under treatment, with overwhelming chances in favour of recovery when the annual report was drawn up. In this year one thousand seven hundred and eightyfive people died of the disease, or a reduction in five years of one thousand per cent.

For some reason that it is unnecessary to enter upon here, no provision was made in the insular budget for the fiscal year 1908-1909 to carry on this wonderworking campaign, and the commission, with the consent of the Governor, ordered that all stations for clinical treatment be closed at the end of June, 1908. Such medicines as were on hand were delivered to the alcaldes, to be used by them for the continuance of the treatment of the poorer patients under the supervision of the municipal authorities. One of the objections made to the continuance of the work by the insular authorities had been that it was excessive paternalism, and that, after all, the municipalities should be charged with the care of their sick from this, as well as from other, diseases. It was also stated that the municipalities were tired of the interference of the central government, and desired to do the work themselves. As a matter of fact, no sooner was the action of the budget committee known than the Governor was besieged with petitions from every municipal council in the island, asking that the work might be continued as formerly, and it is to be hoped that this will be done. At an expenditure of less than fifty thousand dollars a year during a period of five years, this epoch-making work has been carried on. It has attracted the admiration and commendation of all medical officers in the tropical world, it has reduced the death rate from this disease in this short period ten

hundred per cent., it has increased the manual efficiency of the rural Porto Rican immeasurably, and it seems a pity that political jealousy and shortsightedness should allow this wonderful work to pass into less competent hands.

CHAPTER XVI

MEXICO AFTER DIAZ

THE causes of the discontent with the present régime in Mexico are not far to seek. They are none the less real factors in the situation because they could have been foreseen or because they are for the most part unavoidable. As long as Diaz remained in power, and the capture of his stronghold was obviously the first step to be taken, the revolutionary groups presented an united front, and they seemed to be entirely in accord as to the purpose as well as to the methods of the revolution.

In the hour of victory, however, divergences of opinion appeared. In Mexico a successful revolution has always been a law unto itself, and a slightly modified form of the biblical vae victis regarded as a reasonable proposition with which even the vanquished were not inclined to quarrel. But the platform of the provisional government, installed after the resignation and flight of Diaz, which, as it existed by his favour, Madero naturally inspired, approached the task with far less drastic remedies than had been expected, and, as is now apparent in some quarters, these measures have proved far from satisfying.

Provisional administrations were hastily installed in the various States to run matters on a hand-to-mouth system until, at the October election, 1911, the people could be consulted as to their wishes. The promise

of effective suffrage, which, in Mexico at least, is regarded as manhood suffrage, was repeated, as was also the "no-re-election " legend, which had been inscribed upon so many banners. But it cannot be disguised that to a people of optimistic temperament like the Mexicans the first-fruits of the revolutionary harvest were meagre as to bulk and disappointing as to taste. Instead of the immediate restitution which the Chihuahua ranchman, who had been robbed of his estate, or the hemp grower in Yucatan, whose plantation was confiscated, had expected, the revolutionists were told that they must content themselves with a régime under which the recurrence of similar wrongs would be impossible, and, with an opportunity of getting back by due process of law what had been taken from them, by addressing themselves to the very courts which tacitly, at least, had sanctioned the robberies of which they complained.

While public attention followed closely the revolution in Portugal, owing to the interesting personalities involved, the struggle for control in Mexico passed almost unnoticed in the United States, until it entailed practically the mobilisation of our whole regular army. I hold to the opinion that the revolution had to come sooner or later, and that, as there was nothing of educational value in the Diaz régime, which had long outlived its former undoubted usefulness, the sooner it came the better for us and all others concerned. Without wishing in the least to detract from the skill with which the whole Mexican situation was handled by the administration, or from Ambassador Wilson's trained diplomacy, to which we all owe a debt of gratitude, I am still of the opinion that had not the sym

pathy of our border population been overwhelmingly with the revolutionists, and had they not recognised that intervention on our part would have been the salvation of the Diaz régime, the situation would have passed out of official control and intervention become a fact. As it was, the revolution cost the lives of twenty American citizens, who were killed while following their vocations on American soil, and of at least forty other non-combatant Americans, working for their daily bread in Mexico. Our losses from the destruction of property and disturbance to business run into the millions; so it would seem to be plain that the outbreak of another revolution is a very intimate concern of ours.

Sentimentalists on both sides of the Rio Grande may regret the disappearance of the desert of Northern Mexico, which Benito Juarez, a great man in his day, sought to maintain intact with all its features of pristine inhospitality. Juarez, who was not versed in American politics, credited the desert with stopping Taylor's army after Santa Anna had fled, and in many addresses to his people he insisted upon the value of this natural and, as he thought, insurmountable barrier between a strong, masterful power and a weak one. To-day, however, the desert has vanished, and the two countries have grown very close together. The daily relations between our Southwest and the Mexican Republic are thought by many to be closer and of greater value than those which exist between many of our groups of states at home. The desert, shorn of its dangers, is traversed by railways which, in efficiency and capacity, compare favourably with many of our trunk lines. Every day the potential