GENERAL PRIMO’S GRIP OF SPAIN.

Hokitika Guardian, 22 May 1924, Page 3

GENERAL PRIMO’S GRIP OF SPAIN.

(By G. Ward Price in Daily Mail.) .MADRID, .March IS. For six whole months the self-con-stituted military dictatorship of General Prime do Rivera lias now exercised unchallenged control over the national life of Spain. Parliament remains siispcnoVd. Government departments are reduced to tho simple function of recording the decrees which the Military Directory isnes almost daily. The rights and liberties of 22,000,1)00 Spaniards are concentrated solely in tlie hands of a portly, amiable, and untiring President—and so far the nation has shown complete acquiescence in this autocratic administration of its affairs. The vitality and endurance that General Prime de Rivera brings to lvis. Task an- really remarkable. Recently when he received me in his room at the Ministry of War, outside which at least forty people were waiting to see him either individually or ns deputations, lie was dressed in a morning-coat, for he was going to a reception presided over h v the Queen of Spa in in honour of a Spanish an-I thoress.

Afterwards lie was present in uniform at a dinner to some Portuguese officers who had accompanied one of their national football teams to Madrid. Later on he was to he seen at a hall.

But before ten every morning he is at his desk attacking the piles of dossiers dealing with current State business that fill a 1 able in the middle of his room.

Met in appearance General Prion, do Rivera is as vigorous and keen as if this incessant work and respnnsi ..:it -.- of running the business of a while n.ition almost single-handed were j ren. tion and repose. There is, however, no doubt that i.cInrc long the Military Directo.-v will lie looking for some more, ion-.ti iiti .oial form of goverment to wlii-n u> transfer its authority. General I’> im:; states this plainly, lie cousidres tin.*. Spain needed a period of intensive government reform, and ho believes that much of tin- task which he 1 • i• 1 lis fellow-generals assumed has h.-.-o i lined out. Sumo time soon, if experienced politicians ol tin- riglu lyric were available to take over the steering-wheel of State, General Prime would In- not unwilling to relinquish it. But—like changing drivers while the motor-car is going—unless the transfer is made very carefully and in perfect harmony, there is u good chance that the car may swerve into Ihe ditch during

the process. At the present mona-ni no one in Spain sees a .suitable’ "relief” for General Prinio do Rivera. That is tin- danger of the present situation. Another summer of wearisome, irritating, and profitless skirmishing in Spanish Morocco is about to begin ; even before that public opinion and the feelings of the Army in Spain will be stirred up vigorously by the trial, provisionally fixed for the end n! Marrh. of General l.ercngiici, charged with responsibility for tin- reverses in Morocco in 1921. against u hem the Public Prosecutor has asked fur the death-penalty. These are disturbing possibiliUes for the future: but no one can deny that the country is a: preseni orderly and quiescent. Spain is a nation walking forward through a mist of political confusion with possibilities of danger close to the path.. All sorts of foreign intersets with capital invested ill the country have sent representatives to Madrid just now to feel tlie pulse of the country. One of lingo .s-linnes’s sons is here nt

the head of a little mission of German financiers, conferring wit!; Spanish hanks and business men in tinearnest and stenlthv fashion of their race. Tho Spaniards themselves show no signs of foreboding. Enormous marblefronted banks are hurrying to completion on both sides of their magnificent Alcala, one of the splendid streets of Europe. They lately finished n post office so vast that it is known in Madrid as the "Cathedral of ('ommimications,” and. us I have seen for mvsclf, it contains spacious suites of bathrooms, dressing-rooms, and canteens for its swarms of employees. In Spain there is at least one guarantee of security for the future: it is that Lite* whole nation is so lin ret I with politics that it will take no political development too seriously. If Du- name-plate over the door comes to he changed again, there is every likelihood that business will continue a.- ti.-ttal during alterations.

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. MEASLES SERU.AL LONDON, April I. The new method of protecting children from measles and scarlet fever bv injecting '‘convalescents’ ” serum (obtained from the blood of a patient convalescing from the disease) is lioing used with great success in America and on the Continent.

At tin 1 London Fever Hospital. Islington. N-. a few eases of scarlet fever have been thus treated, but the trial, a Daily Mail reporter was told, has not been siiHifientlv extensive to warrant an opinion. A doctor said yesterday that in this prophylactic measure we probably have tbe means of greatly limiting an outbreak of measles ami scarlatina in schools and children’s homes. AYben otic child iu a family lias measles, it can also be employed for tin 1 protection of the other children. It has been found that adults' serum likewise confers protection. When the parents or grown brothers and sisters have suffered from measles an injection of their blood or blood serum greatly reduces the susceptibility of children to infection. Measles, he added, is one ol the diseases we have utterly failed to conquer. It takes the same toll of child life now as a hundred years ago.

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