"POLICY" AND "PRINCIPLE" IN MEXICO I The last days of February, 1913, witnessed one of those sanguinary scenes in Mexico which for generations had accompanied changes in the government of that distracted country.

A group of revolutionists assailed the feeble power of Francisco Madero and virtually imprisoned that executive and his forces in the Presidential Palace.

The Mexican army, whose most influential officers were General Blanquet and General Victoriano Huerta, was hastily summoned to the rescue of the Government; instead of relieving the besieged officials, however, these generals turned their guns upon them, and so assured the success of the uprising.
The speedy outcome of these transactions was the assassination of President Madero and the seizure of the Presidency by General Huerta.
Another outcome was the presentation to Page of one of the most delicate problems in the history of Anglo-American relations.
At almost any other time this change in the Mexican succession would have caused only a momentary disturbance.

There was nothing new in the violent overthrow of government in Latin-America; in Mexico itself no president had ever risen to power except by revolution.

The career of Porfirio Diaz, who had maintained his authority for a third of a century, had somewhat obscured this fundamental fact in Mexican politics, but Diaz had dominated Mexico for seven presidential terms, not because his methods differed from the accepted methods of his country, but because he was himself an executive of great force and a statesman of genius, and could successfully hold his own against any aspiring antagonist.