ble to understand them.
After that, Huerta sought to reestablish the old Diaz regime of wealth
and terrorism; but he only succeeded in plunging the land back into
utter barbarism.

The Mexicans are the last large section of the earth's population thus
left to rule themselves in savagery. Hence the rest of the world has
watched them with eagerness. Europe repeatedly reminded the United
States that by her Monroe Doctrine she had assumed the duty of keeping
order in America. At last she felt compelled to interfere. The picture
of those days of anarchy is here sketched by two eye-witnesses, an
Englishman and an American, both fresh from the scene of action.

EDWIN EMERSON

There is a saying in Mexico that it is much easier to be a successful
general than a successful president. Inasmuch as almost all Mexican
presidents during the hundred years since Mexico became a Republic,
owed their presidency to successful generalship, this saying is
significant. At all events, no Mexican general who won his way into the
National Palace by his military prowess ever won his way out with
credit to himself or to his country.

General Victoriano Huerta, Mexico's latest Interim-President, during
the first few months that followed his overthrow of the Madero
Government found out to his own cost how much harder it is to rule a
people than an army.

As a matter of fact, General Huerta was pushed into his
interim-presidency before he really had a fair opportunity to learn how
to command an army. At the time he was so suddenly made Chief
Magistrate of Mexico he was not commanding the Mexican army, but was
merely a recently appointed major-general who happened to command that
small fraction of the regular army at the capital which was supposed to
have remained loyal to President Madero and his constitutional
government. Huerta had been appointed by President Madero to the
supreme command of the loyal forces at the capital, numbering barely
three thousand soldiers, only a few days before Madero's fall. Even if
he had not turned traitor to his commander-in-chief, as he did in the
end, Huerta's command of the loyal troops during the ten days' struggle
at the capital preceding the fall of the constitutional government
could not be described as anything but a dismal failure.

Before considering General Huerta's qualifications as a President, one
should know something of his career as a soldier. During the last few
years it has repeatedly fall