After some persuasion I promised to write something for the next day’s publication, although stoutly refusing to write an obituary. It so chanced my secretary was not at hand, so without looking up anything, I wrote those fourteen hundred words by hand in fifty minutes. The boy came up from the Daily Mail office to fetch it an hour after my conversation with the editor, and bore it off, to be telegraphed to Paris and Manchester.
Then I had some Cambridge friends to luncheon, followed by my “At Home” day. That night I dined at the “Criterion,” a Society of Authors’ Dinner, went on to a reception, given by the Chairman of the County Council, Mr. Whitaker Thompson, at the Hotel Cecil, and then to bed.
Of course the cold was worse, but inhaling creosote (of all sweet scents!) soon improved it again; and I slept peacefully until early tea began another strenuous day, and brought the following column of type to my bedside.
Here it is, just as it was scribbled:
PORFIRIO DIAZ.
THE MAN WHO MADE MEXICO.
By MRS. ALEC TWEEDIE,
Author of “Seven Times President of Mexico.”
That General Diaz was the greatest man the nineteenth century produced is a bold assertion—and yet I have no hesitation in making it. The statement is especially bold of a century that recognised so many great men. But then Diaz rose from humble origin, and became a dictator, a very Czar and Pope in one, and not only did he attain such a position, but he has kept it. For over thirty years he has governed the country he once roamed as a shoeless boy, and now, as he announced yesterday in a special cable to the Daily Mail, he has suppressed yet another revolt and has established his rule yet more firmly.
Diaz is a democratic ruler. Without a middle class a successful democracy is impossible, and Diaz, alive to all such facts, set himself the task, during the last ten or fifteen years, of building up a middle class in Mexico. Diaz remains as firm a believer in a democracy as ever, although his own Republic has practically become an autocracy. He believes in an Opposition Party; but it is only now an Opposition Party has actually risen against him. During long and interesting visits to Mexico I was unceasingly impressed by the love of the people for their ruler. They revered and esteemed him as a man, they admired and appreciated his capacity to govern, and even his political enemies threw party feelings aside and realised that in him they had an ideal ruler. The Conservatives—who naturally ought to have opposed him—were tranquilly content to let the man who had held the helm for over thirty years continue to steer their bark.
A YOUTHFUL VETERAN