The rising in Mexico, which a week ago threatened to
be serious, has been virtually overcome by the Government. Everything depended on the Army, and the Army apparently remained loyal. General Reyes, the picturesque and popular ex-Commander-in-Chief, who, it is thought, could have altered the course of the revolution as he pleased, has not moved from Paris. Examples of the autocratic habit, which veils itself under the forms of Republicanism, are to be found in the suppression of newspapers which have committed no offence worthy of the name. The Government's semi- official organ has been suppressed, as the Times corre- spondent tells us, for merely recommending that members of the outer circle of the more influential supporters of the Government should be given office. The editor of another paper has been cast into a pestiferous prison because he said that the fighting of the revolutionaries in an engagement was heroic. There is not much real freedom evidently, nor much humour either, in a country where men may not say that an enemy, whoever he be, is a "first-class fighting man." Praise of the enemy you can conquer is really an agreeable form of self-flattery. Probably the wretched people who are held in servitude by their creditors in Yucatan are much too feeble and disorganised to rise, but there must be much dis- content which cannot indefinitely be ignored. President Diaz has done an immense work in the creation of modern Mexico, but it is evident that the conditions must change when his long-continued period of office ends.
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