In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 55, 6 March 1937, Page 21

In the Public Eye

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Behind the barricades in Spain Don Francisco Largo Caballero, plasterer and Prime Minister of the country, is fighting for his life and the lives of his supporters against a rebel army. But this weA Senor Caballero threatened to resign if his home policy continued to meet with opposition.

Caballero was born the son of a carpenter in a village. At seven he was put to work. Largo Caballero attended no school; he was one of Spain's disinherited and disfranchised 12 millions. Until he was 20 he could not read or write. He taught himself. For forty years Caballero was a trade union organiser of the orthodox so-called Socialist persuasion. Not for him the lofty and individualist doctrines of the Anarchists, who were then far stronger in Spain's small-scale industries than the Socialists. Not for Caballero the mass insurrectionary policy of Communism. Spain's TUC chief turned Spanish Communists down with emphasis. Caballero was a reformist. That did not keep him out of gaol in Old Spain. In 1917 King Alfonso's police laid him by the heels in Cartagena gaol. Sentence: Life imprisonment. He was pardoned. He even served under the Administration of General Primo de Rivera, Franco's Fascist forerunner. When the Republic was set up in 1931 Caballero became Minister of Labour and Public Works. He fumbled about, trying to solve the problem of Spain's land-hun-gry peasants. He failed. Senor Ler-roux,'old-time Socialist, formed a National Government of the Right. Wisely, he locked up Caballero. He'got-, only thirty years this time. In the Republican gaol Caballero became what royalist persecution had never made him — a revolutionary. The boss of the Union General de Trabajores, 1,500,000 strong, went Red. - >

Lerroux charged him with inciting the abortive Asturias miners' revolt of 1934. The Public Prosecutor called for his head. Caballero was acquitted. There was still some justice in Spain in those days. But while he still lay in prison his wife died. They let him out to attend her funeral. He drove in a cab behind the hearse, accompanied by warders. Sixty thousand of his followers lined the route. They raised the clenched fist silently. The Government set him free in December, 1935. A reporter said to him, suddenly gone grey with his 67 years, "Now you can rest.'' Caballero said, "Now I will work." March, 1936, enemies shot up his house. He escaped. He organised the Popular Front that won the election in the spring. For the first time in Spanish history Caballero persuaded the Anarchists, Socialist, and Communists to work together. The Popular Front Government was formed, but not with Caballero. He stayed outside. "It won't last," he said,."the point is, who will take over—the army or us?" When Liberal Premier Azana stripped the Dons of half a million acres of land and gave it to the peasants Caballero said with a contemptuous grin: "An aspirin to cure an appendicitis!" He spurred and kicked the Republican Government onward into new assaults upon property. He told the peasants: "Your problem is easily solved. Just take the land. Don't wait to be given it." When civil war opened he forced the Government to arm the factory workers and the peasants. Said Caballero, "I would like to. see every bricklayer go to work with his rifle slung on his shoulder. Then I know that nothing could exist in Spain except the will of the great mass of the Spaniards." Mr. Edward Taylor. A graceful compliment has been paid to the New Guinea Public Service by the inclusion in the New Year honours list of Mr. Edward Taylor, District Officer, now in charge of the Morobe district, in which are situated the great goldfields of Wav and Edie Creek. Mr. Taylor has been made a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (Civil Division). Unhappily, little is heard in Australia of the work of the Magistrates of the Territory of New Guinea until they become casualties. Mack and Hough, both killed by arrows, and McDonald, murdered by a maniacal native policeman, served their apprenticeships under Mr. Taylor, who is the doyen of New Guinea's executive' officers. Mr. Taylor began his life in New Guinea as a soldier in- the Australian^ Military Force which occupied Germany's former possession during the Great War, and he travelled extensively throughout the Territory in a soldier's uniform. He led a life of adventure, and his many encounters with wild natives, whom, with a few exceptions, he succeeded in bringing under Governmental control, would provide material for an exciting book. It was he who subdued the wild Baining tribe, which inhabits the mountains about' thirty miles from Rabaul, and ; which used to cause much trouble with' its continued attacks upon other tribes. In 1920, he was the first white man to see the mysterious Moi kolkols, a tribe inhabiting the oppoI site side of New Britain. To this day these people have resisted the efforts of officers to make friendly contact with them. Several attempts have been made to bring the Mokolkols under control, but the small tribe has either migrated to the broken country . above them, or have attacked the patrols. Twice serious casualties have been inflicted. In the Morobe district, before the discovery of gold, Mr. Taylor, 'in 1924. concentrated upon exploration. In 1925, he was appointed District Officer of I New Britain, the whole of the island having been placed under his direction. In 1926 the Nakenai massacre, in which four white men were killed, took place, and Mr. Taylor arrested the principals and brought them to trial after months of difficult and dangerous work. , . " . ■

In 1932, he was transferred from.New Britain to his old love, the Morobe district. His control extended to the heart of New Guinea, and there is an aeroplane : service from his headquarters, at Salamaua, to all his sub-stations.

The Duke of Alba, who has been in the news both on account of the destruction of his palace in Madrid and again through his refusal to transmit a humanitarian suggestion on behalf of fhe English members of Parliament unofficially in Spain, comes of one of the most famous of European families, according to the "Manchester Guardian." It descends from James FitzJames, Duke of Berwick, illegitimate son of James II who accompanied his father on his forced abdication and fought in Ireland and in Flanders against William 111. His mother was sister of the great Duke of Marlborough and he had some of the. Churchill skill as a soldier, as the allied troops discovered when he beat them at Almanza, for which he was made a duke and a grandee of Spain. He was killed eventually by a cannon ball at the siege of Philipsburg, leaving behind him a reputation which found warm tributes in the writings of Montesquieu and of Bolingbroke. Formerly, according to Drummond Wolff, who was Ambassador in the eighteennineties, the family had a wonderful "collection of archives and treasures" in Madrid. The family titles as set forth by Wolff almost induce vertigo.

The Duke of Alba's principal title is Duke-of Berwick .. . His Christian names were Carlos Maria Stuart FitzJames Porto Carrero Palafox Vintimiglia. To these he added as titles, inherited through women, the Duchies of Alba di Tonnes, of Liria, of CondeDuque Olivarez, and of Peneranda. He had eleven marquisates, one of them with a grandeeship, fifteen countships to three of which a grandeeship was annexed, one being the title of Count de Montyo, which he inherited from his mother sister of the Empress of the French. How much of all this will be left when the .fires lit in Spain have burnt themselves out? Dr. J. A. Kempthorne. The Bishop of Lichfield (Dr. J. A. Kempthorne) has announced in the "Lichfield Diocesan Magazine" his forthcoming resignation of his office: I have resolved to submit my resignation of this bishopric to the Archbishop and the King and to ask that the resignation may take effect early in June, 1937. I shall then be entering on my seventy-fifth year of life and concluding my twenty-fourth year as bishop of this- diocese. It will .be a hard wrench to give up work which has been full of happiness and to part from friends whose kindness and consideration no words can express. But I am acutely conscious that my powers are beginning to fail and it is wise for a bishop to lay down his office before, and not after, such failure becomes serious. There are some duties of my ministry which I feel able to\perform as well as in former years; there are others which I am increasingly unable to fulfil with any satisfaction to myself and the laity. There are problems before us, such as that of church extension in the new districts, which I do not desire to shirk but wh}ch, I am sure,, can be faced and solved more effectively under the leadership of a younger man.I hope that neither my wife nor I will be condemned to an altogether idle life. For myself I hope to find some opportunity for such simple work of a pastoral sort as is possible for an old man and a retired bishop. Dr. Kempthorne became Bishop of Lichfield in 1913. Previously he had been for three years Bishop Suffragan of Hull. Livings which he held earlier in his career include those of vicar of St. Mary's, Rochdale (1895----1900), Rector of Gateshead (1901-1904), and Rector of Liverpool (1904-1910). Dr. Kempthorne has been a vigorous defender of the younger generation against their critics, clerical and other. At a diocesan conference some years ago he said: "I do not wonder that some of our young people do not care to go to. church when everything is being swayed by the stupid sticky conservatism of some of their seniors." Speaking at the Church Assembly at Westminster, in 1927 the Bishop referred to the young people who "go out on motor-bicycles or on push bicycles on Sunday afternoons in the summer," and said "we must give the boys and girls in their teens the opportunity of .associating in healthy ways so that it can be a safeguard against any future tendency to associate in unhealthy ways." General Hirohito. Some 60 years ago an ambitious military clique in Japan undertook to thrust into the background the _ Emperor Mutsuhito, who was determined to rule the country in his own right. It even went so far as to rebel in an attempt to set up an army dictatorship. The Emperor rallied the country behind the throne and, with the aid of loyal troops, fought down the ambitious Generals. In the last few weeks in Tokio histcry has been partly repeating itself. Again an army clique undertook to tell the Emperor how the government of the country should be, run. It has found that the grandson of; Mutsuhito is made of the same courageous stuff as his strong ancestor. Whatever may be the final outcome of the struggle for military ascendancy, the young Hirohito has demonstrated, that he is determined to rule in his own right and that the army cannot gain ascendancy except by a direct attack on the throne itself. ' ■ . ■

Moreover he-has shown great political skill in rallying the country around him. Also, he has demonstrated to the army clique that, if it rebels, the navy will stand by him.