"BEFORE AND AFTER"

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 2, 25 August 1931, Page 6

"BEFORE AND AFTER"

ROYAL TYRANNY EVILS UNDER MONARGHY. . ? TYRANNY AND INJUSTIGE. WASHINGTON, July .11. Petty tyrannies, unjust death sentences, the squandering of public and the conflscation of private property, exile of prominent cltizehs, insubordination of army officers, and mismanagement in Morocco, were some of the underlying causes of Alfonso losing his throne, Don Salvador de Madariaga, flrst Ambassador of the Republie •of Spain to the United States, said here to-night in a radio address. One striking feature of the overturn, the Ambassador said, was that one heard less to-day about communism in Spain than in the final years of the monarehy, and yet the Spanish people for the first time had unfettered use of their liberties. Speaking on "Before and After the Spanish Revolution," he began by quoting from the American Deolaration of Independence, which, he .'declared, was the best . explanation of what happened in Spaih."~ / . RevFval of Parliamentary System. "It has been said that the dictatorship had become necessary because the Parliamentary system had failed in Spain," he said. "The facts are . exactly the reverse. "The dictatorship became necessary for an autpcratic monarcy because the Parliamentary system had begun to work. For o\Ler forty years it had heen a sham. Any Kingappointed .government could rely on a more or less fabrieated majority. "But from 1909 when the 'King, wholly unnecessarily, turned over Morocco to the army, public opinion began to walce up, for there is one thing that Spanish people have done with' forever and that is, worrying foreign nations out of the peaceful enjoyment of their own soil. "As Moroccan affairs grew worse, public affairs hecame- more lively. It became impossib|e for governments to count on a majority or to cope with the disorders provoked by anarchists, syndicalists and employers in Barcelona. Hence, as a- last resort, the dictatorship. "But- the remedy was worse than the disease. The dictatorship meant caprice and oppression. "As an example among raany, a government school inspector was deprived of his position, . salary and pension rights because he courteously declined to allow all the school children in Granada to line the streets for hours wliile the newly appointed Archbishop entered the town in state. Virtue of Patience in Revolution. "Petty tyrannies, unjust death sentences, squandering of public and conflscation of private money, exile of prominent citizens against all law and ' equity, insuhordination of army officers, all lcinds of social and political koubles were suffered for years, for, as the Declaration of Independence says, 'Marikind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. ' "It was this patience wherewith he Spa'nish people entered the seven lawless years, as the dictatorship is now described, which explains the wonderful order, the peace, the wellbehaved flrmne-ss of the change. "'The revolution is already made in all hearts and heads,' a Spanish friend told me last Summer in Geneva. 'All that remains is to manifest it.' Every Spaniard having become a Republican during the dictatorship, the proclamation of the Spanish Republie was a matter fo»' peace and unanimous joy rather than for strife and civil war. And so, e\en the dethroned king bowed before the ihevitable. Education for IMew Liborty. "The Spanish people has now, at last, the free and unfettered use of its liberty. It is handicapped by the ills inherited from the past. Its educational system is inadequate; but here a warnin°g: we hear too much about Spanish illiteracy. "Any one who has talked to Spanish illit.erate peasants and heard their proverbs and their popular songs, inspired with so deep a philosophy and couched in so perfect a poetical form knows that illiteracy can, at itimes, hold centuries of wit and wisdom, next to -vhich the standardised facilities of newspaper readers sound cheap and shallow. "The Irouble, then, is not with the illilerale but with the half-educated, for in them education may have confused an old instinctive culture without having developed a conscious culture of their own. "The splendid revival of learning, which began in Spain about fifty years ago and which in essence is one of the causes of the present revolution, is the guarantee .that. the reorganisation of university and secondary education will he carried out und'er strong and intelligent guidance. As a preliminary measure, the Ministry of Education has provided for theTpening or 30,000 new schools within a year. Reduction of the Army. "The most formidable ohstacle to Spanish liberty and progress in recent- years was the army, by which is meant the army officers. The members of the present government, who as the Revolutionary Gom-mit-tee, spent many months in gaol, prof•ited by their enforcecl leisure as the King's guests to study their future work as the National Cabinet. "The present Secretary of War had' then plenty of time to mature the plan for the reduction of the Spanish Army, which he has successfully carried out to a considerable extent. in less than three months. "The sixteen divisions 'which he found have been reduced to eight, and the 23,000 officers to 7000. And this drastio reform has been carried out with so much 'tact, courtesy and human sympathy that what seemed an unattainable dream but four months ago is now a reality, universally accepted. Freedom Of Worship Upheid. "No one needs to attach too much importance to the so-called religious question. Were there an American prelate, or, indeed, any one of the other Spanish Archbishops, in the See of Toledo, no trouble need have arisen. "An unwise statement of the Archbishop of Toledo called forth a series •of disorders directed against ecclesiastical buildings, but even here, when one might have expec-ted the Spanish neople' to get out of 'hand and comiqir somQ of the regrettable attacks onpersons which accompany nearly ,

every revolution, the anti-clerical disorders took place with out any personal victims. "The crowds waited till all the occupants of convents and monasteries had evacuated them hefore destroying the buildings. "All the Spanish Government wants is that every one should have the right to worship in peace undev whatever faith he wishes. "Such a doctrine is anathema to the reactionary wings of the Spanish Church, most of whose members, however, have moved along since the sixteenth century and they understood that freedom and religious worship have come to stay. Spain is an old Catholic nation and no one thinks of tampering with its old faith. s But the Church must ohey the laws. Vanishing of Communism. "As for social and industrial troubles, one hears less about communism than a few weeks ago. "Lenin and Bolshevism are purely Bussian phenomena, and just as the Russian republie refused to imitate the French, the Spanish republie will refuse to imitate the Russian. "There is no communism worth speaking of in Spain, ancl there cannot be, as was eloquently shown by the failure of all Gommunistic candidates in the general election. "Social troubles, such as the present campaign -of strikes, are due to syndicalists, wh-o are workers entirely opposed to communism. The •antidote to syndicalism is socialism. "The Socialist party of Spain is the larger and the best organised in the country and with influence in the near future. It is a party which believes .in the gradual transformation of society through peaceful evolution and It is led by intelligent and statesman-lilce persons. It represqnts a guaranty'of order and stability for the Spanish republie, The Assembly will meet on July 14. During tlre Summer and Fall the Gonstitution will be hammered out and promulgated and the Ghief of the State elected. Spain will then have stabilised her political life in less than two years since the fall of the dictatorship and in less than eiglit months after the fall of the oldest throne in Europe."