384 



The Review of Reviews. 



WILL SPAIN BECOME A REPUBLIC? 



Dr. E. J. Dillon, in T.P.'s Magazine for March, 

 inquires, Is the Spanish Monarchy Doomed ? Is it 

 earmarked as the next European Republic ? and offers 

 many reasons for answering in the negative. Many 

 Spaniards, he grants, are dissatisfied with the Govern- 

 ment, but the contrast between Portugal before the 

 revolution and Spain is so great as to make no inference 

 from one applicable to the other. Even of Portugal 

 he says : — 



I am profoundly convinced by what I then saw that if King 

 Manoel had stood his ground for a single day— nay, for a 

 couple of hours — he could have made short work of the rebels, 

 consolidated his dynasty, and cleared tlie ground for sorely 

 needed and helpful reforms. At that stage of the movement, 

 then, it was the monarch himself who compromised the cause of 

 the monarchy and unwittingly played into the hands of the 

 republicans. The change of n'gime, therefore, was not so 

 much the outcome of a revolution as the consequence of the 

 abdication of the monarchy. It died by its own hand : by 

 suicide. 



KING ALPHONSO EXEMPLARY. 



But, Dr. Dillon adds, nothing like this need be 

 feared or hoped for in Spain : — 



Whatever else may be said of Don Alfonso, he is gifted with 

 a will which asserts itself in unmistakable ways and with a 

 degree of physical courage which seeks adventures and thrives 

 in an atmosphere of danger. Alfonso XIII. is a constitutional 

 monarch in fact, although a monarch by the grace of Gcd in 

 his own estimation. And he is careful never to give grounds 

 for dissatisfaction to any of his ministers or for blame to any of 

 his political critics. In this respect he is an exemplary ruler. 

 The republican chiefs with whom I discussed the outlook 

 assured me that whenever they might need a handle for the 

 hatchet with which they would cut down the monarchy, it is 

 not the King or the Court that would supply it. 



SPAIN CONTRASTED WITH PORTUGAL. 



In Portugal hopeless corruption characterised the 

 administration of the monarchy, and that caused the 

 cup of bitterness to overflow. In Spain the monarchy's 

 chiefs are clean-handed. It is the Republicans in Spain 

 who are associated with shady transactions, and whose 

 municipal record is distinctly unfavourable. Under the 

 Portuguese monarchy progress was impossible owing 

 to the deadlock between the Parties. King Alfonso's 

 realm is, on the other hand, very much alive, legislation 

 is advancing, reforms are being realised, with a deep 

 sense of national unity. There are many abuses, but at 

 core the Spanish system is healthy. In Portugal it was 

 the Republicans who agitated for reform ; in Spain it is 

 the Monarchists and Conservatives who have framed 

 and passed and applied most far-reaching remedial and 

 democratic measures now in force. The Spanish 

 Republicans arc a drag on every progressive move. In 

 Spain the bulk of the army is not Republican, and the 

 officers' corps is decidedly Monarchist by conviction 

 and interest. 'J'hc King and his Government take care 

 continually to better the material and moral condition 

 of officers and soldiers. 



CLERICALISM NO PROBLEM. 



Dr. Dillon uproots the current belief that clericalism 

 is one of the most crucial problems of the day in Spain. 



He says the clerical question cannot be said to exist 

 there at all : — 



I may even assert, without exaggeration, that the I'reedom 

 with which religious and ecclesiastical questions are discussed 

 by the press, and ecclesiastical abuses, nay. Church dogmas, are 

 ridiculed in books and on the stage goes far beyond anythmg 

 which would be deemed permissible by the authorities of Berlin, 

 Vienna, St. Petersburg or Rome. 



THE REAL DANGER. 



Monarchism and religion are held up to derision and to 

 obloquy every day in the l.ay schools, the newspaper press and 

 the stage. And therein lurks the canker which is gnawing the 

 vitals of these two institutions. 



This anti-monarchic and anti-religious propaganda 

 is fraught with increasing danger to Spain. " It has 

 its principal source, like that which helped to ruin the 

 Portuguese monarchy, in Paris." It constitutes the 

 real danger which at present threatens the Spanish 

 monarchy. 



THE SEVENTH SENSE: THE EQUILIBRIAL. 



In Harper's for March Professor E. A. Ayers dis- 

 cusses the seventh sense in man and animals, by which 

 he means the sense that leads automatically to the 

 readjustment of equilibrium. The bird, the deep-diving 

 or high-flying man, stake their lives on equilibrial 

 reliability. The writer advances the theory of the 

 creation of sensations in the equilibrial sacs through 

 varying pressures and vibrations of their enclosed 

 fluid. The semicircular canals in the labyrinth com- 

 posing the internal ear in man are suggested by the 

 writer as the organs of equilibrium : — 



Further, the fact that the three canals of each ear-set lie, 

 one horizontal and the other two perpendicular, and at right 

 angles to each other, thus meeting all possible dimensions of 

 space, compels the belief and seems to confirm the theory that 

 sensations of position and motion are the product of fluid action 

 through inertia, flow, and momentum. Still further, fluidic 

 fluency is secured through the canals being directly and patu- 

 lously connected with the cochlea, and by outer tubular linking 

 of one part with another, all somenhat like a hot-water heating 

 system of circulation without the heat. 



So far as we kno\\-, the only difference in the automatism of 

 the equilibrial sense and that of liver and other structures is that 

 the semicircular canal structure is acted upon, excited to action, 

 by vibrations and gravity instead of chemical or electrical 

 stimuli. In summation : we find in practically all feats of 

 equilibration that the fundamental non-conscious sense is assisted 

 by the conscious senses sight, touch, and muscular pressure ; and 

 that we casually award all the credit to the latter three senses. 

 They are the steering-gear of the ship, but the canals are the 

 ballast in the hold. 



Human aviation makes an appeal to the semicircular canals 

 that they have never had before. In so far as aeroplane equi- 

 librium is not secured through the machine, is not mechanically 

 automatic, it must depend upon the aviator's sight, touch, 

 muscle-pressure, and semicircular-canal senses ; and to that 

 extent man must bring the sensitiveness of these parts to the 

 standa.'d of the bird. The bird depends wholly upon sight and 

 semicircular-canal senses in flying. 



The Asiatic Quarterly Revie^v publishes an article 

 bv Mr. H. F. B. IaiicIi, setting forth his well-known 

 views on the Persian question. The American view 

 of the .same question finds e.xpression in the Atlantic- 

 Monthly, in which British policy is set forth in all its 

 Machiavellian cnormitv d la Shusler. 



