PORTUGUESE PROGRESS

Evening Post, Issue 17, 20 July 1936, Page 7

PORTUGUESE PROGRESS

EMPIRE & GERMANY

/ REFUSAL TO YIELD

Portugal is indignant over suggestions made in other European capitals that the new Germany's hunger for colonies might be appeased by carving up the Portuguese • Empire, says a writer from Lisbon in the "New York Times." v

This little nation is making a valiant attempt to put both her domestic and overseas affairs fn order. She is proua of the progress that has been made under the Estado Novo (the new regime) and would resist to the utmost any move by the great Powers to sacrifice her to their international political needs.

The Estado Novo was introduced on January io, 1935, when the' National Assembly and the Corporative Chamber met for the first time. It is headed by two leaders-President Carmona and Dr. Oliveira Salazar—who have been m charge almost since the instiISViSj! mUitary dictatorshi P in

President Carmoma, who now has been for ten years the figurehead, has aged greatly of late. The Presidents equanimity, coolness of judgment, and kindliness have endeared him to his countrymen, who on his re-election on February 17, 1935, gave him the highest poll on record. The guiding spirit has been Dr. Salazar, for eight years Finance Minister and since July 1932 Prime Minister,' and behind him- has been the army. Formerly Professor of Economics at the University of Coimbra, Dr. Salazar is forty-seven years old, of robust health, ascetic habits, and gifted with tremendous powers for his official ,work. ■ COUNTRY'S GUARANTEE. The cautious execution of his reforms is the country's best guarantee against costly mistakes. ■. But, the new edifice being incomplete,(is naturally not yet secure, and Dr. Salazar's most intractable material is the human. With, the national finances he has been remarkably successful. The burden of public debt has been reduced .to £10 a head, compared with £18 in 1913," which indicates that the accumulated charges of the war, followed'by a decade of disorder, have been liquidated. In the course of wiping the slate clean £17,000,000 of floating debt, a relatively large sum, has been funded. For seven' years in succession there has been a budgetary surplus, and colonial budgets have .also been balanced. Economic problems are attacked as methodically aS financial, and the balance of trade is improved .without resort to quotas and contingents. ' The years 1925-29 showed an average deficit in the wheat crop of 180,000 tons. This has been transformed in the, last two years into a surplus which enabled 100,000 tons to be sent to Great Britain, apart from shipments to the Eastern Mediterranean. ' The struggle against illiteracy proceeds apace. During the last few^yeara the number of secondary school examinees has almost doubled. A fifteenyear plan involving an expenditure o£ £60,000,000 on public works is in progress. Reorganisation is being extended to the colonies. A Colonial Act has been incorporated in the Constitution and Imperial preference introduced to knit the colonies with the mother country. Both army and navy are being re-equip-ped and strengthened. In the international sphere, policy is based on an alliance with. Great-Britain..so ancient that it has become a national tradition—it was signed at Windsor on May 9, 1386, "for ever"—and on co-opera-tion for wbrld peace through the League of Nations. , HATRED OF TAXES. The intense hatred incurred by.Portuguese tax collectors during a long period of maladministration is not abated merely by inscriptions in the receiving offices to the effect that "aIL moneys paid in here are spent for the good of the people." Roads are being built, schools opened, hospitals inaugurated, and dishonest officials heavily punished whenever found out, and yet the clamour for relief continues to be heard. The standard of living is rising, but more slowly where suffering, is {most acute. Ingenious bureaucrats sitting in Lisbon may decree'that each cow shall have so many cubic feet of air in its stable, and overlook ■ ths squalor prevailing in the cottages where peasants and livestock, huddle together. Collective contracts "■ and minimum wages may be grandiosely decreed in some districts, while women toil all day long loading coal by the basketful in others. There is still widespread misery among the lower classes,' and Dr. Salazar complains openly of the "lack of comprehension of employers" to whom, desiring to avoid State Socialism, he makes- con stant appeal.