About this time the war with the United States broke out and the future president, a youth of seventeen, volunteered but saw no fighting, although he thus early in life showed his genius for organization by forming his fellow-students of the academy into a battalion for the defence of his home city. Benito Juarez, afterwards president, was attracted by this youth and invited him to read law in his office, which offer was accepted. Thus was begun an association between two men who were destined in later years to occupy such a prominent place in Mexican history. Through the influence of Juarez, the younger man was made assistant librarian and by the aid of the salary attached to this position, and money earned as tutor, he completed his course, and received his law degree. Politics and war seem to have divided the attention of Diaz from the very first with a preference for the latter in early life. Diaz was a military genius. I can say this in all seriousness. Although he never commanded a large army yet, under his hands, the rawest recruits soon became valuable troops. He is possessed of a personal magnetism and the quality of _simpatica_, (which can not be translated into English) that draws people to him and, when once aroused, they become his enthusiastic partisans. In a land of lethargy and procrastination his movements were quick and decisive, and he soon became noted for night marches and early morning attacks. He never was overcome except by superior forces, and then only after his stores and ammunition were exhausted. Even when beaten and his army captured or separated, a few days of freedom would again place him at the head of a respectable force ready to take aggressive stand against the enemy. Had he been in command of a hundred thousand men, he would have met the situation with the same tact and ability. The first of the many political offices held by Diaz was that of Jefe Politico, or mayor, of the little Indian town of Ixtlan when only twenty-five years of age. Here he devoted his time to organizing the Indians into a company of militia, and this little body of soldiers formed a nucleus that proved a great help to him in the troublous times which followed. Later he was made Jefe of Tehuantepec where he showed great administrative ability. Soon afterward, in 1861, he was elected a deputy to congress from Oaxaca, but at that time would not sacrifice the excitement of war for the more prosaic duties of law-making.