SPAIN OF TO-DAY 



I. — The Country at Large 



THE newspapers have been teeming with news from 

 Spain regarding the present crisis; but very few facts 

 have been given their readers upon which to base any 

 adequate view of events. Even as I write, there are rumors 

 of civil war. Vague statements are made without names, dates, 

 or places that the clergy are fomenting it. The Catholic com- 

 mittees have abstained from their projected protest against the 

 present policy of the government, and that alone, irrespective 

 of whether troops were massed or Radical counter-demonstra- 

 tions were planned, shows that they have no desire to involve 

 their country in insurrection or war. We have been regaled 

 ad libitum through the press with extracts from the speeches 

 of Liberal and Republican, and even of Socialistic leaders, but 

 not a word has been said of the speeches, in reply, of La 

 Cierva, Dalmacio Iglesias, Urguijo, and others, quite as notable 

 in their way from the Conservative standpoint. This is not an 

 entirely fair attitude for the American press ; it ought to tell 

 both sides of the story. 



Spain is an intensely Catholic country, with Catholic tradi- 

 tions and Catholic prejudices running back to the earliest ages. 

 The Spaniards still have much of the Goth in them, much of 

 the old inflexible spirit which drove out the Moor and pro- 

 tected all Europe from the Moslem. Spain was at one time 

 the greatest country in the world, an empire vaster than that 

 of ancient Rome. People are apt to forget this. The old, 

 proud spirit that brooked no contradiction and knew no com- 

 promise, still dominates the people, although they are fallen 

 from their high estate as rulers of the world. Kings like 

 Charles V and Philip II, with their strong centralizing ten- 

 dencies, enhanced the natural national disposition to inflexibility 

 of character, while lesser men, following the line of their poli- 

 cies, confirmed and fixed it. We who judge Spain as a whole 

 must take into consideration this inheritance of history and 



