IGNORANT SPAIN

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 35, 10 August 1921, Page 15

IGNORANT SPAIN

"THE RUSSIA OF THE WEST"

NO PROFIT FROM WAR WEALTH.

"During the war Spain -was o. large neutral Power conveniently situated for maritime traffic, and posseting in abundance many of the things_ urgently needed by the belligerents, she increased her nominal wealth to an enormous extent,".sa-ys tho Glasgow Herald. , "The grape crop trebled 1 in value between 1913 and 1917; the dividend of a Bilbao shipping- company advanced from 35 to 1775; bank deposits increased by nearly 150 million pounds; the surplus war wealth of the country is estimated at 320 million pounds; and the peseta, to-day has nearly twice tne exchange value of tho French franc. _ Yet, despite heary taxation, mainly indirect, the first postwar budget—five years delayed—showed a deficit approaching- 30 million pounds, and. according to a Madrid correspondent of the Fortnightly Review the country is in a. desperate condition of poverty, dirt, ignorance, unemployment, and social unrest. "More than half the population are illiterate, the death-rate is the highest in Europe,, thousands of beggars swarm in the streets of Madrid, and in whole regions of the country 'human beings herd like savages in holes and caves—halfertarved, degenerate people, without doctors or churohes or schools; clothed with rude skins, and with their fears and hopes preyed upon b" witch doctors, as in Haiti or Nigeria.' \ny causes are assigned— priestcraft, offioiW corruption and cruelty, tho conge6tion of money in a few selfish and unscrupulous hands, and the inherent weaknesaes of a, half-Moorish race. But all these causes, it would sjeem, boil down to clerical reactionism, and. the lack of popular education, handicaps which, so long as they exist, will make Spain's warwon wealth as useless to her as wore the spoils of Mexico and Peru." " 'Agriculture was rained,' says the writer in. tho Fortnightly. , 'More than half the peninsula was now a deseert, with a. mortal silenco brooding over it, and emigrants leaving in shoals from town and country, chiefly to South America,. Nearly half the small towne and villages of Spain' are still without roads. Thirty thousand schools are lacking for over 3,000,000 chil dren, and something like 12,000,000 Spaniards are still unable to read or write or calculate the simplest figures.' "So goes the terrible indictment to-day with ex-Prim© Ministers like Don Joaquiii Sanohez .do Tooa, and tho Conde de Roraanones chiming in with remedies for Spain s miseries,' and ex-senators like Oandido Buimar roundly asserting that the nation is 'down and out' for all time, by reason of. temperamental defects duo to, raco and climate. 'More Moor than Latin' is Don Candido's verdict upon his own people. "Marcellino Domingo, the Socialist deputy for Tortosa, calls Spain the Russia or the West, sunk in torpor and ignore ance, ,as well as forgotten and despised by her neutral allies, Great Britain and France. 'We have had no ohanoes,' is the bitter oomment of the greatest lawyer, Javier do la Berna— 'we who fight on with empty minds, thin blood and empty bellies.' Speech of this sort may astonish the prospective tourist, with illustrated programmes in his hand showing Sunny bpai^.' and all the Moorish glamor of the Albambra; all the gaiety of Seville in Holy Week, with the majas and i&ajosof a Qoya dancing to guitars anJ castanets in a lanuorous grove of polnis. "This is a grossly inacourate piotur* of the only surviving despotism in Western Europe. Yet a huge army "is still maintained in Morocco at immense cost in blood and treasure. What Labor calls 'la loca advontura' eats up a. million pesetas a day. Public moneys melt unaccountably. I know, of a Government building whioh figured in the budget estimates at 700,----000 pesetas, yot cost 14,000,000 pesetas before it was finished! However, Spain in the mass is awake at long last. She now rules her old devotion to altar and throne—the fervor wliich once burned men alitfe for their.bolub' sake, and carvied Jho aword of persecution into foreign lands, ' where heretic hunting- wos the 1 pastime of such tyrants as Carlos V. and Felipe 11.-

"Organised Labor is to-day a power in the anoient theocracy, and the priests are viewed with real malevolence by' an under-fed and over-taxed proletariat; This sentiment ia upt new. I need only recall the 'Red Week' of Barcelonia in 1909, when convents and churches were burned, and - 'tho Jesuits' —as the l priests are. generally styled—were obliged to flee for their lives. ■

■ VMoii who know and love Spain feel their hearts sink when they contemplate the misery of the long-suffering medley of races from Galicia to Malaga, and from the Ebro to the Rio Tinto-^where I have seen the children of strikers prowling: aniong the garbage dumps in quest of potato peeling and rotten fruit. "It ia impossible to convoy in a brief space the condition of squalor and neglect in which Spain is plunged in this, llcr war-rich period. Her death rate ia the highest in Europe; I have counted over 4000 beggars in the. streets of Madrid alono on a aummpr's day. Moanwhile the nation is deafened with remedies and schemes." ' ,