ity, he felt, could
be assured only by imposing upon the country the heavy weight of an iron
hand. Foreign capital must be invested in Mexico and then protected;
immigration must be encouraged, and other material, moral, and
intellectual aid of all sorts must be drawn from abroad for the
upbuilding of the nation.

To effect such a transformation in a land so tormented and impoverished
as Mexico--a country which, within the span of fifty-five years had
lived under two "emperors," and some thirty-six presidents, nine
"provisional presidents," ten dictators, twelve "regents," and five
"supreme councilors"--required indeed a masterful intelligence and a
masterful authority. Porfirio Diaz possessed and exercised both. He was,
in fact, just the man for the times. An able administrator, stern and
severe but just, rather reserved in manner and guarded in utterance,
shrewd in the selection of associates, and singularly successful in
his dealings with foreigners, he entered upon a "presidential reign" of
thirty-five years broken by but one intermission of four--which brought
Mexico out upon the highway to new national life.

Under the stable and efficient rulership of Diaz, "plans,"
"pronunciamentos," "revolutions," and similar devices of professional
trouble makers, had short shrift. Whenever an uprising started, it was
promptly quelled, either by a well-disciplined army or by the rurales,
a mounted police made up to some extent of former bandits to whom the
President gave the choice of police service or of sharp punishment for
their crimes. Order, in fact, was not always maintained, nor was justice
always meted out, by recourse to judges and courts. Instead, a novel
kind of lynch law was invoked. The name it bore was the ley fuga, or
"flight law," in accordance with which malefactors or political suspects
taken by government agents from one locality to another, on the excuse
of securing readier justice, were given by their captors a pretended
chance to escape and were then shot while they ran! The only difference
between this method and others of the sort employed by Spanish American
autocrats to enforce obedience lay in its purpose. Of Diaz one might say
what Bacon said of King Henry VII: "He drew blood as physicians do, to
save life rather than to spill it." If need be, here and there, disorder
and revolt were stamped out by terrorism; but the Mexican people did not
yield to authority from terror but rather from a thorough l