and the establishment in the political laws of the principle of one term. The political problem seemed to be the most important of all questions, and it absorbed entirely the public's attention so that the economic and social problems were lost sight of.

General Diaz accepted very easily his last reëlection, and permitted to be named with him, as vice-president, Ramón Corral, who represented the perpetuation of the Diaz régime. No other candidates than Diaz and Corral were admitted. Madero was arrested before the elections, and the triumph of the Diaz-Corral ticket made it apparent that it was impossible to obtain a political change by ballot.

On his escape from prison, Francisco I. Madero started the revolution. The plan of San Luis Potosi, which was the basis of the movement, made it clear that the leaders still considered as the chief problem of Mexico a political change, and the purpose of that plan was chiefly a change of government.

The rural classes, however, followed Madero, and supported him in the revolution initiated by him, under the tacit belief that his revolution would bring some agrarian reforms which were needed to improve the condition of the masses, but which were not yet enunciated in any concrete form.

General Diaz believed that he would stop the revolution by his retiring from power. The negotiations at Juarez, by which General Diaz agreed to retire and to deliver the government to a provisional president, checked the revolution precisely when it began to acquire its actual strength and real form.

De la Barra, a vacillating and Jesuitic character, had no formative policy during his administration. As a creature of General Diaz, intimately connected with the conservative element of the old régime, he merely limited himself to muster out the revolutionary army, as the way in which he understood peace ought to be reëstablished.

By this negative action he minimized the effect of the revolution and he prepared a reaction in favor of the old régime. The same men who surrounded General Diaz and who had urged the continuation of his policies, returned to

the country when they saw that they were not persecuted, and started a political campaign against Madero and against the revolution. It was during this period that efforts were made to concentrate the public opinion in favor of General Reyes and De la Barra himself as presidential candidates against Madero.

It was at this same time that the clerical party which since 1867 had shown no signs of life, was revived under the name of the Catholic party, and clearly showed that it favored the reactionary principles of the Diaz régime.

De la Barra's ad-interim administration can be summed up by saying that while he received the government in trust to be turned over to the revolution, he did everything in his power to keep it for himself and to avoid the advent of the new régime, thus showing disloyalty both to Madero personally, and to the revolution itself.

When Madero came into power in November, 1911, he found the government in such condition that he was unable to change its direction, and was forced to accept existing conditions and even the same cabinet appointed by De la Barra, in which the most influential part was played by Ministers Calero, Hernández and Ernesto Madero.

Surrounded by nearly all Diaz followers, Madero could not establish a reform policy. During all the time of his government, he was constantly called by two opposite tendencies: on one side the reactionary in favor of the Diaz régime, and on the other side the revolutionary.

Madero tried to make friends of the Diaz partisans but unsuccessfully. At the same time he lost the support of the greater part of the men who had helped him during the revolution.

At the very beginning of Madero's administration a protesting movement started, which was backed by some of the old régime. The insurrections of Pascual Orozco and of General Bernardo Reyes were no more than attempts of reaction against the 1910 revolution. The insurrection of Félix Diaz in the month of September, 1912, demonstrated that the reactionary sentiment had acquired a great importance, and that the army, which was the same army left by

General Porfirio Diaz, was not in sympathy with the revolution nor with Madero personally.

The uprising of the arsenal at Mexico City in the month of February, 1913, was the most vigorous reactionary movement of any started against Madero, and it gave General Huerta a chance to place himself at the head of the reaction.

General Huerta, who had been in the army since the time of General Diaz's administration, remained in it during the ad-interim administration of De la Barra, and later was under the orders of President Madero.

In the spring of 1912, Huerta had rendered President Madero very important services in overcoming the revolutionary movement started by Pascual Orozco in Chihuahua.

The prestige acquired by General Huerta after his campaign against Orozco, made him appear as one of the rising political figures in Mexico, in spite of his deficient culture, and his not very commendable personal habits. The enemies of Madero soon began to drop words of personal ambition in his ear, and finally succeeded in convincing him that he was the most prominent of the military officers and Madero's chief support in maintaining power.

When in the month of February General Félix Diaz captured the arsenal, Huerta, who was then the commanderin-chief of President Madero's troops, did not make, as a matter of fact, any serious effort to recapture the arsenal and overcome Félix Diaz. He had already realized that the fate of the government was in his hands, and during the tragic ten days of the bombardment of the city he kept a dubious attitude.

The fight, or rather the firing sustained by either side, was used by Félix Diaz's supporters as a moral pressure to bear on Madero to obtain his resignation. Various influences were resorted to for that purpose. Finally, the pressure brought to bear by the foreign residents and the diplomatic representatives, gave Huerta an excuse to attempt his coup, seemingly with the purpose of reëstablishing peace through the arrest and deposition of Madero and Pino Suarez.

The principal rôle in this coup d'etat, as regards the help

given by foreign residents and diplomats to the uprising of Félix Diaz and the subsequent overthrow of Madero by Huerta, was played by Mr. Henry Lane Wilson, American ambassador. He can be considered as the chief adviser of Huerta and Diaz, during the bombardment and, indeed, as the one really responsible for that coup d'etat.

After Madero and Pino Suarez had been arrested, they were compelled to hand in their resignations. As provided by the Mexican Constitution, the secretary of foreign relations, Mr. Pedro Lascuráin, took charge of the executive power, but only for a few minutes, just long enough to appoint Huerta as secretary of the interior and to hand in his own resignation himself. By virtue of this resignation, Huerta was to assume the presidency at once.

The Mexican congress, acting under duress, and believing that the lives of the president and the vice-president would thus be spared, accepted their resignations, and endorsed the appointment of Huerta as president of the Republic.

The assassination of Madero and Pino Suarez was an act of a purely political character; it was discussed and approved by General Huerta and his cabinet1 as the most expeditious way of removing all possible obstacles to the political success of the new administration. Huerta thought that by putting Madero and Pino Suarez out of the way he would remain practically without enemies. He was mistaken in thinking that Madero and Pino Suarez were the only obstacles that the new administration would have to overcome.

General Huerta's administration, both on account of its acts and of its men, was a thorough restoration of the dictatorial régime of General Diaz, with the only difference that the dictator was now Huerta, and that dictatorial measures and rigorous methods were carried to an extreme they had never reached before, not even in the most hazardous times of General Diaz's administration.

1 The cabinet of General Huerta, which was appointed in accord with Félix Diaz, was: Francisco L. de la Barra, Alberto García Granados, Toribio Esquivel Obregón, Rodolfo Reyes, Manuel Mondragón, Alberto Robles Gil y Jorge Vera Estañol.

During Madero's government, the position of the revolutionary element was uncertain and awkward, because while they were supposed to be exercising a great political influence through Madero, practically they had no influence whatever since the Madero government was almost controlled by the conservative cabinet.

After the death of President Madero, the position of the revolutionary elements became clear. During his life, for reasons of loyalty and hope of a change, they had never taken an aggressive attitude, but once the president was dead and nothing to be hoped for from Huerta, there was no difficulty in renewing the struggle.

Huerta represented the reaction and his government was no more than the restoration of the government of General Diaz, with its same proceedings and the same men, under the orders of another chief.

The revolution against Huerta is nothing more than the revolution started in 1910 by Madero, and which having been checked in 1911 by virtue of the negotiations of Juarez and the election of Madero, now continued and entered into full activity, augmented because of the revolting circumstances under which the fall of Madero had taken place. The death of Madero has been one of the most powerful sentimental factors to increase the revolutionary movement against Huerta.

It has been very widely stated that the Carranza movement has only the purpose of avenging the death of Madero and reinstating the office-holders appointed by him. This is not the case. The purposes of the Constitutionalists are higher and better defined than were the motives of the 1910 movement. The Constitutionalists propose the reëstablishment of a Constitutional government in Mexico, but as they realize the unfitness of the Mexican Constitution and other laws, they intend to reform them in order to have a system fitted to the country.

There is no doubt that peace in Mexico cannot be established unless a complete change takes place in the government's personnel and in the systems and laws. This is the