The Mexican Crisis.

New York Times 100 years ago today, February 24, 1913:
    "We need not jump at conclusions about the shocking murder of ex-President Madero and ex-Vice President Pino Suarez. They were sent on their last journey, from the National Palace to the Penitentiary, in an open motor car with a guard of three officers and one private soldier. Murder has been stalking through the streets of the Mexican capital. Sentiment against Francisco I Madero has been growing, and it is in accord with Mexican traditions to satisfy hatred by killing. Therefore we need not assume, without clear evidence, that Madero and Suarez were killed by the Provisional Government's orders, that the time and place of the assassination were agreed upon, and the assassins officially appointed.
    Yet that is what the whole civilized world will say without waiting for evidence, and it will be hard to make people believe that the old Santa Anna traditions have not been revived in the stricken republic and a new era of assassination inaugurated. The manner of the killing of Gustavo Madero, the day after the coup d'état, measurably justifies this belief, and if it is unjust to Huerta, Felix Diaz, and Blanquet, they will still find it hard to explain why they intrusted the safety of prisoners, both so distinguished and so reviled by a large part of the populace, to an utterly ineffective guard.
    Of the men who were murdered at midnight Saturday, Jose Pino Suarez had no world-wide repute. He was elected Vice President by the will of Madero in place of Dr. Francisco Vasquez Gomez, an able man but brother of the weaker, vainer Emilio Vasquez Gomez, who proclaimed himself a candidate for the Presidency in opposition to Madero, and has since, from his safe shelter on our side of the border, uttered a feeble cry from time to time. The choice of Pino Suarez for the Vice Presidency gave the impetus to anti-Maderism just as the renomination of Ramon Corral as the running mate of Porfirio Diaz gave Madero's revolution its impetus. It was a sad mistake. Yet Pino Suarez was a purely negative character, and he would have been much happier in the humbler office of Governor of Yucatan, from which Madero called him, than he ever was at the capital.
    Francisco I. Madero, however, was a man who will live in history, in spite of his obvious weakness. In his youth, as one of the humblest members of a comparatively unimportant branch of a powerful Mexican family, he inspired neither respect nor dislike. He astonished none more than his relatives when he forced himself on public attention as a severe critic of the rule of Porfirio Diaz. His book, which possessed some merit as a historical survey of Mexican Government, was largely a revelation of his own visionary character, the work of an idealist who had not come in contact with stern facts. But he developed amazingly in the revolution, though he was no soldier, and the blow at the rule of Diaz having been struck at the very moment when many thoughtful Mexicans felt that a change was necessary, all hopes were centred upon him as the reformer of his country and the upholder of the still neglected Constitution.
    As President, however, he was slow in action, irresolute, and easily managed by the new crowd of politicians, who flocked around him. He was able to carry out none of his projected schemes of reform. Opposition to him in Congress was continuous. The finances of the country were soon in a perilous state. He appointed large numbers of relatives to office, strangely checked all efforts to suppress the outrages of Zapata and his outlaws, almost at the gate of the capital, and chose his advisers with poor judgment. On the other hand, though grave charges of cruelty and injustice, which may yet be substantiated, were made against his Administration, he presented to the world an aspect of mildness and forbearance almost unique in Mexican rulers. Orozco, who has been one of his most potent enemies, might have died by "suicide" or accident, in the Summer of 1910, after he had defied his chief at Juarez. Military law and Mexican custom would have sanctioned the execution of Bernardo Reyes after his ineffectual uprising, and Felix Diaz after the Vera Cruz incident, but Madero has gone to his account with a record for leniency which his successors evidently do not envy.
    As for the effect of his death, after the excitement has subsided, it is likely to clarify the situation in Mexico and to remove some sources of danger to the present factitious peace. In other countries the murders will cause distrust of the Provisional Government and repugnance to its methods, but the killing of Mexicans by Mexicans is not a cause for foreign interference. Our countrymen will view with horror, and grief for a neighbor's shame, the recurrence of the savagery that shocked civilization when Iturbide was cruelly put to death. With such Mexican methods of making power secure we have no manner of sympathy, and the shallow fiction of the ley de fuga is held here in the contempt it deserves. But our National interest in the incident is concerned only with its effect on Mexican politics, and the possibility that it may increase the danger of anarchy in the much-afflicted republic.