SPAIN'S CRISIS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12086, 15 August 1917, Page 5

SPAIN'S CRISIS.

STRIKE BECOMES REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT. DISTURBANCES AT VARIOUS POINTS. Reutor's Telegrams. (Received August! 10, 10 a.m.) MADRID. August 14. The strike has assumed the character of a general movement with a revolutionary tendency. The calling up of reservists is authorised in order to prepare for emergencies. Disturbances.are reported at various f.ointe. All is quiat in the capital. FIGHTS BETWEEN STRIKERS AND SOLDIERS. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Received August In, noon.) LONDON, August. 14. Telegrams from Spain indicate that many people were wounded in collisions between the strikers and the soldiers at Madrid. (The centre of the industrial unrest in Spain is the great industrial province of Catalonia, and its chief city, Barcelona, which is the Spanish counterpart, of Liverpool in the- United Kingdom and of New York in the United States. Catalonia has always been the hotbed of every revolution and insurrectionary movement, in Spain, its people, while very hard working and thrifty, are intensely jealous of their civic and political rights, and, beincr very hot blooded, are ever ready to fight for them. They contributed in no small degree to the downfall of the Conservative administration of Senor Dato in 1915. when the Government of the day, m deference to German machinations, sought to put a stop to the export of supplies, produce and manufactures of everv kind, from Catalonia, into France., by. rail, ou the pretext that a stricter enforcement of tho laws of neutrality had become imperative. At that, time Spain's sea-borne trade had not been totallv arrester], by Germany as it is to-dav. '' At present," a correspondent laitely wrote from Spain, "the people of Catalonia arc literallv boilim/. with rage against, the Kaiser, and the return to power of Ministers who formerly showed themselves subservient to Berlin, and who still continue to be regarded as instruments of the Kaiser and of his policies is well-nigh certain to cause the Catalonians to rise, in the quite near future, perhaps within the nest lortiught, against the new Government at Madrid. Catalonia and her fellow-sujler-ers in Spain are encouraged m their attitude bv tho conviction that they are in sympathy with the vast majority of their kinsfolk on the other sitlo of the Atlantic Ocean, that is to say wi'th tho Latin republics of Central and South America, who ate well-nigh universal in regarding the Kaiser as thenfoe The ties between the Latin republic of the Western Hemisphere and Snain ties sentimental, economic and poliCc'al. are far closer than most people seem to be awnre of in the United States and Latin American opinion carries weight in the kmgdom of Alfonso XIII., especially m Catalonia."