THREATS TO ALFONSO.

Evening Star, Issue 20413, 19 February 1930, Page 8

THREATS TO ALFONSO.

The exchange of one dictator for another, who seeks only, according to his professions, the relinquishment of that role in Spain, has had no violent repercussions up to the present time. General Berenguer has formed a provisional Cabinet, and he has announced that a general election will be called so that constitutional government may be restored at the earliest moment. It is yet to be seen whether a parliamentary Government of the old kind will content those Spaniards who found fault with it before, or whether at this stage they can improve on its kind. General Berenguer must feel for the present that he sits very precariously in the saddle, and the King may feelnot much more secure on his throne. The first act of tho new Prime Minister had been to recall or pardon ail those political exiles who were banished or imprisoned during the preceding regime, and, though it may be a necessary one, that is always a dangerous procedure in times of political convulsion. A similar act, performed by the first moderate revolutionary Government, gave the Bolshevists their chance in Russia; and among the plotters and intriguers who have been set at large in Spain there are certain to be extremists who will have no more love for General Berenguer than they had for De Rivera, and who will think a political change altogether unfinished while it still leaves rooi for tho King. It was a bad omen for tbe monarchy when almost the first great gathering held under the new regime was one to celebrate the anniversary of the Republic which, fifty odd years ago, lasted for a year in Spain. The speeches of Republicans were punctuated by cries of “ Death to King Alfonso,” and one orator declared that tho monarch was afraid to call a genera) election in view of his responsibility for tho military disaster in Morocco in 1921. That charge has been often repeated. The allegation is that the King provoked a costly reverse for his armies by giving orders to attack to a subordinate general, passing over the heads of the War Minister and of General Berenguer, who was in chief command. The Parliament wished to try publicly the officers who had been involved in a bad collapse of Spanish arms; they would certainly have defended themselves —so Alfonso’s enemies assert —by placing the blame on the King’s shoulders, where it belonged: and the charge is that, to prevent this exposure, Alfonso summoned De Rivera to establish his dictatorship, with the result that the Parliament was suspended and no trials took place. Alfonso has bis enemies in his own, country, who do not hesitate to ascribe to him every kind of abuse of his high trust. It was the knowledge that he has them, one may easily suspect, which made him sacrifice so easily as he did a dictator who had become unpopular. Better for De Rivera to go, in time, than De Rivera and Alfonso both. According to a well-informed authority, writing just before the recent change of control, three developments are possible in the future of Spain. “ First, the establishment of a Bolshevist regime, under the pressure of the extremist elements of labour syndicalism, the most audacious, if not the most numerous, members of that group. This would be a catastrophe that would surpass in violence and bloodshed tho Russian Revolution. Second, the advent of a moderate republic, in which all wise Republican and Socialist elements would come to an agreement with the old Liberal Conservatives, after turning their backs upon the monarchy (such an understanding, and not merely a tacit one, has already been realised).” The third possibility would be the continuation of the present situation under another dictator. “This would menu the stagnation and tho political death of Spain.” Republican prejudices, however, may have given their bias to that prophecy.