Just returned from the Requiem Mass for the five hundred sailors and officers of La Liberté. It was most impressive, with a great Tricolore unfurled across the high altar. Nearly all the lost were Bretons, and over a thousand widows and orphans are weeping. The Mass was held in the Church of El Colegio de Niños, on one of the busiest down-town corners, and which has survived many different tides of life. It is now the "French" church, served by French clergy, and is clean and orderly, but dismantled of beauty or treasures.
It dates from Fray Pedro de Gante, one of the greatest of the friars, and I dare say was once full of beautiful things, now possessed or scattered by tourists, or by various breeds of revolutionaries. Mexico has been such a bottomless, inexhaustible source of treasures fashioned by the genius of Spain.
The political outlook is still very uncertain. Madero, of course, for President. The vice-presidency between de la Barra, who does not want it, another man, Vasquez Gómez, who does want it, and Pino Suarez, the obscure and evidently not over-popular Maderista candidate from Yucatan. Personally I shall be most sorry to see the De la B.s go. They are people of the world. De la B. is a trained diplomat, and these months of his "Interinato"[15] have been a "finishing-school" indeed. His father and mother were Chilians, afterward naturalized in Mexico.
Crowds parade the streets crying "Pino-no-no-no!" Why Madero insists on that running-mate we don't understand. Pino Suarez was an unknown editor of a Yucatan newspaper before fate beckoned to him, making him first governor of Yucatan, and now pointing him on to the vice-presidency.
Madero's party, with its banner cry, "No reelección y sufragio efectivo," is called "Progressive Constitutional" (we couldn't do better at home). His platform, if it will hold under the weight of virtue and happiness it bears, is quite wonderful.
To begin with, it re-establishes the "dignity of the Constitution," and there is to be no re-election. The press is to have its antique shackles struck off, pensions and indemnities for working-men are to be introduced, and the railways are to be "Mexicanized," which will make travel a bit uncertain for a while. Even the jefes must go.
I couldn't explain, if I would, the real uses of the jefe. You have to live in Mexico to understand even dimly his attributes. Madero, whom no difficulties daunt, even tackles the vexed question of the Indians, saying that he intends to show the same interest in their affairs as in those pertaining to other shades of Mexicans, especially in those of the Mayas and the Yaquis, whose tragic deportations in great groups from hot climates to cold climates, and vice versa, have long been a blot on the Mexican 'scutcheon. In fact, everything is to be made over—the judiciary, the army. Foreign relations are to be founded on brotherly love instead of interest; a fight is to be waged against alcoholism and gambling; and there are many other reforms I don't remember now. Ojalá, but it makes me sad!
XI
Election of Madero—The strange similarity between a Mexican election and a Mexican revolution—The penetrating cold in Mexican houses—Madame de la Barra's reception—The Volador.
Sunday evening, October 1st.