TROUBLE BREWING IN PORTUGAL.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1013, 31 December 1910, Page 5

TROUBLE BREWING IN PORTUGAL.

ALARMIST REPORTS. NEW REPUBLIC IN PRECARIOUS POSITION. ■ CONSPIRATORS ARRESTED, By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright, .(Rec. December 30, 9.40 p.pi.) Paris, Docember 30. Alarmist telegrams from Lisbon state that the Portuguese Army and Navy is disaffected,- and that tho trade? unions are bitterly opposed 1 to tho ment. Tho "Daily Mail's" Paris correspondent reports that the British Minister at Lisbon has asked for tho immediate dispatch of a warship. ■' The government, lie adds, has arrested conspirators who are seeking ~ to re-establish ex-King Manuel on 'tEo throne. Tho "Temps" states that the labour organisations at Lisbon aro raising demands impossible of fulfilment. . Numerous cases of insubordination have occurred in the Army, and three cruisers havo been sent from the Tagus on various pretests. : OMINOUS DECREES. . ' , ■ , (R'cc. December 30, 9.-40 p.m.) Lisbon, December 30A Government, decree has been issued prpyiding penaltios for offences against the Provisional Government, and for those spreading falsa and alarming reports. ' Punishments are also fixed for milii tary indiscipline.

PORTUGAL'S DIFFICULT TASK. ;

"If ever the misery of a people and, tho folly of a Court explained and justified a, drastic purge, it is'in Portugal," so wrote the "Nation" in discussing the re--volution.'of Ootpbor. "Whatever 1 was jnost enterprising, arid most virile in the . peasantry'migrated tp, Brazil in. numbers .to which even Ireland'can .show, lio parallel,- Whatever was most enlightened and' • most-resoluto' among the ;i educated class had.been driven, timb and. again: into exile. Not even in Russia is the percentage of illiteracy so appalling, and'this rioh ■soil, with its generous climate, shows an area of, uncultivated' land which , resemblos npthirig else in Europe. The poverty and the ignorance are alike .factitipus and unnecessary. A clerical . despotism explains tho oi?o'and corrupt misgovernnieiit the other. Tasatipn had been adjusted with a cynical accuraoy to' fall, exclusively nn the '.producing classes, iti prpdhce went to subsidise a governing caste, which, made for itself- sinecures and perquisites that only a nice sense ■pr>humour could'excuse.! Rational' bankruptcy was the only possible' end, and oilco already.Portugal lias faced a confession of' insolvency. The game wrs played',out, .and the, appointment of'the' Dictator Franco marked the end. The indignation which made an end at oijco of King: Carlos and tho Dictatorship -.was' as much. the ■ revolt of a people against brigandage, (is the .affirmation :of a Republican principle. •„< • : "The: .iiast. pf, pprtngiil ,has. made it a little dimciilt.to. feel sanguine about her future. Thememory of h,er transient greatness is sp distant, and the amazing energy lrhich she . displayed in the period of her navigators and colonists seems to have left'in the world of affairs so little trace behind it. The worst one may honestly say'.'.of the Portuguese is that : a people whiclr had retained mnch capacity for self-government would BPniehow have made its .revolution long ago. Tho new leaven . has,, indeed,, been long, astir. But with a totally illiterate, mass , below it, ..and a totally corrupt;,.caste .above it, the marvel,.is; rather that it, has-,succeeded so thoroughly and. so soon. .The experi-ment-which it .is about tP'essay is the' ! application to_ almost- medieval conditions of the ideas,-moral and intellectual, of the modern world. One may douljt whether .Egypt .or, Turkey, is much more desperately boliited than the remeter .regions of Portugal. The Republicans, men of European education, in-' spired mainly; by, French traditions', rationalists all of, them, Positivists some of them, bredj'n foreign exilo or in the cloistered .world of '.. their... p?vn universities, are corning to power to'face an 'inertia arid an ignorance hardly less hopeless than that with which the Young Turks have to contend. Their work will by the severest test of the generalisations of modern politic* fid -tho adaptability'' of . their own minds." .