THE DELAY OF SPAIN.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 303, 18 June 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DELAY OF SPAIN.

A correspondent last week was quite indignant with us for saying that thnro must bo in tho Spanish character, otherwise a very strong one, Home root of inefficiency ; but how else can ho explain the continuous decline of Spain ? Greece was conquered three peparate times—first, by tho Macedonian clansmen fused together by two men of military geniun; secondly, by the disciplined strength of Rome; and thirdly, after a wonderful revival in tho Eastern Empire, by a warlike Tartar horde which had turned a tribute of children into a mofit effioient standing army. Rome was conquered after two hundred years of battle by tho incessant invasions of half barbarous white tribes, who were individually bigger and biaver than the freo Romans, who were probably as a whole raoro numerous, and who found invaluable allies in the crushed and miserable population of white slave* that performed the manual labour of tho Empire. The Tartars, whoserealm was once wider than that of Rome, and who seemed for a few veara about to master tho world, were " warred down " by the Slavs in a struggle which lasted nearly as long as that by which the barbarians subjugated their Romans foe?. Spain, however, tho next claimant to world-wide empire, was never conquered. She was defeated once at sen by Elizabeth's fierce privateers, but she was never conqured, and in 1580 she was by far tho greatest Power in the world, owning all she owns now plus Portugal, the Milanese, Naples, including Sicily, the Low Countries, and the whole of the two Americas south of the 34th parallel, a dominion to which neither that of Great Britain, nor Russia, nor the ♦ United States can, in some respects, and especially in respect of potential wealthyieldins: power, fairly be compared. Tho Empire, too, rested on strong foundations. It Jasted in Naples for two hundred years. The people of the Low Countries only threw it off by an effort that was like a martyrdom, while the Spanish ascendancy in America was so deeply rooted that to this hour the creed, the language, and the civilisation of every land that belonged to Spain remain essentially Spanish. Nevertheless, some change, real or apparent, did pass over Spaniards, and from 1600, the history of their country has been one of continuous misfortune and slow decay. Why P There are men among ua who attribute it all to Catholicism, as Macaulay was inclined in that way, and we do not see any good reason why the Spanish Church should enfeeble the Spanish people any more than the Russian Church does. There are historians who say than the valour of tho people decreased; but Napoleon's Marshals did not think so, tho guerillas often fought as if Cortez had been leading them, and in the still more recent American wars the Royalists often accomplished prodigies of valour. Individually .the Spaniard, by the consent of all who know him, is as brave as anybody else. The American Spaniards did not rebel out of any self-developed perverse hatred of Spaiu, but because they were uuable to bear her treatment. The Spaniards themselves say the cause is a kind of accident, the perpetual recurrence of inefficient Governments ; but they had tLe power to make and undo their Governments like every other race. Why did they not create s one which, up to the limit of the national strength, could at least succeed, which, for example, could give them a fully organised army, a strong fleet, a Treasury as effective, say, as that of far poorer Prussia ? Spaiu ought to have absorbed Portugal long since, and to have been a wealthy nation of thirty-five millions, with colonies in Asia, Africa, and America, with the trade of the Mediterranean in her hands, and with a country as safe from invasion as if it were an island with an armed population. There was, that outsiders can see, nothing to prevent her, and yet she has declined until she will probably by 1900 be a weak Kingdom or Republic, with only part of the Peninsula in her possession, with scarcely seventeen millions of people, with no colonies, with a broken Treasury and a divided Army, unfeared in Europe and unremembered in the great struggles of the world. That seems a hard destiny, and we confess we see as yet but an imperfect explanation of it. The Spaniard, we maintain, is a strong man ; and wherefore, then, is a nation of Spaniards ineffective ? It is very easy to say that a race wear out like a family, but even if doctrine is true, which we doubt, not seeing evidence that the Jews, who are the oldest of races, are worn out, or that the Parsees are feebler than the fire-worshipping Persians from whom they deecend, the wearing out takes a long time, and Spain has taken, on the hypothesis, less than three hundred years. She was at her highest point during our Elizabethan period, and it would be hard to prove, that, except perhaps in the power of producing first-class" poetry, the Victorian English are at all inferior to the Elizabethan. They are certainly as efficient for all different tasks of life, which is the point we are now discussing, and more efficient both as administrators and as industrials. Spaniards are not, and it seems to us a matter of keen interest to discover a reasonable explanation of the difference. Why Spaniards do not increase faster in numbers we cannot even guess, but the same tact was observable in our own Elizabethan period, the total result being that they seem in the presence of advance ing Europe, and especially of the energetic, uncontented, pushing Anglo-Saxon, to be standing still. They will fight in this war, as we shall see, right well, and with a great wish for victory at any cost of danger ; but they will always be late, always half organised, anl always baffled when they are most in earnest by the want of a certain capacity in their agents for taking infinite trouble. Tho true motto of th 3 Spaniard, as of our own bravo Highlander, is " Icanna be fashed," and it is a motto "v?hich, in ah age when the trouble-taking races are in front, means disaster if not death.—Spectator.

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