A PORTUGUEST SCANDAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 97, 24 December 1913, Page 5

A PORTUGUEST SCANDAL.

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION. By Electric Telegraph—Copyright] [United Press Association.] (Received 9.50 -a.m.) ■ Lisbon, 'December 23. The Government has ordered seven •oilegos, including a new English •allege at Oporto, to he closed on he grounds that they are illegally providing religions instruction.

POSITION OF THE CHURCH.

London, December 23

The Daily Chronicle, summing up a

cries of articles written by Mr Philip Gibbs, a well-known journalist, ifter a visit to Portuguese prisons, .ays that the priesthood is hostile to die Republic, but the Government is iot justified in violating the customs if humanitv.

M r Gihhs found Syndicalists and Republicans, in addition to Royalists, mprisoned, without trial, in some hor■ible damp caverns near Lisbon. He omul Figueredo, a priest who was ar•ested in March, 1911, in solitary coninement in a dark, noisome cell, recaling the days of mediaevalism. Senor foelho and his wife were in solitary •onhnement for refusing to divulge die names of persons involved in a onspiraey of which they profess iguovmce.

The Daily Chronicle advises the Portuguese Government to proclaim it political amnesty. Though these scanlals are not as horrible as those disposed in .Mr Gladstone’s pamphlet on Neapolitan prisons in 1850, they are md enough to justify indignant protests from Great Britain.