THE SITUATION IN PORTUGAL 79 



est and most improbable stories of underground passages and 

 subterranean flights were spread broadcast about the regular 

 clergy, who were expelled from their religious houses. All 

 the insults, cries and contempt were for the irmas, or sisters, 

 and the frades, or brothers, as the members of the religious 

 orders were called in Portuguese. Not even the Sisters of 

 Charity were spared. A correspondent calls attention to the 

 way in which two different groups of prisoners were treated 

 by the revolutionists. One group of men came along as pris- 

 oners conducted in a polite and suave manner by the soldiers. 

 They were not unfrocked frades, but they were three private 

 soldiers in uniform, who had broken down the door of the 

 church of San Salvador and plundered everything valuable 

 there which they could lay their hands upon. Shortly after- 

 wards a few nuns were hustled along, with insults, cries and 

 whistling. Among them were three Spanish women, one a 

 widow, 79 years of age, and her two daughters, all of them 

 discalced Carmelite nuns, who were thrust across the border 

 into Spain without funds or resources. 



For three days no order whatever was observed by the revo- 

 lutionists in Lisbon. Churches were dismantled or closed and 

 all services ceased. Yet there was one exception. The Irish 

 Dominican Church, which has stood for 150 years in Lisbon, 

 was wide open and services went on uninterruptedly. The 

 British flag was hoisted over it and the Union Jack was draped 

 over the doorways, while each Dominican monk wore a tiny 

 Union Jack as a buttonhole ornament. The so-called republic 

 did not dare arrest or expel these religious, nor make any 

 attack upon their church or convent. So they made them the 

 general exception to the expulsion of religious, and that, too, 

 without any representation, diplomatic or otherwise, from Eng- 

 land. But the brave government of seven knew that if they 

 touched an Irish Dominican friar, save after charges duly pre- 

 ferred, and a formal trial and conviction for violation of some 

 law which they had infringed, the new government would hear 

 in no uncertain manner from Great Britain. 



The new government of seven, before there is a Constitution 

 or legislature in existence, has begun to promulgate decrees 

 having all the effect of law, and put into practice the following 

 as far as possible: Separation of Church and State, which 

 also spells confiscation of church property; a law of divorce 



