Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-10-07

ly administered as any state in our Union
bar none; as easily traversed as any OF
Gus states west Of the Missouri: as COM
pact and national In spirit, and In fact,
as could wish some better countries to
pc. OF sound business prosperity in every
line that ingenuity could question. and of
mental awakening as honorable as 1t il
overwhe'm ming
Diaz not only crushed revolution-and the
way TO crush Is to crush-and weeded out
corruption in office and cured the thieves
and brigands and agitators who were
durable and wiped out those that were not
He fetched into Mexico the largest rail-
road building that has been seen since our
transcontinental lines. and supplemented
them with the telegraph and a very good
postal service. He slaughtered the OBJ
structfve Interstate and intertown tariffs
multiplied manufactures by an enormous
figure through judicious legislation turned
the balance Of trade and changed revenue
from cavity to eminence. He set a
unit to the church. and began to make
prisons We can justly envy. He greatly en-
powered colleges; and from the medieval
suppression of women to domestic ignor-
ance subverted that whole immemorial fab
ric and began Qor the first time on a large
scale. believe. in any Spanish-speaking
country to provide literally for women's
rea! education. Long before he became a
national figure he established girls school
In Oaxaca: and now any bright girl in the
republic can get n modern and practical
education If she WILL
Father of the Public Schools.
Above all. he is the father of the public
school In Mexico a system to which In
gives not only the due turn OF the reins,
but his earnest personal care There is not
village in Mexico, even in the remote In.
dian districts, which has not its free public
school: and the normal schools OF the re-
pubic are turning out yearly little army
OF earnest and pretty well-equipped teach
ers for these schools. Manual training
schools. professional schools. all are taking
rank In poor old Mexico which no one
Will disparage who fairly knows the facts.
Peace. security. communication. COM
merce, education-these are in Mexico
the child children Of one patriot They are.
to speak generically. and only of pro-
portions large enough to count in history,
modern inventions there and the invention
OF Dfaz- Mexico had taste of all of them
before. at times and by unsatisfying bites
but now they are on the regular bill Of
fare. I do not deem it too much to call the
man who could do this. soon and from so
little. one of the worlds great figures. the
man who did do it one of the great pa
triots. And no one fully grounded in the
chronicles and in the visible facts Of the
held will call in question these apparently
large statements. There sometimes are big
men.
The Presidents Wife,
A factor not to be forgotten in the esti-
mate of this great success is the present
Sonora DiaZ, the presidents young and
lovely second wife. His first died in his
years Of stress, leaving him three good chill
dren In 1883 he remarked, taking Carmen
Rubio, the daughter Of an old opponent
then not twenty. but already a woman OF
the rarest charms. Not one of ten in
Mexico would know who ia Sonora Diaz'
might be; every one in Mexico old enough
to talk man, woman or child. Indian or
mestizo or don. knows and revereS and
loves 'Carmelita' with devotion as deep
as it is patriarchal. Beautiful. gracious.
hlghly educated a type of the very highest
womanhood, not alone the actual charities
to which she devotes much time money
and hard work, but her every relationship.
have endeared her to her nation. 1t will
be fairly wise historian who shall be able
to say how much of Mexican progress has
been due to this lovely personality, winning
hearts for the strong man at the helm.
Mexico n Safe Country.
Mexico today is as Unconditional as New
England. The most offensive tourist can
go anywhere with as perfect safety as is
found in this mortal sphere. He can say
things that would get him knocked down in
any New England village, and wear man
ners such as We never saw. 1t is quietly
amusing to those who have any real knowl-
edge of the country when he ascribes his
safety to the fact that Mexico is a des-
potlsm: that Diaz is and the little
pollcias at the corner his spies and that
no one dares be bad. The great secret is
now that no one seriously wishes to.
A good, serious man could go out any
morning in any Mexican town under 90 900
and strangle all the soldiers in it. for a
constitutional. He would not have pro-
longed need of a constitution, it is
true, for there is law in Mexico and it
goes. But the idea that the country is a
military camp a close corpora ton OF
the despot, or a nursery of spies and pass
ports, is so grotesquely false and foolish
that those who entertain it are proper for
warders of our gayety. Mexico is pretty
thoroughly governed, but absolutely with
out a trace of Caesarsm The hard
hand" (and those are his own words to mel
was used when need was to throttle bri-
gandage and revolution and uplift wilIfuI
wallowing." But the machinery is aston
ishingly simple and small and untyrannous
as great minds devise. And, strangest of
all, 1t is not so much to carry deadheads
and make places as it is to get effective
public service. The service is not perfect.
Mexico being stdll populous with human
beings and not much invaded by angels
Qn spite of much immigration from the
north).
But there is no machine" no aggre-
CATION for purposes of plumber, and the
civil service of Mexico. by and large, is
not anything we can fully afford to sneeze
at. Despite our proper distrust of every
thing we do not know. the time has come
when to despise Mexico Is to confess scant
enlightenment.