52 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



a quite innocent explanation, it was not unnaturally taken at 

 first as confirming the most sinister rumors. To the Anglo- 

 Saxon mind it would seem that when a community walls itself 

 in from the world, and admits no intervention of the law, no 

 public inspection of its practices, whether in life or death, it 

 should not complain if suspicions arise as to the nature of 

 these practices. The alleged design of the rioters was to take 

 the bodies to the ayuntamiento or town-hall, that their condi- 

 tion might be publicly verified." This is a fine specimen of 

 an unbiassed statement ! But he did not take the trouble to 

 find out that there are only nine cloistered convents of women 

 in Barcelona, and that the other religious orders are unclois- 

 tered and are not "walled in from the world," but are Little 

 Sisters of the Poor, Sisters of Charity, Third Order of St. 

 Francis, Sisters of Mary Immaculate, Sisters of the Immacu- 

 late Conception, etc., who go in and out of their houses as 

 their duties require, and who are seen regularly by their 

 friends, scholars, patients, and others exactly as the same reli- 

 gious orders are seen here in New York. It was from these 

 that the bodies were taken. If Mr. Archer had made any 

 inquiry he would have found that the town-hall of Barcelona 

 is called the casa consistorial, and that it is in the centre 

 of the old city, not far from the cathedral, and that the rioters 

 carried the bodies of the nuns in the opposite direction, away 

 from the town-hall. His explanation does not explain ; neither 

 does it show why these dead bodies were treated with the most 

 revolting grossness. 



But it would take too long to go over his article in extenso. 

 In every portion of it are found evidences of insinuation 

 against the clergy, nuns, and members of religious orders in 

 general, while the riotous mob and its anarchist leaders are 

 uniformly credited with good intentions. Certainly this is not 

 the mere detailing of facts ; it is the addition of coloring mat- 

 ter. It is not the calm statement of an unbiassed investigator; 

 it more nearly inclines towards the statement of a prejudiced 

 journalist, who desires to exploit only one side of the case. 

 Take as an example the sentence : "The fact that the Cortes 

 was not sitting left the Maura cabinet the unchecked despots 

 of Spain ; and the fact that Senor Maura declined to summon 

 the Cortes showed that this despotism was essential to the 

 carrying through of his policy," which sounds so unbiassed. 



