—that he was suffering from a common malady which comes upon one overpowered by acute and panicky fear.
The fact that when Diaz seized the power he carefully excluded from any part in the government each and every one of the most popular and able Mexicans of the day is attributed to fear. The fact that he maintains a large army which he distributes in every quarter of the country, and a huge secret police system armed with extraordinary power to kill on suspicion, the terrible way in which he gets rid of his enemies, his bloody massacres themselves, even his muzzling of the press, are all attributed to arrant cowardice. In his book "Diaz, Czar of Mexico," Carlo de Fornaro voices this belief in the cowardice of Diaz and reasons quite effectively upon it. He says:
"Like all people quick to anger he (Diaz) is not really fearless, for as the jungle song says, 'Anger is the egg of fear.' Fearful and therefore ever vigilant, he was saved from destruction by this alertness, as the hare is preserved from capture by his long ears. He mistook cruelty for strength of character and consequently was ever ready to terrorize for fear of being thought weak. As a result of the outrageous nickel law and the payment of the famous English debt in the period of Gonzalez, there happened a mutiny. 'Knife them all,' suggested Porfirio Diaz to Gonzalez. But Gonzalez was not afraid.
"Last year, on the 16th of September, as the Mexican students desired to parade on the streets of the capital, they sent their representative, a Mr. Olea, to beg the President's permission. Porfirio Diaz answered: 'Yes, but beware, for the Mexicans have revolutionary tendencies lurking in their blood.' Think of three score of youngsters parading unarmed being a menace to the republic, with 5,000 soldiers, rurales and policemen in the capital!
"It is only by admitting this shameful well-hidden stigma on the apparently brave front of this man that we can logically explain such despicable and infamous acts as the massacres of Veracruz and Orizaba. He was then panic-stricken, like a