peace Society had made Porfirio Diaz an honorary vice-president, in consideration of his having brought peace to Mexico. The theory seems to be that since the history of Mexico before Diaz was full of wars and violent changes in the government and the history of Mexico under Diaz has been without violent upheavals of far-reaching effect, Diaz must necessarily be a humane, Christ-like creature who shrinks at the mention of bloodshed and whose example of loving-kindness is so compelling that none of his subjects have the heart to do anything but emulate him.
In answer to which it will only be necessary to refer the reader to my account of how Diaz began his career as a statesmen by deliberately breaking the peace of Mexico himself, and how he has been breaking the peace ever since—by making bloody war upon the self-respecting, democratic elements among his people. He has kept the peace—if it can be called keeping the peace—by killing off his opponents as fast as their heads have appeared above the horizon. This sort of peace is what the Mexican writer DeZayas calls "mechanical peace." It has no virtue, because the fruits of legitimate peace fail to ripen under it. It neither brings happiness to the nation, nor prepares the nation for happiness. It prepares it only for violent revolution.
For more than twenty years before arriving at the supreme power in Mexico Diaz had been a professional
