Diaz, master of Mexico . promise in which it was if the wisest and best-poised statesman of his agecould say that of the great organic law in which the un-conquerable aspirations and capacities of the Anglo-Saxon race burst into blossom, what must philosophy—statelier name for common sense—say of the varyingshifts and compromises which inevitably lie betweenthe noble democratic formulas borrowed from Anglo-Saxons by imaginative Mexican patriots, and the peace,prosperity and ultimate individual liberty which are thesupreme objects of the republic, a vast majority ofwhose citizens
Diaz, master of Mexico . promise in which it was if the wisest and best-poised statesman of his agecould say that of the great organic law in which the un-conquerable aspirations and capacities of the Anglo-Saxon race burst into blossom, what must philosophy—statelier name for common sense—say of the varyingshifts and compromises which inevitably lie betweenthe noble democratic formulas borrowed from Anglo-Saxons by imaginative Mexican patriots, and the peace,prosperity and ultimate individual liberty which are thesupreme objects of the republic, a vast majority ofwhose citizens can neither read nor write, are indi-vidually indifferent to political institutions, and appar-ently descended from many Oriental, probably Asiatic,bloods ? There is no more heroic, no more picturesque, nomore commanding and appealing figure in the worldthan Porfirio Diaz, in whose veins leaps the tide-rip oftwo races and two civilizations; nor does modern historypresent a more wonderful and bewildering problem than8. THE QUICK AND THE DEAD Mexico, the mystery of whose remote past, unreadablein prehistoric palaces and temples, makes her future allthe more searchless. In the name of religion, the Spanish priests who wentto Mexico under the protection of Hernan Cortes andhis steel-clad conquistadorcs extinguished an entire civili-zation reaching back, perhaps, thousands of years, by asystematic, pitiless, and complete destruction of itsrecords. The long and bloody struggle which drove the Span-ish flag from Mexico was followed by a savage and,at times, almost barbarous conflict between the repub-lican forces and ecclesiastical authority, which strippedthe arrogant and licentious monastic orders of theircivic powers, sheared the Church of its enormous prop-erties, abolished its exclusive privileges, and politicallydisfranchised its priesthood, leaving the government ofthe triumphant republic to an experimental democraticstatesmanship seeking to express an unlimited imagina-tio
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