The accomplishments of Diaz were many. It would require a long enumeration to give them in detail. The very fact that he succeeded to a government which had seen fifty-four different rulers, including two emperors and a number of avowed dictators, in the fifty-five years preceding his own accession, and ruled the country for more than a generation, is in itself sufficient to stamp him as an extraordinary man. Those were indeed troublous times in Mexico while we were celebrating the centennial of our independence. The strong spirit of Juarez had been broken by the long strain from 1857 to 1872, during which time he was nominally President. His successor was a weak, ambitious man who accomplished little. Disorder everywhere, the country overrun with bandits and a worse than empty treasury were the conditions when Diaz grasped the reins. It was not until nearly two years afterward that his government was formally recognized by the United States. Few men could have steered the country through such a state of affairs so successfully. He did it without repudiating any valid claims. He established credit by paying foreign obligations rather than the salaries of government employees. He surrounded himself with an able cabinet, and started the machinery of government in a business-like way. I do not subscribe to the doctrine of Shakespeare that all the world is a stage, and that each person is a player, for that would take away sincerity. Porfirio Diaz has been accused of only acting a part. He could not always be acting, for his course was too consistent under many and diverse circumstances. As a young man he refused pay for military services because the government was so poor. He declined promotion over the heads of men older in the service for fear of jealousies. He refused remuneration after the close of the war of intervention, although not a rich man at that time. He turned a deaf ear to the emissaries of Maximilian, who wanted to place him in command of the Mexican army when that ruler abdicated, which would practically have made him President. He was a humane adversary, as is shown by his treatment of prisoners of war. He disregarded ceremony as much as is possible in a Latin country. He declined to live in the National Palace, but resided in a private house the most of the time, and at Chapultepec a part of the year.