The Power of Convention.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18634, 8 March 1926, Page 8

The Power of Convention.

The " Evening Standard," according to a cable message, reports that Queen Ena of Spain,'' while apparently watching " every detail of the most import"ant bull-fightsj" is actually gazing into the impenetrable darkness of black discs in her field-glasses. When a bull is goring a horse she regularly blinds herself, so, while maintaining the attitude of an absorbed spectator. By the one device she avoids hurt to her own feelings and to those of the devoted sportsmen of Spain, who would naturally resent it if the Queen averted her eyes or turned her back, and are as naturally delighted to see her " just " like, one of ourselves." Her diplomacy is even greater than that of Lady Chamberlain, who.took the irreconcilables of Locarno out in a boat, with the design that, as they heard lakewater lapping with low sounds by the shore, peace should come dropping slow. But is it as innocent? The guile of Lady Chamberlain was dove-like in harmlessness, and the wisdom which knew the power of soft surroundings and chat to dissolve disagreement compromised no principle. But we make no doubt that, while many will smile at the deception which enables a Queen of Spain to behave both as a Spanish sportswoman and as an English lady, just as many will scowl at her lending her countenance, if not her eyes, to "an orgy of blood and cruelty." They Avould have her ,at least stay away; better, join (or found) the Spanish Anti-Bull-Eighting League; better still, rise at a bull-fight and make a dignified but emotional appeal to her people for sweeter manners, kindlier laws. Alas that they are not Queen of Spain: moralist Bottoms, they would condole in some measure. It is easy to cry out against spiritual weakness in high places; but the Queen of Spain must be first a Spaniard, and what part of her acquired and inherited morality is English she must in Madrid reserve, though she will not recant, till it became Spanish too. Fortunately for the Queen, and perhaps it may be a little consolation to those who would stiffen her standards to the rigidity of a poker, Spain is reforming its bullring, and horses will no longer be disembowelled, because they will no longer appear there. When the bull-ring is further reformed, and the bull-fighters themselves withdraw from it, the whole thing will become as innocent and Arcadian, as a cattle-show, perhaps as dull. By that time, presumably, fishing and hunting will be evil memories from ■ our present barbarism, and the vegetarian world have long before beaten all its swords into plough-shares. Principle will have asserted itself into complete autocracy, and as the opposite of principle will not exist, there will be no room for compromise. Convention is a tyrant, and public opinion its thumbscrew. We must either pay formal allegiance to the one, noble rebels as we may be at heart, or suffer the worst the other can do to us. Unhappily, the time when there shall be no conventions, but pure and universal law, commeasuring perfect freedom, is not yet. The Queen of Spain must still do as the Spaniards do, at any rate while they are looking.