236 



The National Geographic Magazine 



circulation to the value of $65,897,100. 

 Recently, on account of the war in 

 China and the Philippine Islands, many 

 millions of Mexican dollars have been 

 exported, producing a certain stringency 

 in the Mexican money market. The 

 evil is not great, and it will disappear 

 totally, owing to the opportune meas- 

 ures taken by the government and the 

 prudent and conservative policy of the 

 banks. 



A few words now about our War and 

 Navy Departments. 



I admire the peace congresses, the 

 anti-war speeches and sermons, but my 

 opinion is that those well-intentioned 

 persons lose their time, as there will 

 always be war, because we cannot change 

 the intimate nature of mankind, and 

 universal and perpetual peace is a mathe- 

 matical limit, to which mankind can 

 approach but never touch, as then hu- 

 manity would cease to be what it is. 



The barbarism of war, the injustices 

 and atrocities inseparable from it, are 

 truths within the knowledge of every 

 civilized man ; but as long as there will 

 be human passions, as long as there 

 will be a great difference of strength 

 among nations, there will be war. I 

 think that there is a practical and efh- 

 cient method, if not to extinguish what 

 is an impossibility, at least to make in- 

 ternational wars very rare, and that is to 

 invent something equalizing as much as 

 possible the strength of the different 

 peoples, leveling to the greatest possible 

 extent the weak with the strong. The 

 invention of dynamite and other explo- 

 sives, the great improvements in hand 

 arms and in the artillery, under equality 

 of circumstances favor more the defense 

 than the attack, and are therefore in 

 favor of the weak, and are producing 

 in favor of peace and justice an excellent 

 and practical effect. I say justice, be- 

 cause in the majority of cases justice is 

 on the weak side. 



An army is a necessity. Justice is 

 represented by the image of a girl hav- 



ing a balance in her left hand and a 

 sword in the right, and unfortunately, 

 but truly, she is obliged to use the sword 

 more than the balance. 



Armies at the beginning and the mid- 

 dle of the last centurj^ were in many 

 cases bodies of men with interests and 

 exigencies opposite to those of the na- 

 tion's supporting them. 



In our times good armies must be 

 bodies of armed men, taught not only 

 military exercises, but to know that the 

 law is superior to everything; that they 

 form a part of the nation of whom they 

 are servants and not masters. Every 

 citizen must be a soldier, because every 

 citizen has the includible duty of keep- 

 ing peace and order in the interior and 

 repelling the foreign invader. That, it 

 seems to me, is the only way of forming 

 and keeping an arm^^, especially in a 

 country ruled by republican institutions. 



In Mexico experience has conclu- 

 sively shown that officers and even sol- 

 diers cannot be improvised, and the very 

 first care of General Diaz has been to 

 establish a good school for instructing 

 scientific officers. The military school 

 of Chapultepec in its actual condition is 

 the fruit of his efforts. Many foreign 

 officers of different nationalities have 

 visited that establishment and believe 

 that it ranks among the first in the 

 comprehensiveness and perfection of 

 military instruction there imparted and 

 in the severe but j ust discipline to which 

 the cadets are subjected. 



From that institution are graduated 

 all the officers of our army, and new 

 rules have been recently issued to pre- 

 vent the abuse committed by some per- 

 sons who go there to receive a good and 

 gratuitous education without any inten- 

 tion of serving in the national army. 



In the capital and in many other 

 places commodious barracks, affording 

 comfort and good hygienic conditions 

 to the soldiers, have been constructed 

 or are in the course of construction. 

 The soldiers are armed with weapons 



