Spain and Her Dictator I.
[This is the first of two articles on the situation in Spain, written by our own representative, who recently had an interview with General Primo de Rivera.]
I BOUGHT my evening paper in Madrid, and read that L Dr. Paul Winslow, the eminent English specialist in nervous diseases, attributes " the frayed nerves from which we suffer so much to-day to the clatter and rattle of our big cities." The worthy doctor advises all married couples to make a journey to some quiet spot where they may be immune from this constant noise. I realized in a flash that the prescription holds good for every one of us, not simply married couples but all of us, individuals and conglomerates, who integrate our bustling, scurrying, jostling Western civilization. Of all countries to-day Spain alone, it seems to me, provides this spiritual solace, this recreation of mind and body and soul of which we stand so sorely in need. " It is, above all, as a model of essential substance that Spain means something to a Europe which takes such delight in change "—so wrote Count Keyserling in one of the most eloquent and authen- tic. chapters that he has written. I would add, too,—as model of man's fundamental yearning for the growth-and freedom of his own soul—eternal Spain cannot be prized too highly. In Spain, it must be remembered, the soul is one of the most ordinary subjects of conversation, whereas. in England it is only now beginning to lose its Victorian mantle of indecency.
One of the greatest of modern Spanish writers, Angel Ganivet, truly said :—" Spain is a family of 'individuals whose ideal is that every Spaniard should carry in his pocket a charter proclaiming ' this Spaniard has a right to do as he pleases.' " You can see this spirit of indivi- dualism and independence written all over the national life—not excluding their football ! It is what makes Spain so attractive, even to casual visitors—the country has more " character," not merely picturesqueness, than any other on the Continent—but it is also, of course, the reason why the Spaniards have never yet discovered a solution for their political troubles. In a word, Spain is the perfect junction of East and West (Victor Hugo was never more of a seer than when he wrote Les Orientales mainly from his recollections of Spain), and the very best vantage-point from which to survey the European scene at the close of the first decade after the War.
Not that time stands still in Spain. It should no longer be necessary to smash the legend that the feet of Spaniards are firmly planted in the Middle Ages.
On the contrary, the heightened sense of dignity, of human worth which the Spaniard retains in this era of mechanization, is, perhaps, one of the most potent civilizing influences in the world to-day. There is in Spain a certain leisurely .pace of life, however—and better still, a serene detachment from most of those pre-occupations that bind us moderns into so many bundles of nerves—which are an unfailing tonic. I pointed this out with a certain relish to my fellow-journalist, an Italian, who was waiting with nie in the palatial ante-chamber of the Ministry of the Army (when are we, too, going to discard the obsolete title of liar ?), to have an audience with General Primo de Rivera, the Spanish Dictator. With the studied pessimism of his kind he regaled me with gloomy views as to the complete fecklessness of our twentieth century civilization. " Speed, faire plus rite que son voisin," that was the only characteristic which he could find in it. When the modern man, he argued,—the man who accepts modem civilization—looks into his soul, he discovers, in the old saw of Aristophanes, that " Whirl is King. ' There followed the usual comparison with the great ages of the past, each of which, he said could be symbolized in one great personality or one great achievement. But, I maintained, the supreme characteristic of our present age is precisely its diversity, its infinite variety, its firm endeavour to make the world safe for personality, for individuality of the person and of the group. The conver- sation went on for an hour and a half—the Senor Presi- dente who had made the appointment for 12 o'clock actually came at 1.35 p.m.—but nothing that I could say seemed to bridge the gulf between what I would call the " universal " cast of mind and the English—or Spanish—. Weltanschauung, which finds the very purpose of life in its growing diversity.
An hour and a half !—and my wife waiting for me at the hotel, with no Spanish and no money. There were, fortunately, one or two amusing incidents. A Belgian woman was the only other person in the huge room. She had with her a number of doll-like figures of the arts and crafts type, one I noticed particularly being an excellent model of a Spanish soldier in full-dress uniform. I under- stood her to say that she had shown and sold her handi- Work td members of the Royal Family (Belgian and Spanish), also to Signor Mussolini, but for the life of me I could not imagine how she had come to be admitted to the precincts of the dictator on one of his busiest days. And sure enough soon after she was unceremoniously bundled out. Before she took her departure, however, she was instrumental in giving me a great thrill. At a given moment I turned round towards the sofa on which she and the Italian and his wife were sitting, and suddenly I saw him stropping on his hand what looked for all the world like a gleaming stiletto. Visions of assassination crowded upon my mind—not for nothing was I in Italy at the time of the first three attempts on the life of Signor Mussolini--and it was only after several cold shudders had gone down my spine that I realized he was only handling the tiny sword of the model soldier.
After we had been there for a good hour I began to get impatient, and I determined to engage in conversation the next of the silent official figures who from time to time passed in and out of the waiting-room. In this way I had the good fortune to meet the Censor, Don Celorio Iglesias, the official of the present Government who surely has the ,,most unenviable task. As I hail written a longish, article on the Spanish Press some months before, this was for me a particularly happy chance. He certainly did not belie the epithet of una bellissima persona which, as the Times correspondent told us a year or two ago, is the general opinion in. Madrid.
My Italian colleague, too, had sensed the delightful freedom from the bondage of Time which is inherent in the Spanish atmosphere. Yet here we were foiled by that same Zeitgeist which we thought to escape ; for if there is one man who has had to renounce this peculiar and ineffable Spanish freedom it is the Dictator himself. This man, who only six years ago led the light and leisurely life of the typical Spanish Army officer, now gets through each day an amount of sustained and varied work such Ss—and this even his enemies admit—no ruler in Spain has ever before achieved. On the day that I went to see him—for weeks before he had been travelling about between Barcelona and Seville and in the North, so that I was lucky to see him at all—his programme was as follows :—In the morning he was present with the King at the formal opening of new blocks of cheap tenement dwellings for soldiers' families ; at 3 o'clock he had to be at Aranjuez (about thirty or forty miles away) to join King Alfonso in inaugurating a new radiotelegraphic service with Argentine, Cuba and the United States.
At 6.80 p.m. there was to be a Council of Ministers, after which the President had arranged to entrain the same evening for Seville.
My interview, then, was brief. It was long enough, how- ever, for me to feel the peculiar charm of his expansive Andalusian personality. I expected to see a large-framed and careworn soldier whose martial training alone kept him erect and " dictatorial." Instead, I saw a khaki- clad figure bearing no signs of fatigue—mental alertness was the chief impression which I carried away with me—at once gracious and very human, with an odd nervous trick of taking on and off his very ordinary looking spectacles, which was, to say the least of it, unexpected in a soldier. It was obvious that in a few minutes' conversation I could get little satisfaction for my curiosity as to certain possible developments in Spain. I had taken with me, however, as a precautionary measure a few cuartillas (sheets of pencilled notes) and as soon as the Dictator saw them he seized them—with my visiting card attached—and said " I will answer these questions for you from Seville."
Not many a Dictator, not many a man, indeed, would offer to put himself out like this to help a young foreign journalist. That hitherto I have received no answer from Seville does not surprise me at all, partly because the questions were certainly awkward ones—and, indeed, my notes were never intended for his eyes—and partly because since I left Madrid the situation of political stalemate has been revealed crystal-clear and General Primo de Rivera finds himself in, perhaps, the worst fix of the many that his regime has encountered.
Whoever heard before of a Dictator willing and anxious to retire, straining every nerve, in fact, to bring King and country safely on to the constitutional shore, and yet unable to solve the problem of succession ? And does not the story of Sanchez Guerra remind one of W. S. Gilbert rather than of politics in 1980 ? Here you have a highly-respected ex-Prime Minister tried by Court- martial on a charge—to which he persistently pleaded guilty—of conspiracy an behalf of the Constitution (of 1876), and who is acquitted in despite of the plain evidence of the fact and his own confession. The Government had confidently expected a verdict of guilty, whereupon General Primo de Rivera would have amnestied him, thus maintaining his reputation for magnanimity and incidentally deferring to the wishes of King Alfonso who counted Senor Guerra among his greatest friends. The verdict of the Court was, indeed, a serious blow to the Dictator, for it can mean nothing else than that influential sections of the Army grasped this opportunity of a " gesture " against him and in favour of their quondam political friends.
It is not for me here to explain how andWhy the Military Directory came to take over the government of the country in September, 1928. We must remember that the Army caste, both in its relationship to the King and to all the other elements of the country, has a position which is without parallel in this age of democracy. Being the strongest organization in the State, the Army held the reins of Government throughout the nineteenth cen- tury until the Restoration of 1875, when by the Pact of El Pardo the Conservative and Liberal politicos displaced it. The tragedy of the Moroccan War was actually a pretext for as much as the occasion of the incessant rivalry of these two elements of the governing class. By their own fault the politicos were discredited and the swing of the pendulum brought back the Army in 1928. Yet this was no ordinary Military Dictatorship as in Greece or in Hungary, for it is to the undying credit of Primo de Rivera that he has realized one at least of modern Spain's greatest needs. Not only has he put an end to the senseless Moroccan campaign—the landing at Alhucemas Bay which he planned and executed himself against the advice of the military experts was an exploit in the best Spanish tradition which the Spanish people must ever treasure in their memory, if there be any gratitude in this world—but he has set himself to the best of his ability to wean the army from Spanish " polities " in the old sense of the word. Hence the sustained opposition to the present regime in professional army circles and the paradox that Spain is governed by a Military Dictatorship, with the army against it. W. H. C.
(To be continued.)
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