SPAIN TO-DAY.

Hokitika Guardian, 29 March 1924, Page 4

SPAIN TO-DAY.

ORDER IN THE CITY OF BOMBS. (Bv G. Ward Price in the “Daily -Mail.” They used to call this place “Barcelona, where the bombs came from.” It is peaceful enough now, spinning cotton and printing calico in mills supplied with power by an Anglo-Cana-dian company, with dams and dynamos up in the mountains behind the city. But just after the war ended Barcelona was as lively a town to live in as Dublin used to be. During two years assassination here, and five hundred there were eight hundred attempts* at of them succeeded. Intimidated by the Anarchists, the courts dared not convict. Though they liavo their own Sinn Feiners in Barcelona (they are called Separtists in Spain), it was not they who spread corpses about its sunny streets where even sparrows chirp so gaily in the plane-trees overhead that their chorus makes one long shrill scream. The campaign ol terror waged against both employers and steady-going work-men was carried on by the Syndicalists, whose aim was to force every mill-hand in Catalonia, at the pistolpoint, into joining a Unified Syndicate, which should dominate the whole province politically and industrially. As always, everywhere—and the present contented tranquility of Barcelona proves it—the Red Tyranny in Barcelona was the work of a small minoiity of savage men. Because it happens to be a Spanish city that was for two vears intimidated by cowardly class warfare wo Britons are inclined to remark what violent people these Southerners arc and dismiss the object-les-son from our minds. But there _ are men in Glasgow and South Wales today deliberately scheming to bring about such a state of things in England.

The man who broke Spanish Bolshevism was General Martinez Anido, Prefect of Barcelona from 1919 to 1921. To-day. next to Prime do Rivera. he is the strongest man in the group of generals that is ruling Spain. 11c docs not belong to the Directory, luit acts as Minister of tho Interior under its orders, controlling the whole internal situation. General Anido is an unpretentious figure, with a rather benignant, wea-ther-beaten face and gold spectacles. But lie showed himself in Barceona a man of steel will and iron hand. Before ho went there the 300,000 workmen of the city were driven fiom one strike into another by the selfappointed bullies who called themselves their leaders. During his Prefectsliip there were no strikes. In two jears ISO disputes between employers and employed were settled peaceably. The men remained at work, and under the Prefect’s supervision their claims were justly dealt with. The annual average of terrorist outrages in the same period fell from 400 to 30.

“Syndicalism of the kind I had to deal with,” General Martinez Anido told me, “is always imposed upon ,; tho mass of the workers by a handful of violent extremists. The rest are terrified and obey dike sheex>.” Immediately hq -ttook* charge this elderly, sturdy, low-voiced soldier began by sending to 'prison 30 or 40 of the known Syndicalist leaders. Then he proceeded to arrest, otic after another, their secret agents in each factory who exacted from the workpeople a weekly contribution to the Syndicalist funds. At one time they were collecting £32,000 each Saturday. Soon there was no one who would risk this work. ~~

Meanwhile the life of the new Prefect was threatened a defien times a day. Not only did he pay no attention, but he used to take his young daughter about with him in his car. Once, hearing that a definite plan was on foot to assassinate him, lie spent the whole day walking alone up and down the Ramblas, the most crowded street of Barcelona.

At last, as always happens when the terrorism of a few is faced boldly in the name of public order, the Syndicalists gave up the struggle. Their leaders went abroad, to live on the money they had extracted from Barcelona workers. And now tlic city is busy and safe again. One firm—Fabra and Coats, in which there is a good deal of British capital—employs 3,200 hands and has 110,000 spindles in its mills. But if no one had stood up to the Syndicalists Barcelona might to-day have boon as idle and wretched as Petrograd.