Do not, however, be led to think that the story is at
all farcically treated; Miss MEARS is far too serious an artist to
neglect the graver aspects of her theme. Briefly, an excellently human
and stimulating novel, whose only drawback is that recent events have
caused the suffrage atmosphere in which it is sat to taste somewhat
stale.
* * * * *
Between anarchy and anarchy the history of unhappy Mexico is
spanned for the space of a generation by the colossal figure of the
soldier-president, _Diaz_ (CONSTABLE). Mr. DAVID HANNAY, writing with
exquisite literary workmanship in the series of biographies entitled
collectively _Makers of the Nineteenth Century_, presents this
typically "strong" man as neither hero nor villain, but as a human
being with human limitations, even more as a Mexican with the
characteristics of a Mexican. Amongst a populace hopelessly divided by
race, untrained in self-government and cursed with a natural twist for
lawlessness only equalled by its hatred of work, _Diaz_ stands for a
tyranny certainly, but for a unified orderly tyranny, preferable, one
might think, to a myriad petty outlawries. If little of the country's
wealth found its way beyond the narrowest of circles during his long
control, and if certain Indian tribes were shamefully enslaved--a fact
which is neither denied nor condoned--still railways and harbours
did get themselves built and the dictator himself lived a life of
uncorrupt simplicity.
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