BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

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—that 1e was suffering from a common malady vlii:h
comes t1Ofl one overpowered by acute and panicky fear.
The fact that when Diaz seized the power he carefully
excluded from any part in the government each and
every one of the most popular and able Mexicans of the
day is attributed to fear. The fact that he maintains a
large army which he distributes in every quarter of the
country, and a huge secret police system armed with
extraordinary power to kill on suspicion, the terrible
way in which -lie gets rid of his enemies, his bloody
massacres themselves, even his muzzling of the press,
are all attributed to arrant cowardice. In his book
"Diaz, Czar of Mexico," Carlo de Fornaro voices this
belief in the cowardice of Diaz and reasons quite effectively
upon it. He says:
"Like all people quick to anger he (Diaz) is not really fearless,
for as the jungle song says, 'Anger is the egg of fear.'
Fearful and therefore ever vigilant, he was saved from destruction
by this alertness, as the hare is preserved from capture by
his long cars. He mistook cruelty for strength of character
and consequently was ever ready to terrorize for fear of being
thought weak. As a result of the outrageous nickel law and
the payment of the famous English debt in the period of
Gonzalez, there happened a mutiny. 'Knife theni all,' suggested
Porfirio Diaz to Gonzalez. But Gonzalez was not afraid.
"Last year, on the 16th of September, as the Mexican students
desired to parade on the streets of the capital, they sent their
representative, a Mr. Olea, to beg the President's permission.
Porrio Diaz answered: 'Yes, but beware. for the Mexicans
have revolutionary tendencies lurking in their blood.' Think of
three score of youngsters parading unarmed being a menace to
the republic, with 5,000 soldiers, rurales and policemen in the
capital!
"It is only by admitting this shameful well-hidden stigma on
the apparently brave front of this man that we can logically
explain such desp icable and infamous acts as the Tn:lsars
of Veracruz and Orizaba. He was then panic-stricken, like a