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202 Carranza and Villa had met, concluded that Zapata's behaviour was detrimental to all parties and elected Lagos Chazaro, the former Maderist Governor of Vera Cruz, to the Provisional Presidency. They had unhappily selected another broken reed, for, after a few weeks had passed, Chazaro disappeared. Once more Zapata entered Mexico city, and in September, 1915, was attacked by the Carranzist forces to the east of the capital. For nearly a month the conflict raged with but small losses on either side. In the end, Zapata was forced to evacuate the city, since when he has lain low in the Cuernavaca district. By this time, the price of food had risen enormously. A pound of meat cost about $6 (Mexican) or 12s., milk had gone up from 15 to 80 cents the litre, potatoes from 12 cents to $3, flour from $10 the 100-lb. bag to $138. The wretched women and children of the city were starving for the most part and begging from door to door for a mouthful of bread. Scores of them dropped in the streets from sheer weakness and died there—and all because of the fiendish rapacity of the leaders of the various "parties," that of Carranza excepted. It must be admitted that for a time the machine of civilisation in Mexico was entirely broken down and that the barbarian element triumphantly vindicated its presence. Was Diaz aware from the experience of his rule of forty years that the only methods of repressing this element were those of harshness and peonage, or was this outbreak of barbarism the fruit of his régime? Who can say? Those who have studied the history of Mexico know that certain of the races who flourished within its borders in the aboriginal period were cruel and bloodthirsty, and cherished a sanguinary faith in which human sacrifice and ceremonial cannibalism were the outstanding characteristics. Have these inherent brutalities only slumbered since the Conquest? In some measure, it is probably only too true that they have. But the critic of the Mexican people should strive to remember that at such a crisis the better elements in a population