THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1909. A DISGRACEFUL WAR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9611, 4 October 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1909. A DISGRACEFUL WAR.

It is a somewhat curious historical fact th it one of the outstanding - features of the history of Spain is that her administration has always been more or less disgraced with acts that cannot be very well described as other than rapacious scoundrelism. When the mighty Spanish Empire was towering to the height of its glory, towards the end of the faurteenth and in the fifteenth century, ) its rulers could not refrain from such atrocious actions as, practically, brought upon their head the scorn of all rival nations. When that great navigator Columbus diecovered the "New World," he found the highway to ruin so far as his country was concerned. The wealth of South America was the real source of.Spain's downfall, and though it is several hundred years ago since she was humiliated, Spain only now appears, and that only in certain uninfluential quarters, to realise the chief source of her severe tribulations. The Spanish don is a brave autocrat —he ia a soldier by nature, and he is lazy. He possesses a passionate love for magnificence, and his whole soul craves for wealth that he may satisfy his self-indulgence and love of show. To give him credit, he is willing enough to risk his life, and anything else, to get what he wants. It is evident, however, that the masses of the people are growing tired of the soldierly Qualities, and faults that are typical of the ariatocracv. Spain shocked the Old World with hir barbarisms in search of wealth in the New World. In more recent days sli3 lost huge possessions of a most valuable character in the same part of the world, the result of greed, and now the over-mastering passion of greed—the lust of wealth —has caused her to undertake as disgraceful a war as the pages of history ever recorded. The cause of the dispute with the Moors is of the usual kind —an attempt by the Spaniards to rush the Moors out of property belonging to them. Mr Cunninghame Graham has given to the London "Daily Chronicle" this account of the events which Jed to the war. He sriys: -Two mining companies exist in Melilla, one-Spanish and one French. The chairman of the Spanish company is now the Conde Gueli, who is brother-in-law of the Marquis of Comillas, the head of the TransAtlantic Line. Mr McPherson, of Cadiz, an employee of the Marquis of Comillas, the Dake of Tovar (an

intimate friend of King Alfonso), and his brother, the Oonde of Romanones (an ftx-Minister of Education

under the Libaral Government) comprise the chief shareholders. The French company, known as the Norte Africans, whose president is a Spaniard called Garcia Alix (an ex-Con-servative Minister), is financed from Both these companies are working under concessions from the Moorish Pretender, El Roghi. It is within the knowledge of your readers that the Spanish Ambassador, Merry del Val, was unable to come to any understanding with the Sultan as to the object of his Embassy. 1 am now assured by a gentleman who has just arrived from Moroco that one of the Spanish Ambassador's demands was that the Sultan should ratify the mining concessions granted by the Pretender to the two mining companies. That is to say, that the Sultan should ratify concessions given by a rebel, ac tua'ly under arms, against his authority. This the Sultan refused to do. The astounding public statement of Senor Villanueva, an exLiberal member, and ex-President of the Spanish Mining Company in Melilla, in which he stated that the murder of the folir Spanish workmen which brought about the intervention was arranged by the) mining companies' themselves, is now as clear as noonday. It will at once appear that these two companies, seeing that the Sultan would not ratify the concessions they had obtained from the rebel against his authority, had some motive in organising the murder of the four workmen, if it is true, as Senor Villanueva has publicly stated, that they did so. Being unable to obtain the concession from the Sulta ?, they naturally concluded —I am merely deducing what I say from th. remarkable statement/ of V illa-iueva—if they could bring about Spanish intervention they would be able to secure the ratification of tluir concession from the Spanish Government. If Villanueva—rod he is a man who stands very hi h in Spair/ is correct in his assert on, no more scandalous affair has ever come to light in the whole ;lalous history of the dealinas of Eik ipsan Powers with the inhabitants of Northern Africa. . Oo>i—and the only—Mattering unction that the Spanish public can lay to its soul is that the number of the Tovars, Romanones, Coroillas, etc., is very small, for their names have appeared iii nearly all the disgraceful financial operations in Spain of late years, such as the Kio de Ora business, the tobacco monopoly, the bolstering up of the Trans-Atlantic line, and the curious and intricate financial operations which have passed between the Spanish Government and that great national octopus, the Bank of Soain.