dies to create disturbances
at his meetings. He was ridiculed, he was threatened, he was
persecuted, but he went on unafraid.

Just before and during the elections every known Maderista, from Madero
down, was arrested on charges of "sedition." Things came to such a pass
that in the city where I lived some sixty prominent Maderistas were
arrested at two o'clock one morning without warrants and on no charge,
it being noteworthy that the men arrested were almost without exception
some of the best and most honorable men in the state. And this happened
at the same hour of the same day in every city in Mexico. But in spite
of the fact that many votes were lost to Madero through intimidation or
actual imprisonment, so strong a vote was registered for the Madero
electors that fraud was resorted to to cover his gains. The result of
the elections was that Diaz and Corral were _unanimously_
reelected--the former for his eighth term and the latter for his
second.

The Anti-reelectionists then appealed to Congress and the Senate to
annul the elections, alleging fraud and intimidation. Without the
slightest pretense of considering or investigating these charges
Congress and Senate--long the mouthpieces of Cientificismo--ratified
the elections as just and legal. Every peaceful measure to bring about
justice in the elections and insure the free expression of the nation's
will was now exhausted. The only recourse left to the people by the
Cientifico regime was war. Their leader at the polls became their
leader in the preparations for that war.

In the midst of this riot of tyranny, while the nation yet seethed with
indignation at the outrageous electoral farce imposed upon it, the
first Centennial of Mexican independence was being celebrated before
the foreign diplomats with unprecedented pomp and display. The
Anti-reelectionists declared that Liberty was dead and that instead of
celebrating they were going to don deep mourning. They were thus a mark
for all manner of persecutions from petty annoyances to the most
unprovoked armed attacks. Some students were fired upon by troops while
they were carrying wreaths to the monument of the boy heroes of
Chapultepec; a young lawyer was arrested for making a speech beneath
the statue of Juarez; and in Tlaxcala a procession of unarmed working
men was fired upon and ridden down by _rurales_, several men and a
woman being killed. Consecrating hypocritical hymns to liberty that did
not exist an