A DEMONSTRATION OF REJOICING AT THE FALL OF THE ULTRAMONTANE MINISTRY, NOVEMBER, 1909.[To face page174.
A DEMONSTRATION OF REJOICING AT THE FALL OF THE ULTRAMONTANE MINISTRY, NOVEMBER, 1909.[To face page174.
A DEMONSTRATION OF REJOICING AT THE FALL OF THE ULTRAMONTANE MINISTRY, NOVEMBER, 1909.
[To face page174.
safe keeping; and the general exhibition of alarm on the part of friars, nuns, and parish priests made them a laughing-stock to the working classes for the month during which the demonstrations continued. The Civil Guard were sent, at the request of the ecclesiastical authorities, to assist the friars in their projected self-defence and to instil courage into the trembling nuns, and the garrisons were everywhere kept in barracks in readiness for attacks which nobody dreamed of making. A Civil Guard told me, with a twinkle in his eye, that he and his companion had sat up all night in the portal of a convent, knowing all the time that they might just as well have been in their beds for all the danger the convent was in. No doubt many nuns seriously believed their houses to be in peril, although the Jesuits must have been perfectly aware of the truth, and it is not easy to find words in which to characterise the folly, to say no worse, of a policy which tries to forward its ends by permitting women cut off and completely ignorant of the world to spend hours of misery anticipating dangers which their leaders must know to be imaginary.
It cannot, however, be denied that the deep-seated and chronic hostility of the people to the Religious Orders became manifest all over Spain,as reports of panic-stricken friars spread from mouth to mouth, converting their traditional dread of the Church into a feeling of contempt. The working-class Spaniards fear the underground action of the Church because they know it may mean starvation for their wives and children. But it was something new for them to see the “long skirts” fleeing from Cataluña in fear of their lives, and the spectacle led to open exhibitions of scorn, which are a new feature in the history of the Church in Spain.
There were not wanting either journalists or private persons to hint that the alarm shown by the Religious Orders at the demonstrations against Señor Maura was fictitious, and a renewal of the Catalonian riots would have suited their plans. It was said that the slightest hostile action on the part of the working classes would have been made the signal for a Carlist rising, and that numbers of priests and monks, as well as civilians of that party, were armed in readiness for such a contingency.
This was why the organisers of the demonstration so urgently appealed to their followers not to be provoked into recrimination by “persons subsidised by the other party, who would place themselves among the demonstrators with the intention of causing disturbances.” They thoughtit necessary to warn the public that what might seem the merest act of personal aggression on the part of an ordinary loafer might really be the initiation of an organised plan to raise a serious revolt. And they prayed their friends to bear in mind that persons committing such acts of aggression might be the secret agents of the Jesuits, and therefore on no account to be induced to retaliate. These appeals were issued in leaflets which were distributed by the thousand in all the towns where demonstrations were to be held, and no doubt contributed largely to the self-restraint and good conduct of the crowd everywhere.
If the organisers were justified in believing that the Jesuits wanted to create disturbances, the angry and exceedingly untruthful comments on these leaflets in the Ultramontane Press might be accounted for. They were described as deliberate incentives to the usual list of crimes—incendiarism, sacrilege, &c.—and “good Catholics” were ordered to destroy any that fell into their hands without reading the infamies uttered by the “anarchist canaille.” Naturally the description given by the Clericalists of their opponents’ circular only excited the curiosity of the “good Catholics.” The “good” working man read the paper with the added interest givenby its prohibition, and finding nothing criminal in it, went with the rest to the meeting to hear what it was all about. It is quite likely that the Church’s anathema of the essentially constitutional leaflets issued in most of the industrial cities on the first two Sundays of November, 1909, resulted in making new converts to Liberalism among the small minority of working men who till then were still following the dictates of the priests.
I havealready referred to the popular belief that the riots in Barcelona in July, 1909, were deliberately instigated by the Jesuits and the Carlists acting in concert, the object of the Churchmen being primarily to provide an excuse for closing the lay schools established by Ferrer, the hope of the Pretender and his party being that the disturbances would spread and assume the proportions of a revolution, “on the waves” of which he hoped to ride to the throne.
As the course of events in Barcelona which culminated in the “Red Week” has not unnaturally perplexed foreign observers, it may be worth while, in the absence of any proof as to who was at the bottom of the trouble, to suggest a hypothesis which at any rate has the merit of giving a plausible explanation of the incidents.
Throughout the three years that Señor Maura was at the head of affairs, Barcelona had beenin a state of continual unrest and anxiety. Bomb outrages were reported every two or three weeks with monotonous regularity, but strange to say, the explosions seldom or never took place in public buildings or in places where people congregate. Now and then some inoffensive passerby was killed or wounded, and once in a way an insignificant house would be damaged more or less seriously. But the total injuries inflicted by this long series of bombs were so few that the object of their authors must have been to terrorise rather than to kill. When the King and Queen went to Barcelona in the autumn of 1908, the inevitable bomb was let off—or was reported to have been let off—on the sea shore, where no one could possibly have been hurt by it.
Here, by way of parenthesis, I should like to call attention to the courage and devotion to duty shown by both the King and the Queen on this occasion. It was considered advisable by the Ultramontane Government that the young wife and mother should accompany her husband to the city which has been made to bear such an evil reputation as the home of anarchy and sedition. The nation watched the proceedings with admiration. “What courage the Queen had, to face the chance of another bomb beingexploded in her presence so soon after that tragedy in Madrid!” said those who appreciated the human fear which they knew must be concealed under the smiles demanded by the exigencies of her position. Not a word of this was permitted to appear in the Press, of course. It was only the common talk of the common people. But one little paragraph slipped, through some mismanagement, into a popular paper, which revealed the Queen’s realisation of the danger she might be running. It was to the effect that “the alteration of their Majesties’ itinerary, by which they would spend two days in Madrid instead of travelling direct to Cataluña from Vienna, was dictated by the Queen’s wish to embrace her children before going to Barcelona.” The next day the paragraph was corrected by a careful explanation that the Queen had wished to see the royal children because they were suffering from childish ailments. But the people were not deceived by the second notice. They said that Doña Victoria’s conduct was worthy of a Queen of Spain.
I do not believe that the people of Barcelona would hurt a hair of Queen Victoria’s head, nor that they would have raised a hand against King Alfonso had he appeared there during the riots of 1909: what advantage his secret enemiesmight have taken of his presence during the disturbances is another matter. And my personal belief is that the people of Barcelona were not responsible for any of the bomb outrages which have made their city a byword in Europe.
Two things go to show that the industrial classes in Barcelona had nothing to do with the bombs. The first is that they are too clever to commit stupid crimes by which their class could not possibly benefit. The second is that during the “Red Week,” when Barcelona was given over to mob law, the mob, said to be responsible for the bomb outrages, did not explode a single bomb. It is not likely that if letting off bombs were the favourite occupation of the criminal classes of Barcelona, they would have lost the opportunities afforded them during the first three days of the riots. Yet when the rising was quelled and the whole province was under martial law, the bombs began again, and twenty-three were reported to have been exploded between August 15th and October 20th.
The stringent censorship exercised then and for three months afterwards prevented Europe from hearing of either this remarkable feature of the riots or their real object. But every one in Spain knew perfectly well that the riots were directed solely against the Religious Orders,whereas the bomb outrages never affected a building belonging to the Church or a person attached to the Clericalist party so long as Maura held office.
Is there any previous instance in history of a mob, said to be composed of the lowest and most degraded of the community, firing monasteries, convents, and churches, while they left public buildings, banks, and rich men’s dwellings untouched? Is there any other revolt on record in which troops of people containing the dregs of the criminal classes protected and brought food to orphanages supported by the objects of their attack? And can we find a parallel, in the circumstances, to the organisation which had the markets opened for two hours every morning and kept its forces under such complete discipline that during those two hours persons of either sex could walk all over the town secure from molestation?
These things I have heard from people of unimpeachable veracity who were in Barcelona at the time; not only Catalans and Spaniards, but also foreigners unconnected with any political party. I do not attempt to deny that some half-hundred or so of buildings belonging to the Church and the Religious Orders were damaged or destroyed, nor that many evil deeds were doneby the criminal hangers-on of the movement; nor do I at all desire to minimise the crime of destroying property to gratify feelings of personal revenge. But I do say that the mob, as a mob, behaved with extraordinary self-restraint, and proved by their conduct that they had no complicity with the miscreants who for so long terrorised the unoffending inhabitants of Barcelona by exploding bombs, without apparent intent to injure.
No one disputes that every suspect in the province was imprisoned or fled from the country when the iron hand of military law closed on the insurgents. Nevertheless the bomb outrages began again after the “Red Week” came to an end, and only ceased with the fall of Maura and his Cabinet of repression.
I have related in the previous chapter the continued shooting from the roofs of the town, after the riots were quelled, by persons who were never seen, and the stories that were told of the secret arming of the Religious Orders. When we remember that the hope of the Ultramontanes lies in a Carlist restoration, which is only possible through a revolution, and that a revolution cannot be brought about except by fomenting unrest and discontent in the country, and when further we recall that the bomb explosions ceasedwith the fall of Maura’s Ministry, when the officials of a Government not in sympathy with the aspirations of the Religious Orders might have instituted inconvenient inquiries had the bombs continued, it may at any rate be conjectured, in the absence of any evidence as to who instigated this long series of comparatively harmless outrages, that their authors were the only party who expected to benefit by a subversion of the social order such as might have ensued had the patience of the people given way under this long series of provocations. This theory of the bombs, I may add, is that held by the working classes.
From the moment that Moret took office in October, 1909, Barcelona began to resume her normal aspect, although the constitutional rights were not restored until the new Civil Governor and the new Captain-General had taken possession of their respective offices and reported that the whole province was quiet.
From that date a strict watch was kept upon newspaper reports of explosions, and theHeraldogot into trouble for publishing a paragraph saying that what proved to have been merely a slight explosion of gas was a bomb. The authorities at once explained to the Press that the explosion was purely accidental, and that no one in Barcelona had for a moment believed it to be otherwise, yet the report that it was a bomb had reached theHeraldooffice in a form circumstantial enough to deceive an experienced editor.
It is not surprising, therefore, that doubts are now expressed whether a good many of the alleged bombs may not have been as fictitious as this last. The persons who let them off, or were supposed to have let them off, in order to maintain unrest in Barcelona, could certainly have provided means to deceive the Press, as in the attempt upon theHeraldo, frustrated by the prompt action of the Civil Governor.
Two or three bombs, if they can be given so imposing a name, were exploded in Zaragoza in December, 1909, under the conditions which had become so familiar to Barcelona under the Maura regime. They were made of bits of old iron, mixed with some mild form of explosive and placed in a meat tin, the whole being wrapped in a black cotton material, said to be of the same make as that found on remains of bombs at Barcelona. The tin cans on these occasions were placed in or near the porch of a convent church, and no harm was done beyond some slight damage to the plaster on the walls. The progressive Press, freed from censorship, expressed the conviction that this affair was thework of the monks, desirous of raising disturbances in Zaragoza because they were now powerless to do so in Barcelona, with the result that the public remained entirely indifferent to the incident. One cannot but hope, therefore, that that may have been the expiring effort of the bomb-throwers, whatever their real purpose was and whoever their employers may have been.
I should like, before closing this branch of my subject, to point out once more the wide differences that exist between the methods, objects, and results of the Barcelona and Zaragoza bomb outrages and those of similar attempts elsewhere on the Continent. The murderous anarchist makes a direct attack on the personage whose death he believes to be necessary to the furtherance of his political creed, and when he lets off a bomb he takes care that it shall do as much damage as possible, regardless of risk to himself. Abhorrent though the creed of the militant anarchist is, he has at least the courage of his convictions, since he so frequently pays the penalty of his act with his life. The wretch who tried to murder the King and Queen of Spain on their wedding-day was the tool of some one working on the usual anarchist lines, and his crime bore no resemblance in detail to the work of the mysterious partyinterested in terrorising, without injuring, the inhabitants of Barcelona.
A volume of school statistics published in November, 1909, to which further reference is made in another chapter, shows that there are in Spain 91 protestant and 107 lay schools, 43 of which are in Barcelona. On the other hand, there are 5,000 private Catholic schools, in addition to some 25,000 Government schools, in which the rudiments of the Catholic religion are supposed to be taught. These few Protestant and lay schools are the subject of furious and unceasing abuse from the Clericalist party and Press, who make every effort to traduce and vilify them. It would not be edifying, nor is it necessary, to cull specimens of their flowers of invective: the language in which theodium theologicumis habitually expressed is tolerably well known. The schools in Barcelona, many of which were established by Ferrer, who devoted his fortune to the work of education, are the special subject of clerical hostility, and there is no doubt that they cost him his life. As far as can be learnt about these schools the teaching given in them contains absolutely nothing of the socialistic or anarchistic or other doctrines subversive of society of which their enemies so freely accuse them. They are more or less hostile to the form of religion taughtby the Church in Spain, which is the chief reason for the venom with which they are attacked; but setting this on one side, there is, I am credibly informed, nothing either in the text-books used or the teaching given to which objection need be taken.
Nevertheless the Clericalist campaign against these schools is carried on without intermission, and at the end of February, 1910, about the time that Moret fell, unusual efforts were made against them. Thus in Valencia several thousands of priests and friars, ladies of the aristocracy, and members of the militant religious associations filled the great open-air theatre of Jai-Alai: a telegram giving the Papal benediction to the objects of the meeting was read, and cheers for the Pretender were raised at intervals during the afternoon. The reactionary papers asserted that twenty thousand people were present on this occasion, and although this was doubtless an exaggeration, no one attempted to deny that a very large number attended.
The number of public bodies and associations said to have sent letters and telegrams of adherence to the objects of the meeting would be alarming to any one unacquainted with the arithmetical methods employed on these occasions in Spain. The grand total was given at280,000, “composed of 100 newspapers, 83 town councils, 135 mayors, 429 clubs, 1,714 congregations, and 272 parishes.” But no names of these parishes and congregations were given, and verification of the figures is impossible. It was also said that “9,000” ladies who had been present at the meeting subsequently left their cards on the Civil Governor.
Admission to the meeting was by ticket, and there were not wanting working men who declared that whole villages had been coerced into attending by the action of their priests and their caciques, but I give this for what it is worth. It is, however, safe to say that the great majority of those present were priests and friars, and members of the upper classes. Only one speech by a working man was mentioned in the long report published in theCorreo Español, although the Clericalist papers always give prominence to the smallest indication of sympathy with their cause on the part of the people.
The really serious feature in the affair was the Papal benediction of the speakers and the audience. There is nothing in the Constitution to forbid the existence of the lay schools, to protest against which the meeting was held. Thus the Pope, by his benediction, set the seal of his approval upon an effort to subvert, in this respect,the Constitution of the country. But, further, the introduction by the speakers of the name of the Pretender and the reception given to references to him turned the whole affair into a frankly seditious gathering. The Pope’s support of the meeting was the more significant because his official reception of Don Jaime at the Vatican had been reported by the Spanish and foreign Press a few days before.
The Valencia meeting was followed by others in many of the large towns, and about this time Count Romanones, in his capacity of Minister of Education, closed a lay school[18]on the pretext that it was insanitary, but this only irritated the Liberals without conciliating the Church party, and Romanones hastily declared that the school would be re-opened as soon as certain structural alterations had been made.
On February 27th a Clericalist meeting was held at Bilbao, at which, notwithstanding the efforts of the police and Civil Guards, serious disturbances occurred. The circulars inviting people to the meeting were so inflammatory in tone that the Civil Governor found it necessary to suppress some of them. The following extracts from one of these will give an idea of the kind of language employed.
“In the name of religion outraged, and society menaced with total ruin ... and in the name of our own personal independence, closely bound up with the faith in our souls, let us go to the Catholic meeting to protest against the ignorance of those who desire to separate us from all other civilised nations, tearing faith and Christian morality from the souls of the young, together with all decency, all virtue, and every quality necessary to human dignity.... We unite our voices with those of all Catholics, speaking through the mouths of the most eminent men of science, to condemn this monstrous birth engendered by error and lies.”
The Liberal element in Bilbao is strong, and naturally great indignation was created among the working classes by these insults to their politics and religion. Down to that date there had been no lay school in the city, but now it was announced that one would be opened immediately.
The noteworthy feature of this meeting was a denunciation of the Conservatives by a Carlist speaker, who included them with the Liberals in his fulmination against the “cowardly incendiaries of Barcelona,” urging the Catholics “tohave done with patient endurance and enter upon the period of action.” The result of this was that the Conservatives of Bilbao refrained from sending any representative of their party to the banquet given after the meeting to the orators who had spoken at it, thus definitely dissociating themselves from the policy of the Clericalists in their city.
I have made special mention of two of these demonstrations against the lay schools, one because of its magnitude and importance, the other because of its results. To chronicle more of them would be tedious and unnecessary. The campaign against these schools is unceasing: the defence is by no means equal in vigour to the attack, and is limited to articles now and then in thePaisand an occasional meeting in their support. Whether this apparent indifference is due to weakness on the part of those who uphold the lay schools, or to a feeling of strength which can afford to despise the fulminations of opponents, I am unable to say. It is a quarrel, as the satirist says,
“Ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum.”
“Ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum.”
“Ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum.”
A CONSCRIPT.[To face page199.
A CONSCRIPT.[To face page199.
A CONSCRIPT.
[To face page199.
Itis allowed that great abuses were committed by those in power during the long war in Cuba, which ended with the struggle in the United States and the final expulsion of Spain from the last of her American colonies, and it is common knowledge that the munitions, provisions, and all the supplies of the Army fell lamentably short of what was required. It may be imagined, therefore, that the survivors of these long years of warfare brought back stories of experiences little calculated to inspire their friends with confidence in the governing classes, who were responsible for such shortcomings. Fully to appreciate the difference between the sentiment of the Army to-day and what it was so late as 1901, when the defeated troops from the lost colonies came home with their tale of suffering, it is necessary to show what convictions have had to be changed and what prejudices overcome by Don Alfonso before he could win theplace which he now holds in the affections of his soldiers.
I will only deal with the rank and file, whose loyalty is even of more importance to the nation than that of the officers. My own impression is that, after making all due allowance for differences in politics and traditions, the great majority of the Spanish officers to-day are staunch supporters of the Monarchy and the Constitution they have sworn to uphold. But beyond putting on record my private opinion, formed on the utterances of officers of all arms, I do not propose to deal with this side of the question.
It was natural that reminiscences of the Cuban and American Wars should be continually brought forward during the operations in Morocco, and that the popular expectation of the treatment the troops would there receive should be based on what took place in Cuba; and it was inevitable that the unlettered mass of the community, agitated as they were in the early days of the war by rumours of wholesale massacre and tales of thousands of dead and wounded, should have imagined that their friends and relatives were once more being sacrificed without mercy on the altar of political corruption. Not long ago I heard the following conversationamong a party of working people who were entertaining a soldier at a tavern on the eve of his departure for Melilla.
“Poor fellow!” said a stout elderly matron, with a tear in her eye. “So young and so good-looking, to be killed by the Moors!”
“Don’t distress yourself, Señora,” said the lad, a slim, active young fellow. “I’m going to make mincemeat of at least eight before they kill me, and I shall be in no greater danger there than up at the mines of ——, where I was knocked to pieces by a landslide. Three months I’ve been in hospital, and it’s just like my luck to be called out to Melilla the moment I get out. I’m not afraid. If they kill me it can’t hurt more than that landslide did.”
“He’ll sing a different song when he gets out there,” remarked an elderly man gloomily. “I know how the soldiers are treated—not enough to eat, and that bad, no clothes, no beds, and no cartridges to put into their rifles when they go into action. I saw it with my own eyes in Cuba.”
I ventured to suggest that Melilla was nearer to the resources of Spain than Cuba, and that the general condition of military affairs had considerably improved of late years.
“Don’t you believe it!” said the old soldier. “The Government sold Cuba to put money intotheir own pockets, and they will do the same in Morocco. Do you know what happened to us one day in the Cuban War? We found ourselves attacked by the enemy, and we had nothing,nothingto fight with. There were no officers; the chiefs were in a safe place, spending the money they had robbed us of (for we got no pay), and the inferiors were hiding from the Cubanos wherever they could, behind us, to be out of the fighting. I assure you this is true. When the Cubanos came upon us we tried to load the guns, but many of the balls did not fit, and we had no wadding.[19]We tore up our white drawers and our shirts to make wadding, but what was the good? It was hopeless for us to fight. And seeing the enemy upon us and we helpless to defend ourselves, we went mad with rage and despair and turned on each other, not knowing what we were doing. It was all the fault of the Jesuits at home, who stole the money which the nation gave for the Army. And it will be the same thing now with this Maura and his Jesuits, you will see!”
“It is all quite true,” said another old man. “My son has often told me the same. He said they tied their officers to the gun-carriages in
A FORT ON MOUNT GURUGÚ.The War in Melilla.
A FORT ON MOUNT GURUGÚ.The War in Melilla.
A FORT ON MOUNT GURUGÚ.
The War in Melilla.
his company more than once to prevent them from running away. They said: ‘If we, the common soldiers, are to be killed like flies, at least you, the officers, shall take your share.’”
With such traditions firmly embedded in the popular belief, it would not have been surprising had a real spirit of mutiny been shown on the calling out the reservists in July, 1909. But this was not the case.
In an interview given to a representative ofLe Journalof Paris, in November, 1909, by General Primo de Rivera, who was Minister of War previous to the disasters of July, that officer threw some light on Señor Maura’s conduct of military affairs, and explained why he had no alternative but to retire from office, to be abused by the Clericalists in power as “unpatriotic” for so doing. Here is a brief résumé of his statement:
“From the moment I took office, foreseeing what was brewing at Melilla, I began to fortify our positions in the Riff. Expecting that General Marina would need reinforcements, I brought the regiments of the Cazadores del Campo de Gibraltar up to their full strength, and put the Orozco Division, in all three arms of the service, on a war footing. In order to secure rapidity of transport, I contracted with theTransatlantica Company to make the voyage in twenty-four hours, on only four hours’ notice. When General Linares replaced me in the Ministry, he thought fit to improvise all that was required, and this caused complete disorganisation in the Army. He refused to call out the divisions which I had held in readiness, and by drawing the troops from Cataluña not only gave rise to the melancholy events of the “Red Week,” but rendered it necessary to incorporate many reservists who had married and set up homes in the belief that they were free from service, thus bringing misery on thousands of previously contented families. And after all this mismanagement it was necessary in the end to send the Orozco Division which I had prepared so long before.”
At the time one heard on all sides the question: “Why does the Government call out the reservists while the Orozco Division stands idle at home?” to which there has never been any reply but that of the people, who said: “The Government wants the war to go on because it suits the Jesuits, who are making a fortune out of it.”
But notwithstanding the acute distress throughout the country, the reports of an organised and widespread protest against the calling out of the reserves, which flooded the foreign Press at thetime, were entirely unjustified and incorrect. Parents in Madrid wrote, full of anxiety, to their children in provincial towns, saying: “What is all this we hear about disturbances in your city? What is happening? What have the reservists been doing?” While the children were writing with equal urgency to ask what was amiss in the capital, that “such bad things” were being said of the soldiers in Madrid. I know these reports were spread, for I was asked to read aloud more than one such letter by working people who could not read for themselves.
It was not long before the people discovered that they had been deceived and vilified by some persons unknown, who were making it their business to represent Spain as in the throes of a revolution, and it was then that they became convinced that the rising in Cataluña, represented by the Government as springing from a protest against the calling out of the reserves, was in fact a Carlist plot, gone wrong so far as the Carlists were concerned.
As one travelled about the country in 1909 it seemed as if every village had sent one or more of its sons to Melilla. Yet, although their families made sure that they were going straight to destruction, few endeavours were made to evade the call to arms.
I heard one man, an artisan, say with a shrug of his shoulders that he was going because he might as well be shot in action as shot for a deserter at home, and I saw another fling himself flat on the platform when the train came in, howling that “he was afraid of being killed and didn’t want to go to the war.” The first was a professed republican; the second, as the bystanders promptly informed me, was “drunk, as usual.”
Very likely there were other cases of the same kind, but they were certainly exceptional. I made it my business to travel as much as I could at that time, on purpose to observe the people, for, knowing the Spanish peasant, I did not believe the tales current in the foreign Press of his cowardly and mutinous conduct, and I wished to see for myself how he behaved. I saw no such disgraceful exhibitions as were described by English and French journalists.
The conversations that I overheard were very naïve: not at all the talk of a rebellious people, notwithstanding the tales of suffering in Cuba and in the Carlist wars which balked so large in the popular imagination.
“My son! my son!” wailed one woman. “They will kill thee! I shall never see thee again!”
“Hush, mother!” answered the young man. “Rest assured that if they do kill me I shall have killed plenty of them first.”
“Why will they not let us women go too!” cried another mother. “We could kill all theMoras[female Moors] and then they would bring no more little Moors into the world to be the ruin of Spain.”
It was curious to observe how the eternal race-hatred came out at the very name of Moor—the tradition of the long contest between Christian and Moslem. The Moors of Morocco cannot be held to have inflicted any serious injury on the nation for many centuries past, yet such is the force of ancient tradition among the peasantry that the very name ofMorocalls forth the cry, “They are the ruin of Spain,” and if you ask for an explanation you will be told that “The Moors are always pressing upon us and trying to take our country from us.”
One pathetic yet humorous incident was related by the Infanta Doña Paz (aunt to Don Alfonso) in a letter which she wrote to the Press about this time, exhorting her fellow-countrywomen to have patience and be of good courage. Describing her experiences of the patriotism of the men and the devotion of the women, she told how a poor mother, learning that her sonwas ordered to report himself for service, followed him from village to village, as he pursued his avocation of pedlar, carrying his regimental trousers, which had been put away in the family clothes-chest. When she found him at last, there was barely time for him to catch the appointed train, and the two hurried together to the station with the trousers flapping like a flag as they ran.
The sons of mothers like these do not shirk their duty when called upon to fight for their country. I believe that if the whole truth were told, we should find that no one was more indignant at the protest supposed to have been initiated by the working classes of Barcelona than the reservists whose grievances were its ostensible object.
Fresh from an exceptionally rough crossing, weak with sea-sickness, rusty in their drill after three years of home life, the reservists who sailed from Barcelona found themselves led straight from the ship on to the field of battle. This I had from a naval officer on the man-of-war that took them out.
“If they had been veterans,” he said, “such a situation would have been trying to them, and they were only raw fellows who hardly remembered the words of command. And yet I tell you they behaved with such courage and
A RESERVIST At THE FRONT.[To face page208.
A RESERVIST At THE FRONT.[To face page208.
A RESERVIST At THE FRONT.
[To face page208.
discipline that I felt proud to be among them. I was sorry and ashamed to see those sea-sick boys ordered into action, but now I am glad to remember what I saw my compatriots do that day.”
The naval officer spoke of an incident in the early days of the war, before the foreign correspondents had reached the scene of action. But for some time the censors, both at the front and in Madrid, had made it impossible for the truth about the campaign to be told; and England, at any rate, was for several weeks allowed to remain under the impression that the Spanish rank and file were a cowardly lot, driven into action at the point of their officers’ swords. That impression was corrected as time went on, and it is, I believe, now generally admitted that the Spanish troops do not lack courage.
In Spain the conscripts join at the age of eighteen, and serve three years with the colours, when they are drafted into the first reserve. But those who can afford it may buy exemption from service for 1,500 pesetas (say £60), and from this source the Government makes an income estimated in the Budget for 1909 at pesetas 12,800,000 (about £512,000). Naturally the well-to-do always buy themselves out, as do also a certain number of the more prosperous of theworking classes in the industrial towns. Señor Maura’s Government, not long before they went out, suddenly made an order calling on all those who had already bought their exemption to pay another 500 pesetas or join the colours at once, a proceeding which, differing as it does in no respect from highway robbery, naturally caused a good deal of indignation. No one likes to be called on to pay a second time over for what he has already bought; and in the case of the workmen, who generally secure themselves against service by means of one of the numerous insurance companies formedad hoc, the premiums they had already paid were of course thrown away, and few indeed of them could produce 500 pesetas at a moment’s notice.
A scheme is on foot for doing away with the present unjust system, and making service compulsory on all alike. It provides for six months’ instead of three years’ service with the colours, the term to be extended, in the case of the illiterate, until they can read and write.
This scheme obtained from the first the support of the whole Liberal, Radical, and Republican Press, but the opposition of the Clericalists must always be counted on in Spain, and the proposals most obviously beneficial to the nation are usually those which meet with the strongestopposition. Another popular clause in the scheme affects the officers, whose pay is small. At present the officers live where they can: they have no mess, and their quarters in barracks are so much the reverse of luxurious that a lieutenant in a smart regiment apologised for not asking me to visit him there, as he, knowing our English customs, would have liked to do, because, said he, “it is not fit for an Englishman to see.”
It is now proposed, in order to reduce the cost of living in the Army, that quarters and a mess shall be provided for the officers in barracks. Most Spanish officers have to live on their pay, and even a captain in the cavalry only gets about £140 a year. On the other hand, their social expenses are very small, subscription dances, dinners, sports, and the numerous calls on the purse of a British officer being unknown in Spain.
Thevisitor to Spain is frequently struck with the number of persons whom he meets on all sides clad in various uniforms and armed, some with cutlasses alone, others with revolvers in addition. If he asks who they are, he is told that they are the police, and then he is perplexed to find such a large number of distinct bodies, all apparently performing much the same duties. A few words of explanation as to the various police-forces of the country and their different functions may not be out of place.
In the first place, every town has its body of municipal police, under the orders of the Alcalde. Their chief duty is to regulate the traffic, to maintain order in the streets, and to report to the Town Council any infraction of the municipal by-laws, and to another body of police anything or any person whom they may regard as suspicious or a possible danger to the public security. They do not themselves, as a rule,arrest malefactors, though no doubt they are empowered to do so on emergency.
These policemen are well-intentioned, but on the whole ineffective, not from any fault of their own so much as from the conditions of their appointment and tenure of place. In Spain anything can be done by influence, and it is practically impossible to enforce the by-laws against a person in high place who chooses to break them. Not long ago I was at an exhibition, which a very great number of people had gone to see on that particular day. The municipal police were doing their best to make the crowd “pass along,” but at one point there was a block, caused by one or two well-dressed men who refused to move. I asked the policeman why he did not make them, and he replied that one of them was So-and-so (a person of local importance) and that if he said anything to him he would find himself dismissed the next day![20]In a certain town not long ago a body of police inspectors was established, whose duty it was to supervise the municipal police and report derelictions of duty, and as far as I could learn they were doing useful work. After about three months they all disappeared. On inquiry I wastold that the reason of their suppression was that one of them had reported the carriage of some duke or marquis for obstructing the traffic, and that the indignant nobleman had insisted on and obtained the abolition of the force.
The municipal police go off duty about 8 p.m., and are replaced by theserenosor night-watchmen, who patrol the streets all night carrying a pike and a lantern, and in some towns still cry the hours. Hence their name, from their not unmusical cry, “Las doce han dado y sereno” (“twelve o’clock”—or whatever the hour is—“and a fine night.”)
Alongside of the municipal police is what is known as theVigilancia. It is they who have to deal with criminals of all sorts within their own districts, arrest pickpockets and other offenders, investigate thefts, murders, &c., and catch the guilty. To them the hotels report the arrival and departure of guests, and it is their business to find any persons who are wanted on extradition warrants. In short, they perform most of the ordinary police duties except those assigned to the municipal police.
There is also a body of rural police, whose duty it is to patrol the country districts; they are few in number and not particularly effective.It is not often that one runs across any of them, even in their own districts.
The most important and by far the finest body of men in Spain is the Civil Guard, popularly known as theBenemerita(well-deserving). This force is one which, both in physique and morale, would do credit to any country in the world. They are under very strict discipline, and are prevented as far as possible from associating with any one outside of their own body—for instance, with the ordinary police-forces. Even the officers are under stricter regulations than those of the regular Army. I was told of one case where a junior officer, after due warning, was broke for gambling. The force is officered from the regular Army, and so highly is the service esteemed that an officer who obtains a commission in the Civil Guardipso factoloses a step. Very great care is exercised both in their selection and in recruiting the rank and file.
They are something in the nature of a military police, and may be generally compared to the Irish Constabulary; they do not perform ordinary police duties, but in case of anything serious, such as a riot, they would act, and they are expected to hunt down and catch malefactors who are escaping from justice—which, indeed, they usually succeed in doing. They practicallyhave power of life and death, as if, in the execution of their duty, they think it necessary to shoot, no questions are asked. They always go about in couples, a young man accompanying an older one, sometimes on foot, generally on horseback. They are the terror of evildoers, and some years ago entirely stamped out the brigandage which was then rife in the South of Spain, by the simple expedient of shooting down the brigands wherever they caught them. But I have never heard it suggested that they abuse their powers, and every one, foreigners as well as Spaniards, speaks well of them. Moreover—and this is rare in Spain—they are said, I believe with truth, to be incorruptible, and everybody has the utmost confidence in them.
I have already referred to this force being called on to protect the nervous nuns and the ostensibly non-militant clergy during the anticlericalist demonstrations in November, 1909. It may be interesting to show how they regarded the political situation at that time, premising that as they are in daily contact with the people, no body in the kingdom has its finger more closely pressed on the public pulse.
“You seem to have had your work for nothing,” I remarked to a couple of my friends at their barracks on the evening after one of thedemonstrations. “I never saw a more orderly crowd.”
“What did you expect?” they replied. “These are political matters in which we take no part beyond going where we are ordered. It seems to be the fashion to talk about the prevalence of anarchical ideas in our country, so presumably it suits some persons that the public should think our people are anarchists. Butwesee no symptoms of it. No doubt it is right for the authorities to take precautions if they believe there are fellows of that sort about. It is not our place to inquire why they believe in a condition of affairs which we know does not exist. The Civil Governor naturally does not ask for our opinion on matters connected with politics. If he did we could tell him that he need not be nervous, for anarchy is a disease which does not progress in our nation, at any rate in any part of the districtswehave to travel over.”
Remarks of this tenour have been made to me by members of the force in many times and in many places. A couple of Civil Guards accompany every train, and detachments of them are stationed in every town and village, in addition to mounted men charged with the care of the rural districts. They are continually changedfrom place to place, to prevent any danger of becoming too friendly with those they are intended to control, and the result is that they have an exhaustive knowledge of the feeling of the people. A Government genuinely desirous of gauging the popular point of view at any crisis need only apply to theBenemeritafor information. But so long as the Civil Governors who command the Civil Guard are appointed for party purposes and changed with every change in the Government, this means of contact between the Government and the governed will be neglected in the interests of party.
It must not be supposed that the Civil Guard talk in public about the duty with which they are entrusted. On the contrary, their non-committal attitude is always honourably maintained before their fellow-countrymen. But when I travel alone with them—for I frequently take a second-class ticket merely for the sake of their company—they are not unwilling to express an opinion on affairs in general, feeling secure that I, as an Englishman, can be trusted not to turn anything they may say to their disadvantage. Before Spaniards they are extremely reserved, but when the compartment is empty save for myself and them conversation runs easily.
I was struck by this one day when a hot-headed individual shouted his vehemently Radical views to a friend at the opposite end of the carriage. The second-class carriages in many parts of the country are only divided half-way up, so that it is not unusual to talk from one end to the other on country lines where simple manners prevail. The Radical knelt on his seat and his opponent stood up on his, and the passengers sitting between them chimed in at intervals. The Constitution was suspended at the time, and Señor Maura would certainly have had the whole company clapped into prison had he heard what was said. But the Civil Guards turned a deaf ear, affecting to be entirely absorbed in their cigarettes. Later on I took an opportunity of asking what they thought of the oratorical exhibition we had been favoured with.
“We think nothing at all, and that is just how much it is worth,” they said. “We know that gentleman very well, and he would no more commit an act of violence or an offence against the law than we would ourselves. But all Spaniards love talking, and if he could not relieve himself by that sort of gabble he might become a danger to the public peace. There are a fair number of his kidney scattered about the country, though they are chiefly to be found in the big northern cities. They revel in the nonsense spouted atRepublican meetings and love to read out violent articles from thePaisand theMotin, but they are quite satisfied with talking. Very few indeed of them would fire a shot for what they call their principles. That is why we never take any notice of what they say before us in the trains or elsewhere. We know it means nothing and is an excellent safety-valve. If Maura had done as we always do—let them talk and take no notice—there would have been no riots in Barcelona. But Spaniards have hot tempers, and if you make them angry, trouble begins. What harm does their talk do to any one? You have only to reflect that they are pretty nearly all fathers of families, who know very well that any such revolution as they romance about would only make it ten times harder for them to earn a living for their children, and God knows it is hard enough already to live in our country. We have to eat beans and bread, and often don’t get enough even of that. Do you imagine that any working man wants civil war in the country to make his food dearer still?Ca!Let them talk! It amuses them and it makes no difference to the Government. Whichever party is in power the poor have the same difficulty in bringing up their families.”
The Civil Guards had to shut their ears to agood deal of conversation which the Ultramontane Government would have found it desirable to suppress, during the three months after the “Red Week” in Cataluña; for the attitude of the people towards the priests and Religious Orders, not only in the North of Spain, but all over the country, became daily more aggressive, and I have frequently admired the tact and good temper with which members of that force contrived to do their duty and yet avoid fanning the embers of discontent into a blaze of passion.
It has been sometimes remarked to me that it is the Civil Guard who really govern Spain, and that without them anarchy would shortly ensue. So far as the maintenance of public order is concerned, there is a good deal of truth in this remark. They go quietly about their business, never interfering with any one unless there is need, but if there is, their intervention is immediately and conclusively efficacious. They are at once feared and respected, and it is only in extreme cases that resistance to them is ever attempted.