Few historical events have been so impressive as the sudden and complete union of the South-African States. Seldom have men's minds progressed so rapidly, their life purposes changed so completely. In 1902 England, with the aid of her African colonists in Cape Colony and Natal, was ending a bitter war, almost of extermination, against the Dutch "Boers" of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In that year the ablest and most dreaded of England's enemies in Africa was the Dutch General, Louis Botha, leader of the fiercest and most irreconcilable Boers, who still waged a hopeless guerrilla warfare against all the might of the British Empire. As one English paper dramatically phrases it: "One used to see pictures of Botha in the illustrated papers in those days, a gaunt, bearded, formidable figure, with rifle and bandoliers—the most dangerous of our foes. To-day he is the chief servant of the King in the Federation, the loyal head of the Administration under the Crown, one of the half-dozen Prime Ministers of the Empire, the responsible representative and virtual ruler of all races, classes, and sects in South Africa, acclaimed by the men he led in the battle and the rout no less than by the men who faced him across the muzzles of the Mausers ten years ago. Was ever so strange a transformation, so swift an oblivion of old enmities and rancors, so rapid a growth of union and concord out of hatred and strife!"
Necessity has in a way compelled this harmony. The old issue of Boer independence being dead, new and equally vital issues confronted the South-Africans. The whites there are scarcely more than a million in number, and they dwell amid many times their number of savage blacks. They must unite or perish. Moreover, the folly and expense of maintaining four separate governments for so small a population were obvious. So was the need of uniform tariffs in a land where all sea-coast towns found their prosperity in forwarding supplies to the rich central mining regions of Kimberley and Johannesburg. Hence all earnest men of whatever previous opinion came to see the need of union. And when this union had been accomplished, Lord Gladstone, the British viceroy over South Africa, wisely selected as the fittest man for the land's first Prime Minister, General Botha. Botha has sought to unite all interests in the cabinet which he gathered around him.
The clear analysis of the new nation and its situation which follows is reproduced by permission from the American Political Science Review, and is from the pen of Professor Stephen Leacock, head of the department of Political Economy of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. A distinguished citizen of one great British federation may well be accepted as the ablest commentator on the foundation of another.
On May 31, 1910, the Union of South Africa became an accomplished fact. The four provinces of Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange Free State (which bears again its old-time name), and the Transvaal are henceforth joined, one might almost say amalgamated, under a single government. They will bear to the central government of the British Empire the same relation as the other self-governing colonies—Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, and New Zealand. The Empire will thus assume the appearance of a central nucleus with four outlying parts corresponding to geographical and racial divisions, and forming in all a ground-plan that seems to invite a renewal of the efforts of the Imperial Federationist. To the scientific student of government the Union of South Africa is chiefly of interest for the sharp contrast it offers to the federal structure of the American, Canadian, and other systems of similar historical ground. It represents a reversion from the idea of State rights, and balanced indestructible powers and an attempt at organic union by which the constituent parts are to be more and more merged in the consolidated political unit which they combine to form.
But the Union and its making are of great interest also for the general student of politics and history, concerned rather with the development of a nationality than with the niceties of constitutional law. From this point of view the Union comes as the close of a century of strife, as the aftermath of a great war, and indicates the consummation, for the first time in history, of what appears as a solid basis of harmony between the two races in South Africa. In one shape or other union has always been the goal of South-African aspiration. It was "Union" which the "prancing proconsuls" of an earlier time—the Freres, the Shepstones, and the Lanyons—tried to force upon the Dutch. A united Africa was at once the dream of a Rhodes and (perhaps) the ambition of a Kruger. It is necessary to appreciate the strength of this desire for union on the part of both races and the intense South-African patriotism in which it rests in order to understand how the different sections and races of a country so recently locked in the death-struggle of a three years' war could be brought so rapidly into harmonious concert.
The point is well illustrated by looking at the composition of the convention, which, in its sessions at Durban, Cape Town, and Bloemfontein, put together the present constitution. South Africa, from its troubled history, has proved itself a land of strong men. But it was reserved for the recent convention to bring together within the compass of a single council-room the surviving leaders of the period of conflict to work together for the making of a united state. In looking over the list of them and reflecting on the part that they played toward one another in the past, one realizes that we have here a grim irony of history. Among them is General Louis Botha, Prime Minister at the moment of the Transvaal, and now the first prime minister of South Africa. Botha, in the days of Generals Buller and the Dugela, was the hardest fighter of the Boer Republic. Beside him in the convention was Dr. Jameson, whom Botha wanted to hang after the raid in 1896. Another member is Sir George Farrar, who was sentenced to death for complicity in the raid, and still another, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, once the secretary of the Reform League at Johannesburg and well known as the author of the "Transvaal from Within." One may mention in contrast General Jan Smuts, an ex-leader of the Boer forces, and since the war the organizing brain of the Het Volk party. There is also Mr. Merriman, a leader of the British party of opposition to the war in 1899 and since then a bitter enemy of Lord Milner and the new regime.
Yet strangely enough after some four months of session the convention accomplished the impossible by framing a constitution that met the approval of the united delegates. Of its proceedings no official journal was kept. The convention met first at Durban, October 12, 1908, where it remained throughout that month; after a fortnight's interval it met again at Capetown, and with a three weeks' interruption at Christmas continued and completed its work at the end of the first week of February. The constitution was then laid before the different colonial parliaments. In the Transvaal its acceptance was a matter of course, as the delegates of both parties had reached an agreement on its terms. The Cape Parliament passed amendments which involved giving up the scheme of proportional representation as adopted by the convention. Similar amendments were offered by the Orange River Colony in which the Dutch leader sympathized with the leader of the Afrikanderbond at the Cape in desiring to swamp out, rather than represent, minorities. In Natal, which as an ultra-British and ultra-loyal colony, was generally supposed to be in fear of union, many amendments were offered. The convention then met again at Bloemfontein, made certain changes in the draft of the constitution, and again submitted the document to the colonies. This time it was accepted. Only in Natal was it thought necessary to take a popular vote, and here, contrary to expectation, the people voted heavily in favor of union. The logic of the situation compelled it. In the history of the movement Natal was cast for the same role as Rhode Island in the making of the Federal Union of the United States of America. The other colonies, once brought together into a single system, with power to adopt arrangements in their own interests in regard to customs duties and transportation rates, sheer economic pressure would have compelled the adhesion of Natal. In the constitution now put in force in South Africa the central point of importance is that it established what is practically a unitary and not a federal government. The underlying reason for this is found in the economic circumstances of the country and in the situation in which the provinces found themselves during the years after the war. Till that event the discord of South Africa was generally thought of rather as a matter of racial rivalry and conflicting sovereignties than of simple questions of economic and material interests.
But after the conclusion of the compact of Vereiniging in 1902 it was found that many of the jealousies and difficulties of the respective communities had survived the war, and rested rather upon economic considerations than racial rivalries.
To begin with, there was the question of customs relations. The colonies were separate units, each jealous of its own industrial prosperity. Each had the right to make its own tariff, and yet the division of the country, with four different tariff areas, was obviously to its general disadvantage. Since 1903 the provinces had been held together under the Customs Union of South Africa—made by the governments of the Cape and Natal and the Crown Colony governments of the conquered provinces. This was but a makeshift arrangement, with a common tariff made by treaty, and hence rigidly unalterable, and with a pro-rata division of the proceeds.
Worse still was the railroad problem, which has been in South Africa a bone of contention ever since the opening of the mines of the Rand offered a rich prize to any port and railway that could capture the transit trade.
The essence of the situation is simple. The center of the wealth of South Africa is the Johannesburg mines. This may not be forever the case, but in the present undeveloped state of agriculture and industrial life, Johannesburg is the dominating factor of the country.
Now, Johannesburg can not feed and supply itself. It is too busy. Its one export is gold. Its quarter of a million people must be supplied from the outside. But the Transvaal is an inland country dependent on the seaports of other communities. In position Johannesburg is like the hub of a wheel from which the railways radiate as spokes to the seaports along the rim. The line from Cape Town to Johannesburg, a distance of over 700 miles, was the first completed, and until 1894 the Cape enjoyed a monopoly of carrying the whole trade of Johannesburg. But with the completion of the tunnel through the mountains at Laing's Nek the Natal government railway was able to connect with Johannesburg and the port of Durban entered into competition with the Cape Ports of Cape Town and East London over a line only 485 miles long.
Finally, the opening of the Delagoa Bay Railway in 1894 supplied Johannesburg with an access to the sea over a line 396 miles long, of which 341 was in the Transvaal itself. This last line, it should be noticed, led to a Portuguese seaport, and at the time of its building traversed nowhere British territory. Hence it came about that in the all-important matter of railroad communication the interests of the Transvaal and of the seaboard colonies were diametrically opposed.
To earn as large a revenue as possible it naturally adjusted the rates on its lines so as to penalize the freight from the colonies and favor the Delagoa Bay road. When the colonies tried in 1895 to haul freight by ox-team from their rail-head at the frontier to Johannesburg President Kruger "closed the drifts" and almost precipitated a conflict in arms. Since the war the same situation has persisted, aggravated by the completion of the harbor works and docks at Lorenzo Marques, which favors more than ever the Delagoa route. The Portuguese seaport at present receives some 67 per cent, of the traffic from the Rand, while the Cape ports, which in 1894 had 80 per cent, of the freight, now receive only n per cent.
Under Lord Milner's government the unification of the railways of the Transvaal and the Orange River colony with the Central South-African Railways amalgamated the interests of the inland colonies, but left them still opposed to those of the seaboard. The impossibility of harmonizing the situation under existing political conditions has been one of the most potent forces in creating a united government which alone could deal with the question.
An equally important factor has been the standing problem of the native races, which forms the background of South-African politics. In no civilized country is this question of such urgency. South Africa, with a white population of only 1,133,000 people, contains nearly 7,000,000 native and colored inhabitants, many of them, such as the Zulus and the Basutos, fierce, warlike tribes scarcely affected by European civilization, and wanting only arms and organization to offer a grave menace to the welfare of the white population. The Zulus, numbering a million, inhabiting a country of swamp and jungle impenetrable to European troops, have not forgotten the prowess of a Cetewayo and the victory of Isandhwana.
It may well be that some day they will try the fortune of one more general revolt before accepting the permanent over-lordship of their conquerors. Natal lives in apprehension of such a day. Throughout all South Africa, among both British and Dutch, there is a feeling that Great Britain knows nothing of the native question.
The British people see the native through the softly tinted spectacles of Exeter Hall. When they have given him a Bible and a breech-cloth they fondly fancy that he has become one of themselves, and urge that he shall enter upon his political rights. They do not know that to a savage, or a half-civilized black, a ballot-box and a voting-paper are about as comprehensible as a telescope or a pocket camera—it is just a part of the white man's magic, containing some particular kind of devil of its own. The South-Africans think that they understand the native. And the first tenet of their gospel is that he must be kept in his place. They have seen the hideous tortures and mutilations inflicted in every native war. If the native revolts they mean to shoot him into marmalade with machine guns. Such is their simple creed. And in this matter they want nothing of what Mr. Merriman recently called the "damnable interference" of the mother country. But to handle the native question there had to be created a single South-African Government competent to deal with it.
The constitution creates for South Africa a union entirely different from that of the provinces of Canada or the States of the American Republic. The government is not federal, but unitary. The provinces become areas of local governments, with local elected councils to administer them, but the South-African Parliament reigns supreme. It is to know nothing of the nice division of jurisdiction set up by the American constitution and by the British North America Act. There are, of course, limits to its power. In the strict sense of legal theory, the omnipotence of the British Parliament, as in the case of Canada, remains unimpaired. Nor can it alter certain things,—for example, the native franchise of the Cape, and the equal status of the two languages,—without a special majority vote. But in all the ordinary conduct of trade, industry, and economic life, its power is unhampered by constitutional limitations.
The constitution sets up as the government of South Africa a legislature of two houses—a Senate and a House of Assembly—and with it an executive of ministers on the customary tenure of cabinet government. This government, strangely enough, is to inhabit two capitals: Pretoria as the seat of the Executive Government and Cape Town as the meeting-place of the Parliament. The experiment is a novel one. The case of Simla and Calcutta, in each of which the Indian Government does its business, and on the strength of which Lord Curzon has defended the South-African plan, offers no real parallel. The truth is that in South Africa, as in Australia, it proved impossible to decide between the claims of rival cities. Cape Town is the mother city of South Africa. Pretoria may boast the memories of the fallen republic, and its old-time position as the capital of an independent state. Bloemfontein has the advantage of a central position, and even garish Johannesburg might claim the privilege of the money power. The present arrangement stands as a temporary compromise to be altered later at the will of the parliament.
The making of the Senate demanded the gravest thought. It was desired to avoid if possible the drowsy nullity of the Canadian Upper House and the preponderating "bossiness" of the American. Nor did the example of Australia, where the Senate, elected on a "general ticket" over huge provincial areas, becomes thereby a sort of National Labor Convention, give any assistance in a positive direction. The plan adopted is to cause each present provincial parliament, and later each provincial council, to elect eight senators. The plan of election is by proportional representation, into the arithmetical juggle of which it is impossible here to enter. Eight more senators will be appointed by the Governor, making forty in all. Proportional representation was applied also in the first draft of the constitution to the election of the Assembly.
It was thought that such a plan would allow for the representation of minorities, so that both Dutch and British delegates would be returned from all parts of the country. Unhappily, the Afrikanderbond—the powerful political organization supporting Mr. Merriman, and holding the bulk of the Dutch vote at the Cape—took fright at the proposal. Even Merriman and his colleagues had to vote it down.
Without this they could not have saved the principle of "equal rights," which means the more or less equal (proportionate) representation of town and country. The towns are British and the country Dutch, so the bearing of equal rights is obvious. Proportional representation and equal rights were in the end squared off against one another.
South Africa will retain duality of language, both Dutch and British being in official use. There was no other method open. The Dutch language is probably doomed to extinction within three or four generations. It is, in truth, not one linguistic form, but several: the Taal, or kitchen Dutch of daily speech, the "lingua franca" of South Africa; the School Taal, a modified form of it, and the High Dutch of the Scriptural translations brought with the Boers from Holland. Behind this there is no national literature, and the current Dutch of Holland and its books varies some from all of them. English is already the language of commerce and convenience. The only way to keep Dutch alive is to oppose its use. Already the bitterness of the war has had this effect, and language societies are doing their best to uphold and extend the use of the ancestral language. It is with a full knowledge of this that the leaders of the British parties acquiesced in the principle of duality.
The native franchise was another difficult question. At present neither natives nor "colored men" (the South-African term for men of mixed blood) can vote in the Transvaal, the Orange River, and Natal. Nor is there the faintest possibility of the suffrage being extended to them, both the Dutch and the British being convinced that such a policy is a mistake. In the Cape natives and colored men, if possessed of the necessary property and able to write their names, are allowed to vote. The name writing is said to be a farce, the native drawing a picture of his name under guidance of his political boss. Some 20,000 natives and colored people thus vote at the Cape, and neither the Progressives nor the Bond party dared to oppose the continuance of the franchise, lest the native vote should be thrown solid against them. As a result each province will retain its own suffrage, at least until the South-African Parliament by a special majority of two-thirds in a joint session shall decide otherwise.
The future conformation of parties under the union is difficult to forecast. At present the Dutch parties—they may be called so for lack of a better word—have large majorities everywhere except in Natal. In the Transvaal General Botha's party—Het Volk, the Party of the People—is greatly in the ascendant. But it must be remembered that Het Volk numbers many British adherents. For instance, Mr. Hull, Botha's treasurer in the outgoing Government, is an old Johannesburg "reformer," of the Uitlander days, and fought against the Boers in the war. In the Orange Free State the party called the Unie (or United party) has a large majority, while at the Cape Dr. Jameson's party of progressives can make no stand against Mr. Merriman, Mr. Malan, Mr. Sauer, and the powerful organization of the Afrikanderbond.
How the new Government will be formed it is impossible to say. Botha and Merriman will, of course, constitute its leading factors. But whether they will attempt a coalition by taking in with them such men as Sir Percy Fitzpatrick and Dr. Jameson, or will prefer a more united and less universal support is still a matter of conjecture. From the outsider's point of view, a coalition of British and Dutch leaders, working together for the future welfare of a common country, would seem an auspicious opening for the new era. But it must be remembered that General Botha is under no necessity whatever to form such a coalition. If he so wishes he can easily rule the country without it as far as a parliamentary majority goes. Not long since an illustrious South-African, a visitor to Montreal, voiced the opinion that Botha's party will rule South Africa for twenty years undisturbed. But it is impossible to do more than conjecture what will happen. Ex Africa semper quid novi.
Most important of all is the altered relation in which South Africa will now stand to the British Empire.
The Imperial Government may now be said to evacuate South Africa, and to leave it to the control of its own people. It is true that for the time being the Imperial Government will continue to control the native protectorates of Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland. But the Constitution provides for the future transfer of these to the administration of a commission appointed by the colonial Government. Provision is also made for the future inclusion of Rhodesia within the Union. South Africa will therefore find itself on practically the same footing as Canada or Australia within the British Empire. What its future fate there will be no man can yet foretell. In South Africa, as in the other Dominions, an intense feeling of local patriotism and "colonial nationalism" will be matched against the historic force and the practical advantages of the Imperial connection. Even in Canada, there is no use in denying it, there are powerful forces which, if unchecked, would carry us to an ultimate independence. Still more is this the case in South Africa.
It is a land of bitter memories. The little people that fought for their republics against a world in arms have not so soon forgotten. It is idle for us in the other parts of the Empire to suppose that the bitter memory of the conflict has yet passed, that the Dutch have forgotten the independence for which they fought, the Vier Klur flag that is hidden in their garrets still, and the twenty thousand women and children that lie buried in South Africa as the harvest of the conqueror. If South Africa is to stay in the Empire it will have to be because the Empire will be made such that neither South Africa nor any other of the dominions would wish to leave it. For this, much has already been done. The liberation of the Transvaal and Orange River from the thraldom of their Crown Colony Government, and the frank acceptance of the Union Constitution by the British Government are the first steps in this direction. Meantime that future of South Africa, as of all the Empire, lies behind a veil.
The wave of democratic revolt which had swept over Europe during the first decade of the twentieth century was continued in 1910 by the revolution in Portugal. This, as the result of long secret planning, burst forth suddenly before dawn on the morning of October 4th. Before nightfall the revolution was accomplished and the young king, Manuel, was a fugitive from his country.
The change had been long foreseen. The selfishness and blindness of the Portuguese monarchs and their supporters had been such as to make rebellion inevitable, and its ultimate success certain. Mr. William Archer, the noted English journalist, who was sent post-haste to watch the progress of the revolution, could not reach the scene before the brief tumult was at an end; but he here gives a picture of the joyous celebration of freedom that followed, and then traces with power and historic accuracy the causes and conduct of the dramatic scene which has added Portugal to the ever-growing list of Republics.
When the poet Wordsworth and his friend Jones landed at Calais in 1790 they found
"France standing on the top of golden years
And human nature seeming born again."
Not once, but fifty times, in Portugal these lines came back to my mind. The parallel, it may be said, is an ominous one, in view of subsequent manifestations of the reborn French human nature. But there is a world of difference between Portugal and France, between the House of Braganza and the House of Bourbon.
It was nearly one in the morning when my train from Badajoz drew into the Rocio station at Lisbon; yet I had no sooner passed the barrier than I heard a band in the great hall of the station strike up an unfamiliar but not unpleasing air, the rhythm of which plainly announced it to be a national anthem—a conjecture confirmed by a wild burst of cheering at the close. The reason of this midnight demonstration I never ascertained; but, indeed, no one in Lisbon asks for a reason for striking up "A Portugueza," the new patriotic song. Before twenty-four hours had passed I was perfectly familiar with its rather plaintive than martial strains, suited, no doubt, to the sentimental character of the people. An American friend, who arrived a day or two after me, made acquaintance with "A Portugueza" even more immediately than I did. Soon after passing the frontier he fell into conversation with a Portuguese fellow traveler, who, in the course of ten minutes or so, asked him whether he would like to hear the new national anthem, and then and there sang it to him, amid great applause from the other occupants of the compartment. In the cafés and theaters of Lisbon "A Portugueza" may break out at any moment, without any apparent provocation, and you must, of course, stand up and uncover; but there is in some quarters a movement of protest against these observances as savoring of monarchical flunkyism. When I left Lisbon at half-past seven A.M. there was no demonstration such as had greeted my arrival; but at the first halting-place a man stepped out from a little crowd on the platform and shouted "Viva Machado dos Santos! Viva a Republica Portugueza!"—and I found that the compartment adjoining my own was illumined by the presence of the bright particular star of the revolt. At the next station—Torres Vedras of historic fame—the platform was crowded and scores of red and green flags were waving. As the train steamed in, two bands struck up "A Portugueza," and as one had about two minutes' start of the other, the effect was more patriotic than harmonious. The hero had no sooner alighted than he was lifted shoulder-high by the crowd, and carried in triumph from the station, amid the blaring of the bands and the crackling of innumerable little detonators, which here enter freely into the ritual of rejoicing. Next morning I read in the papers a full account of the "Apoteose" of Machado dos Santos, which seems to have kept Torres Vedras busy and happy all day long.
One can not but smile at such simple-minded ebullitions of feeling; yet I would by no means be understood to laugh at them. On the contrary, they are so manifestly spontaneous and sincere as to be really touching. Whatever may be the future of the Portuguese Republic, it has given the nation some weeks of unalloyed happiness. And amid all the shouting and waving of flags, all the manifold "homages" to this hero and to that, there was not the slightest trace of rowdyism or of "mafficking." I could not think without some humiliation of the contrast between a Lisbon and a London crowd. It really seemed as though happiness had ennobled the man in the street. I am assured that on the day of the public funeral of Dr. Bombarda and Admiral dos Reis, though the crowd was enormous and the police had retired into private life, there was not the smallest approach to disorder. The police—formerly the sworn enemies of the populace—had been reinstated at the time of my visit, without their swords and pistols; but they seemed to have little to do. That Lisbon had become a strictly virtuous city it would be too much to affirm, but I believe that crime actually diminished after the revolution. It seemed as though the nation had awakened from a nightmare to a sunrise of health and hope.
And the nightmare took the form of a poor bewildered boy, guilty only of having been thrust, without a spark of genius, into a situation which only genius could have saved. In that surface aspect of the case there is an almost ludicrous disproportion between cause and effect. But it is not what the young King was that matters—it is what he stood for. Let us look a little below the surface—even, if we can, into the soul of the people.
Portugal is a small nation with a great history; and the pride of a small nation which has anything to be proud of is apt to amount to a passion. It is all the more sensitive because it can not swell and harden into arrogance. It is all the more alert because the great nations, in their arrogance, are apt to ignore it.
What are the main sources of Portugal's pride? They are two: her national independence and her achievements in discovery and colonization.
A small country, with no very clear natural frontier, she has maintained her independence under the very shadow of a far larger and at one time an enormously preponderant Power. Portugal was Portugal long before Spain was Spain. It had its Alfred the Great in Alfonso Henriques (born 1111—a memorable date in two senses), who drove back the Moors as Alfred drove back the Danes. He founded a dynasty of able and energetic kings, which, however, degenerated, as dynasties will, until a vain weakling, Ferdinand the Handsome, did his best to wreck the fortunes of the country. On his death in 1383, Portugal was within an ace of falling into the clutches of Castile, but the Cortes conferred the kingship on a bastard of the royal house, John, Master of the Knights of Aviz; and he, aided by five hundred English archers, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Spaniards at Aljubarrota, the Portuguese Bannockburn. John of Aviz, known as the Great, married Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt; and from this union sprang a line of princes and kings under whom Portugal became one of the leading nations of Europe. Prince Henry the Navigator, son of John the Great, devoted his life to the furthering of maritime adventure and discovery. Like England's First Lords of the Admiralty, he was a navigator who did not navigate; but it was unquestionably owing to the impulse he gave to Portuguese enterprise that Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India and Pedro Alvarez Cabral secured for his country the giant colony of Brazil. Angola, Mozambique, Diu, Goa, Macao—these names mean as much for Portugal as Havana, Cartagena, Mexico, and Lima, for Spain. The sixteenth century was the "heroic" age of Portuguese history, and the "heroes"—notably the Viceroys of Portuguese India—were, in fact, a race of fine soldiers and administrators. No nation, moreover, possesses more conspicuous and splendid memorials of its golden age. It was literally "golden," for Emmanuel the Fortunate, who reaped the harvest sown by Henry the Navigator, was the wealthiest monarch in Europe, and gave his name to the "Emmanueline" style of architecture, a florid Gothic which achieves miracles of ostentation and sometimes of beauty. As the glorious pile of Batalha commemorates the victory of Aljubarrota, so the splendid church and monastery of Belem mark the spot where Vasco da Gama spent the night before he sailed on his epoch-making voyage. But it was not gold that raised the noblest memorial to Portugal's greatness: it was the genius of Luis de Camoens. If Spenser, instead of losing himself in mazes of allegoric romance, had sung of Crécy and Agincourt, of Drake, Frobisher, and Raleigh, he might have given us a national epic in the same sense in which the term applies to The Lusiads. With such a history, so written in stone and song, what wonder if pride of race is one of the mainsprings of Portuguese character!
But the House of Aviz, like the legitimate line of Affonso Henriques, dwindled into debility. It flickered out in Dom Sebastian, who dragged his country into a mad invasion of Morocco and vanished from human ken on the disastrous battlefield of Alcazar-Khebir. Then, for sixty years, not by conquest, but by intrigue, Portugal passed under the sway of Spain, and lost to the enemies of Spain—that is to say, to England and Holland—a large part of her colonial empire. At last, in 1640, a well-planned and daring revolution expelled the Spanish intruders, and placed on the throne John, Duke of Braganza. As the house of Aviz was an illegitimate branch of the stock of Affonso Henriques, so the Braganzas were an illegitimate branch of the House of Aviz, with none of the Plantagenet blood in them. Only one prince of the line, Pedro II., can be said to have attained anything like greatness. Another, Joseph, had the sense to give a free hand to an able, if despotic, minister, the Marquis of Pombal. But, on the whole, the history of the Braganza rule was one of steady decadence, until the second half of the nineteenth century found the country one of the most backward in Europe.
Nor was there any comfort to be found in the economic aspect of the case. A country of glorious fertility and ideal climatic conditions, inhabited by an industrious peasantry, Portugal was nevertheless so poor that much of its remaining strength was year by year being drained away by emigration. The public debt was almost as heavy per head of population as that of England. Taxation was crushing. The barest necessaries of life were subject to heavy imposts. Protection protected, not industries, but monopolies and vested interests.
In short, the material condition of the country was as distressing as its spiritual state to any one with the smallest sense of enlightened patriotism.
King Charles I.—name of evil omen!—ascended the throne in 1889. His situation was not wholly unlike that of the English Charles I., inasmuch as—though he had not the insight to perceive it—his lot was cast in times when Portugal was outgrowing the traditions and methods of his family. Representative government, as it had shaped itself since 1852, was a fraud and a farce. To every municipality a Government administrator was attached (at an annual cost to the country of something like £70,000), whose business it was to "work" the elections in concert with the local caciques or bosses. Thus, except in the great towns, the Government candidate was always returned. The efficacy of the system may be judged from the fact that in a country which was at heart Republican, as events have amply shown, the Republican party never had more than fourteen representatives in a chamber of about 150. For the rest, the Monarchical parties, "Regeneradores" and "Progresistas," arranged between them a fair partition of the loaves and fishes. This "rotative" system, as it is called, is in effect that which prevails, or has prevailed, in Spain; but it was perfected in Portugal by a device which enabled Ministers, in stepping out of office under the crown, to step into well-paid posts in financial institutions, more or less associated with the State. Anything like real progress was manifestly impossible under so rotten a system; and with this system the Monarchy was identified.
Then came the scandal of the adeantamentos, or illegal advances made to the King, beyond the sums voted in the civil list. It is only fair to remember that the king of a poor country is nowadays in a very uncomfortable position, more especially if the poor country has once been immensely rich. The expenses of royalty, like those of all other professions, have enormously increased of late years; and a petty king who is to rub shoulders with emperors is very much in the position of a man with £2,000 a year in a club of millionaires. He has always the resource, no doubt, of declining the society of emperors, and even fixing his domestic budget more in accord with present exigencies than with the sumptuous traditions, the palaces and pleasure-houses, of his millionaire predecessors. It is said of Pedro II. that "he had the wisdom and self-restraint not to increase the taxes, preferring to reduce the expenses of his household to the lowest possible amount." But Dom Carlos was not a man of this kidney. Easy-going and self-indulgent, he had no notion of appearing in forma pauperis among the royalties of Europe, or sacrificing his pleasures to the needs of his country. Even his father, Dom Luis, and his uncle, Dom Pedro, had not lived within their income; and expenses had gone up since their times. The king's income, under the civil list, was a "conto of reis" a day, or something over £80,000 a year. Additional allowances to other members of the royal family amounted to about half as much again; and there was, I believe, an allowance for the upkeep of palaces. One would suppose that a reasonably frugal royal family, with no house-rent to pay, could subsist in tolerable comfort on some £2,250 a week; but as a matter of fact, Dom Carlos made large additional drafts on the treasury, which servile ministries honored without protest. He had expensive fantasies, which he was not in the habit of stinting. The total of his "anticipations" I do not know, but it is estimated in millions of pounds.
These eccentricities, combined with other abuses of finance and administration, rendered even the cacique-chosen Cortes unruly, and our Charles I. looked about for a Strafford who should apply a "thorough" remedy to what he called the parliamentary gâchis. He found his man in João Franco. This somewhat enigmatic personage can not as yet be estimated with any impartiality. No one accuses him of personal corruption or of sordidly interested motives. His great private wealth enabled him the other day to find bail, at a moment's notice, to the amount of £40,000. On the other hand, his enemies diagnose him after the manner of Lombroso, and find him to be a degenerate and an epileptic, ungovernably irritable, vain, mendacious, arrogant, sometimes quite irresponsible for his actions. A really strong man he can scarcely be; scarcely a man of true political insight, else he would not have tried to play the despot with no plausible ideal to allege in defense of his usurpation. Be that as it may, he agreed with the King that it was impossible to carry on the work of government with a fractious Cortes in session, and that the only way to keep things going was to try the experiment of a dictatorship. Dom Carlos, in his genial fashion, overcame by help of an anecdote any doubt his minister may have felt. "When the affairs of Frederick the Great were at a low ebb," said the King, "he one day, on the eve of a decisive battle, caught a grenadier in the act of making off from the camp. 'What are you about?' asked Frederick. 'Your Majesty, I am deserting,' stammered the soldier. 'Wait till to-morrow,' replied Frederick calmly, 'and if the battle goes against us, we will desert together.'" Thus lightly was the adventure plotted; and, in fact, the minister did not desert until the King lay dead upon the field of battle.
Franco dissolved the Cortes, and on May 10, 1907, published a decree declaring the "administration to be a dictatorship." The Press was strictly gagged, and all the traditional weapons of despotism were polished up. In June, the dictator went to Oporto to defend his policy at a public banquet, and on his return a popular tumult took place in the Rocio, the central square of Lisbon, which was repressed with serious bloodshed. This was made the excuse for still more galling restrictions on personal and intellectual liberty, until it was hard to distinguish between "administrative dictatorship" and autocracy. As regards the adeantamentos, Franco's declared policy was to make a clean slate of the past, and, for the future, to augment the civil list. In the autumn of that year, a very able Spanish journalist and deputy, Señor Luis Morote, visited most of the leading men in Portugal, and found among the Republicans an absolute and serene confidence that the Monarchy was in its last ditch and that a Republic was inevitable. Seldom have political prophecies been more completely fulfilled than those which Morote then recorded in the Heraldo of Madrid. Said Bernardino Machado:
"The Republic is the fatherland organized for its prosperity…. I believe in the moral forces of Portugal, which are carrying us directly toward the new order of things…. We shall triumph because the right is on our side, and the moral idealism; peacefully if we can, and I think it pretty sure that we can, since no public force can stop a nation on the march."
Said Guerra Junqueiro, the leading poet of the day: "Within two years there will be no Braganzas or there will be no Portugal….The revolution, when it comes, will be a question of hours, and it will be almost bloodless."
I could cite many other deliverances to the same effect, but one must suffice. Theophilo Braga, the "grand old man" of Portugal, said: "To stimulate the faith, conscience, will, and revolutionary energies of the country, I have imposed on myself a plan of work, and a mandate not to die until I see it accomplished."
The Paris Temps of November 14, 1907, published an interview with Dom Carlos which embittered feeling and alienated many of his supporters. "Everything is quiet in Lisbon," declared the King, echoing another historic phase: "Only the politicasters are agitating themselves…. It was necessary that the gâchis—there is no other word for it—should one day come to an end…. I required an undaunted will which should be equal to the task of carrying my ideas to a happy conclusion…. I am entirely satisfied with M. Franco. Ça marche. And it will continue; it must continue for the good of the country…. In no country can you make a revolution without the army. Well, the Portuguese Army is faithful to its King, and I shall always have it at my side…. I have no shadow of doubt of its fidelity." Poor Charles the First!
At the end of January, 1908, a revolutionary plot was discovered, and was put down with severity. After signing some decrees to that end, at one of his palaces beyond the Tagus, the King, with his whole family, returned to Lisbon and the party drove in open carriages from the wharf toward the Necessidades Palace. In the crowd at the corner of the great riverside square, the Praça do Comercio, stood two men named Buiça and Costa, with carbines concealed under their cloaks. They shot dead the King and the Crown Prince, and slightly wounded Dom Manuel. Both the assassins were killed on the spot.
It is said that there was no plot, and that these men acted entirely on their own initiative and responsibility. At any rate, none of the Republican leaders was in any way implicated in the affair. But on All Saints' day of 1910, Buiça's grave shared to the full in the rain of wreaths poured upon the tombs of the martyrs of the new Republic; and relics of the regicides hold an honored place in the historical museum which commemorates the revolution.
Franco vanished into space, and Dom Manuel, aged nineteen, ascended the throne. Had he possessed strong intelligence and character, or had he fallen into the hands of really able advisers, it is possible that the revulsion of feeling following on so grim a tragedy might have indefinitely prolonged the life of the Monarchy. But his mother was a Bourbon, and what more need be said? The opinion in Lisbon, at any rate, was that "under Dom Carlos the Jesuits entered the palace by the back door, under Dom Manuel by the front door." The Republican agitation in public, the revolutionary organization in secret, soon recommenced with renewed vigor; and the discovery of new scandals in connection with the tobacco monopoly and a financial institution, known as the "Credito Predial," added fuel to the fire of indignation. The Government, or rather a succession of Governments, were perfectly aware that the foundations of the Monarchy were undermined; but they seemed to be paralyzed by a sort of fatalistic despair. They persecuted, indeed, just enough to make themselves doubly odious; but they always laid hands on people who, if not quite innocent, were subordinate and uninfluential. Not one of the real leaders of the revolution was arrested.
The thoroughness with which the Republican party was organized says much for the practical ability of its leaders. The moving spirits in the central committee were Vice-Admiral Candido dos Reis, Affonso Costa (now Minister of Justice), Joao Chagas, and Dr. Miguel Bombarda. Simoes Raposo spoke in the name of the Freemasons; the Carbonaria Portugueza, a powerful secret society, was represented by Machado dos Santos, an officer in the navy. There was a separate finance committee, and funds were ample. The arms bought were mostly Browning pistols, which were smuggled over the Spanish frontier by Republican railway conductors. Bombs also were prepared in large numbers, not for purposes of assassination, but for use in open warfare, especially against cavalry. Meanwhile an untiring secret propaganda was going on in the army, in the navy, and among the peasantry. Almost every seaman in the navy, and in many regiments almost all the non-commissioned officers and men, were revolutionaries; while commissioned officers by the score were won over. It is marvelous that so wide-spread a propaganda was only vaguely known to the Government, and did not beget a crowd of informers. One man, it is true, who showed a disposition to use his secret knowledge for purposes of blackmail, was found dead in the streets of Cascaes. On the whole, not only secrecy but discipline was marvelously maintained.
At last the propitious moment arrived. Three ships of war—the Dom Carlos, the Adamastor, and the San Raphael—were in the Tagus to do honor to the President-elect of Brazil, who was visiting King Manuel; but the Government knew that their presence was dangerous, and would certainly order them off again as soon as possible. The blow must be struck before that occurred. At a meeting of the committee on October 2, 1910, it was agreed that the signal should be given in the early morning of October 4th. All the parts were cast, all the duties were assigned: who should call this and that barrack to arms, who should cut this and that railway line, who should take possession of the central telegraph-office, and so forth. The whole scheme was laid down in detail in a precious paper, in the keeping of Simôes Raposo. "You had better give it to me," said Dr. Bombarda, "for I am less likely than you to be arrested. Even if they should think of searching at Rilhafolles [the asylum of which he was director], I can easily hide it in one of the books of my library." His suggestion was accepted, the paper on which their lives and that of the Republic depended was handed to him, and the meeting broke up.
On the morning of Monday, October 3d, all was as quiet in Lisbon as King Carlos himself could have desired. At about eleven o'clock Dr. Bombarda sat in his office at the asylum, when a former patient, a young lieutenant who had suffered from the persecution mania, was announced to see him. Bombarda rose and asked him how he was. Without a word the visitor produced a Browning pistol and fired point blank at the physician, putting three bullets in his body. Bombarda had strength enough to seize his assailant by the wrists and hand him over to the attendants who rushed in. He then walked down-stairs unaided before he realized how serious were his wounds. It soon appeared, however, that he had not many hours to live; and when this became clear to him, he took a paper from his pocketbook and insisted that it should be burned before his eyes. What the paper was I need not say. At about six in the evening he died.
Bombarda was a passionate anticlerical, and his murderer was a fanatical Catholic. The citizens, with whom he was very popular, jumped at the conclusion that the priests had inspired the deed. As soon as his death was announced in the transparency outside the office of O Seculo, there were demonstrations of anger among the crowd and some conflicts with the police.
Meanwhile the Revolutionary Committee, to the number of fifty or thereabouts, were sitting in the Rua da Esperança, discussing the question, "To be or not to be." The military members counseled delay, for the Government had ordered all officers to be at their quarters in the various barracks which are scattered over the city. The intention had been to choose a time when most of the officers were off duty and the men could mutiny at their ease; but this plan had for the moment been frustrated. The military view might have carried the day, but for the determination shown by Candido dos Reis, who pointed out that it would be madness to give the Government time to order the ships out of the Tagus. Finally, he turned to the military group, saying, "If you will not go out, I will go out alone with the sailors. I shall have the honor of getting myself shot by my comrades of the army." His insistence carried all before it, and it was decided that the signal should be given, as previously arranged, at one o'clock in the morning.
That evening, at the Palace of Belem, some two miles down the Tagus from the Necessidades Palace, Marshal Hermes da Fonseca, President-elect of Brazil, was entertaining King Manuel at a State dinner. There was an electrical sense of disquiet in the air. Several official guests were absent, and every few minutes there came telephone-calls for this or that minister or general, some of whom reappeared, while some did not. At last the tension got so much on the nerves of the young King that he scribbled on his menu-card a request that the banquet might be shortened; and, in fact, one or two courses were omitted. Then followed the dreary ritual of toasts; and at last, at half-past eleven, Dom Manuel parted from his host and set off in his automobile, escorted by a troop of cavalry. Two bands played the royal anthem. Had he known, poor youth, that he was never to hear it again, there might have been a crumb of consolation in the thought.
It would be impossible without a map to make clear the various phases of the Battle of Lisbon. Nor would there be any great interest in so doing. There was no particular strategy in the revolutionary plans, and what strategy there was fell to pieces at an early point. It is not clear that the signal was ever formally given, but about the appointed hour mutinies broke out in several barracks. In some cases the Royalist officers were put under arrest, in one case a colonel and two other officers were shot. A mixed company of soldiers and civilians, with ten or twelve guns, marched, as had been arranged, upon the Necessidades Palace, to demand the abdication of the King; but they were met on the heights behind the palace by a body of the "guardia municipal," and, after a sharp skirmish, were forced to retire, leaving three of their guns disabled behind them. They retreated to the general rallying-point of the Republican forces, the Rotunda, at the upper end of the mile-long Avenida da Liberdade. This avenue stands to the Rocio very much in the relation of Charing Cross Road to Trafalgar Square: there is a curve at their junction which prevents you from seeing—or shooting—from the one into the other. On reaching the Rotunda, the insurgents learned that the Rocio had been occupied by Royalist troops, from the Citadel of St. George and another barrack, with one or two machine guns, but no cannon.
There, then, the two forces lay, with a short mile of sloping ground between them, awaiting the dawn. Under cover of darkness, a body of mounted gendarmes attempted to charge the insurgent position, but they were repulsed by bombs.
Meanwhile, what had become of the naval cooperation, on which so much reliance had been placed? It had failed, through the tragic weakness of one man. Candido dos Reis is one of the canonized saints of the Republic; but I think it shows a good deal of generosity in the Portuguese character that the Devil's Advocate has not made himself heard in the case. Dos Reis had undertaken the command of the naval side of the revolt; but oddly enough, he seems to have arranged no method of conveyance to his post of duty. He found at the wharf a small steamer, the captain of which agreed to take him off to the ships; but there was some delay in getting up steam. During this pause, some one as yet unidentified, but evidently a friend of Dos Reis, rushed down to the wharf and shouted to him that the revolt was crushed and all was lost. Dos Reis, who had assumed his naval uniform on board the steamer, took it off again, and, in civilian attire, went ashore. He proceeded to his sister's house, where he spent an hour; then he sallied forth again, and was found next morning in a distant quarter of the city with a bullet through his brain.
There is no doubt that he committed suicide. The theory of foul play is quite abandoned. As it was he who had vetoed the proposed postponement of the rising, one can understand that the sense of responsibility lay heavy upon him; but that, without inquiry into the alleged disaster, without the smallest attempt to retrieve it, he should have left his comrades in the lurch and taken the easiest way of escape, is surely a proof of almost criminal instability. The Republic lost in him an ardent patriot, but scarcely a great leader.
The dawn of Tuesday, October 4th, showed the fortunes of the revolt at rather a low ebb. The land forces were dismayed by the inaction of the ships; the sailors imagined, from the non-appearance of their leader, that some disaster must have occurred on land. It was in these hours of despondency that the true heroes of the revolution showed their mettle.
In the bivouac at the Rotunda, as the morning wore on, the Republican officers declared that the game was up, and that there was nothing for it but to disperse and await the consequences. They themselves actually made off; and it was then that Machado dos Santos came to the front, taking command of the insurgent force and reviving their drooping spirits. The position was not really a strong one. For one thing, it is commanded by the heights of the Misericordia; and there was, in fact, some long-range firing between the insurgents and the Guardia Municipal stationed on that eminence. Again, the gentle slope of the Avenida, a hundred yards wide, is clothed by no fewer than ten rows of low trees, acacias, and the like, five rows on each side of the comparatively narrow roadway, which is blocked at the lower end by a massive monument to the liberators of 1640. Thus the insurgents could not see their adversaries even when they ventured out of their sheltered position in the Rocio; and the artillery fire from the Rotunda did much more damage to the hotels that flanked the narrow neck of the Avenida than to the Royalist forces. On the other hand, it would have been comparatively easy for the Royalists, with a little resolution, to have crept up the Avenida under cover of the trees, and driven the insurgents from their position. Fortunately for the revolt, there was a total lack of leadership on the Royalist side, excusable only on the ground that the officers could not rely on their men.
While things were at a deadlock on the Avenida, critical events were happening on the Tagus. On all three ships, the officers knew that the men were only awaiting a signal to mutiny; but the signal did not come. At this juncture, and while it seemed that the Republican cause was lost, a piece of heroic bluff on the part of a single officer saved the situation. Lieutenant Tito de Moraes put off in a small boat from the naval barracks at Alcantara, rowed to the San Raphael, boarded it, and calmly took possession of it in the name of the Republic! He gave the officers a written guaranty that they had yielded to superior force, and then sent them off under arrest to the naval barracks. He now asked for orders from the Revolutionary Committee; and early in the afternoon the San Raphael weighed anchor and moved down the river in the direction of the Necessidades Palace. In doing so she had to pass the most powerful ship of the squadron, the Dom Carlos: would she get past in safety? Yes; the Dom Carlos made no sign. The officers were almost all Royalists, but they knew they could do nothing with the crew. As a matter of fact when the crew ultimately mutinied, the captain and a lieutenant were severely wounded; but I can find no evidence for the picturesque legend of a group of officers making a last heroic stand on the quarter-deck, and ruthlessly mowed down by the insurgents' fire. It is certain, at any rate, that no lives were lost.
In the Palace, on its bluff above the river, King Manuel was practically alone. No minister, no general, was at his side. It is said, on what seems to be good authority, that when he saw the San Raphael moving down-stream under the Republican colors, he telephoned to the Prime Minister, Teixeira de Sousa, to ask whether there was not a British destroyer in the river that could be got to sink the mutinous vessel. Even if this scheme had been otherwise feasible, it would have demanded an effort of which the minister was no longer capable. At about two in the afternoon the San Raphael, cruising slowly up and down, opened fire upon the Palace, and her second shot brought down the royal standard from its roof. What could the poor boy do? To sit still and be blown to pieces would have been heroic, but useless. Had he had the stuff of a soldier in him, he might have made his way to the Rocio and tried to put some energy into the officers, some spirit into the troops. But he had no one to encourage and support him. Such counselors as he had were all for flight. He stepped into his motor-car, set off for Cintra and Mafra, and is henceforth out of the saga.
The flight of Dom Manuel meant the collapse of his cause. It is true that the Royalists were reenforced by certain detachments of troops who came in from the country, and, beaten off by the insurgents at the Rotunda, made their way to the Rocio by a circuitous route. The Guardia Municipal, too, were stanch, and showed fight at several points. It was the total lack of spirited leadership that left the insurgents masters of the field. Having done its work at the Necessidades, the San Raphael moved up stream again, and began dropping shells over the intervening parallelogram of the "Low City" into the crowded Rocio. They caused little loss of life, for they were skilfully timed to explode in air; the object being, not to massacre, but to dismay. There is nothing so trying to soldiers as to remain inactive under fire; and as there had never been much fight in the garrison of the Rocio, the little that was left speedily evaporated. At eleven in the morning of Wednesday, October 5th, the Republic was proclaimed from the balcony of the Town Hall, and before night fell all was once more quiet in Lisbon.
The first accounts of the fighting which appeared in the European Press were, as was only natural, greatly exaggerated. A careful enumeration places the number of the killed at sixty-one and of the wounded at 417. Some of the latter, indeed, died of their wounds, but the whole death-roll certainly did not exceed a hundred.
The Portuguese Monarchy was dead; and the causes of death, as disclosed by the autopsy, were moral bankruptcy and intellectual inanition. It could not point to a single service that it rendered to the country in return for the burdens it imposed. Some of its defenders professed to see in it a safeguard for the colonies, which would somehow fly off into space in the event of a revolution. As yet there are no signs of this prophecy coming true; but the prophets may cling, if they please, to the hope of its fulfilment. For the rest, it was perfectly clear that the monarchy had done nothing for the material or spiritual advancement of the country, which remained as poverty-stricken and as illiterate as it well could be. Dom Carlos had not even the common prudence to affect, if he did not feel, a sympathy with the nation's pride in its "heroes." The Monarchy could boast neither of good deeds nor of good intentions. Its cynicism was not tempered by intelligence. It drifted toward the abyss without making any reasonable effort to save itself; for the dictatorship was scarcely an effort of reason. "The dictatorship," said Bernardino Machado, the present Foreign Minister, "left us only one liberty—that of hatred." And again, "The monarchy had not even a party—it had only a clientèle." That one word explains the disappearance of Royalism.
For it has simply disappeared. Even the Royalist Press is almost extinct. Some papers have ceased to appear, some have become Republican, the few who stick to their colors do so rather from clerical than from specifically Royalist conviction. All the leading papers of the country had long been Republican; and excellent papers they are. Both in appearance and in matter, O Mundo and A Lucta ("The Struggle") would do credit to the journalism of any country. In size, in excellence of production, and in the well-considered weight of their articles, they contrast strangely with the flimsy, ill-printed sheets that content the Spanish public.
The Provisional Government has been sneered at as a clique of "intellectuals"; but it is scarcely a reproach to the Republic that it should command the adhesion of the whole intelligence of the country. Nor is there any sign of lack of practical sense in the admirable organization which not only insured the success of the revolution (in spite of certain cross accidents) but secured its absolutely peaceful acceptance throughout the country. There are no doubt visionary and fantastic spirits in the Republican ranks, and ridiculous proposals have already been mooted. For instance, it has been gravely suggested that all streets bearing the names of saints—and there are hundreds of them—should be renamed in commemoration of Republican heroes, dates, exploits, etc. But the common sense of the people and Press is already on the alert, and such whimsies are being laughed out of court.
Of the Provisional Government I saw only the President and the Foreign Secretary. The President, an illustrious scholar, historian, and poet, is a delightful old man of the simplest, most unassuming manners, and eagerly communicative on the subjects which have been the study of his life. When I asked him to explain to me the difference of national character which made the Portuguese attitude toward the Church so different from the Spanish, he took me right back to the Ligurians—far out of my ethnological depth—and gave me a most interesting sketch of the development of the two nations. But when we came to topics of more immediate importance, he showed, if I may venture to say so, a clear practical sense, quite remote from visionary idealism. The Foreign Minister, Dr. Machado, is of more immediately impressive personality. Younger than the President by at least ten years, yet little short, I should guess, of sixty, he is extremely neat and dapper in person, while his very handsome face has a birdlike keenness and alertness of expression betokening not only great intelligence but high-strung vitality. He is a copious, eloquent, and witty talker, and his remarkable charm of manner accounts, in part at any rate, for his immense popularity. Assuredly no monarchy could have more distinguished representatives than this Republic.
The desire of the Republic to "play fair" was manifested in another little trait that interested me a good deal. In the window of every book-shop in Spain a translation from the Portuguese, entitled Los Escandalos de la Corte de Portugal, is prominently displayed. It is a ferocious lampoon upon the royal family and upon Franco; but in Lisbon I looked for it in vain. On inquiry I learned that it had been prohibited under the Monarchy, as it could not fail to be; but, had there been any demand for it, no doubt it might have been reprinted since the revolution. There was apparently no demand. The people to whom I spoke of it evidently regarded it as "hitting below the belt." "We do not fight with such weapons," said a leading journalist. In no one, in fact, did I discover the slightest desire or willingness to retail personal gossip with respect to the hated Braganzas.
In the midst of progress comes reaction. The far northern European country of Finland had for a century been progressing in advance of its neighbors. It was a true democracy. It had even established, first of European lands, the full suffrage for women; and numerous women sat in its parliament. But Finland was tributary to Russia; and Russia, as far back as 1898, began a deliberate policy of crushing Finland, "nationalizing" it, was the Russian phrase, by which was meant compelling it to abandon its independence, adopt the Russian language, and become an integral part of the empire under Russian officials and Russian autocracy.
Under pressure of this repressive policy, the Finns began leaving their country as early as 1903, emigrating to America in despair of successful resistance to Russia's tyranny. Many of them were exiled or imprisoned by the Czar's Government. Then came the days of the Russian Revolution; and the Czar and his advisers hurried to grant Finland everything she had desired, under fear that her people would swell the tide of revolution. But that danger once passed, the old policy of oppression was soon renewed, and was carried onward until in November of 1909 the Finnish Parliament was dismissed by imperial command. All through 1910 repressive laws were passed, reducing Finland step by step to a mere Russian province, so that before the close of that year the Finlanders themselves surrendered the struggle. One of their leaders wrote, "So ends Finland."
We give here first the despairing cry written in 1903 by a well-known Finn who fled to America. Then follows the official Russian statement by the "Minister of the Interior," Von Plehve, who held control of Finland in the early stages of the struggle, and was later slain by Russian revolutionists. Then we give the very different Russian view expressed by the great liberal Prime Minister, Baron Sergius Witte, who rescued Russia from her domestic disaster after the Japanese War. The story is then carried to its close by a well-known Finnish sympathizer.
"Russia is the rock against which the sigh for freedom breaks," said Kossuth, the great statesman and patriot of Hungary. Although fifty years have passed, and sigh after sigh has broken against it, the rock still stands like a colossal monument of bygone ages. It is pointing toward the northern star, as if to remind one of the all-enduring fixity. Other stars may go round as they will; there is one fixed in its place, and under that star the shadow of despotism hopes to endure forever.
While yet in Finland I used to fancy Russia as a giant devil-fish, whose arms extended from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Then I would think of my native land as a beautiful mermaid, about whom the giant's cold, chilly arms were slowly creeping, and I feared that some day those arms would crush her. That day has come. The helpless mermaid lies prostrate in the clutch of the octopus. Not that the constitution of Finland has been annulled, as has been so often erroneously stated, and quite generally believed. The Russian Government has made only a few inroads upon it. The great grievance of the Finns is not with what has been absolutely done in opposition to their ancient rights and privileges, nor in the number of their rights which have in reality been curtailed, but with the fact that they have henceforth no security. The real grievance of the Finns is that the welfare of their country no longer rests upon an inviolable constitution, but upon the caprice of the ministers.
In 1898 the reactionists succeeded in getting one of their tools appointed as Governor-General. No sooner had General Bobrikoff taken his high office than he declared that the Finnish right to separate political existence was an illusion; that there was no substantial foundation for it in any of the acts or words of Alexander I. The people were amazed, appalled. But this was not all. Pobiedonostseff, the Procurator of the Holy Synod, and other men as reactionary as he, discovered the fact, or gave birth to the idea, that the fundamental rights of Finland could be interfered with if these fundamental rights interfered with the welfare of the Russian Empire. In other words, they discovered a loophole which they termed legal, on the principle that the parts should suffer for the whole, and that this principle was an integral part of the plan of Russian government.
The abrogation of maintenance of Finland's ancient rights would seem by this decision to rest on the arbitrary interpretation on the part of Russia as to whether or not they interfered with the welfare of the empire. It is possible that, according to the individual opinions of Russian autocrats, they might all interfere with the standard of welfare which certain individuals have arbitrarily established to fit the occasion.
In justice to the Russian Government it should be stated, however, that the joy of persecution was not the motive which led to the arbitrary acts. During the time that Finland was under Swedish control, the Finns had learned to dislike everything Russian. These anti-Russian tendencies were accentuated, after Finland became an appanage of the Russian crown, by the restrictive and often reactionary policy of the Imperial Government. Such a form of government was repugnant to the Finns, who had learned to be governed by good laws well administered, and by an enlightened public opinion. At the same time, owing to their larger liberties, their higher culture, and their susceptibility to western ideals, the Finns exerted an attractive influence over the peoples of the Baltic provinces, and even of Russia proper. A Finn would very seldom become Russianized, while many Russians became Finnicized. Unlike his Russian brother, the Finn enjoyed the privileges of free conscience, free speech, and free press.
To the average Russian such a life was enchanting, and many were so fascinated that they became citizens of Finland. In order to do so, however, they were obliged to go through the formality of changing their nationality and becoming subjects of the Grand Duchy. Doubtless this was distasteful to the Russians, but so many and so great were the advantages accruing from such a change that not a few renounced their nationality.
Such a state of affairs seemed unnatural and antagonistic to the propaganda of the Panslavistic party. Instead of Russian ideals pervading the province, provincial ideals, manners, and customs were gradually spreading into the empire. But there seemed to be no honorable way of checking the progress of the rapidly growing Finnish nationality. The Finns maintained that their rights and privileges and their laws rested upon an inviolable constitution, which could be changed only by a vote of the four estates of the Landtag. That body would never yield.
It was at this juncture that the Procurator of the Holy Synod conceived the idea that the fundamental rights of the Finns can be curtailed in so far as they interfere with those of the empire. Acting according to this new idea the Imperial Government in 1899 took for its pretext the army service of the Finns. Heretofore, according to a hereditary privilege, the Finns had not been called upon to serve in the Russian Army, and their army service had been only three years to the Russian's five. The officers of the Finnish Army were to be Finns, and this army could not be called upon to serve outside of the Grand Duchy. This was the first fundamental right of the Finns to be attacked by the Russian Government. In some mysterious way the very insignificant army of Finland "interfered with the general welfare of the Russian Empire."
Immediately following the Czar's startling proposal for a disarmament conference in 1899 came his call for a special session of the Finnish Landtag to extend the laws of conscription and the time of regular service from three to five years. Furthermore, the new law provided that instead of serving in their own country, the Finnish soldiers were to be scattered among the various troops of the empire. By this means it was hoped to Russianize them.
The representatives of the people had no time to consider the measure before the Czar's decree was issued, February 17, 1899, declaring that thenceforth the laws governing the Grand Duchy be made in the same manner as those of the empire.
It is not necessary to dwell upon the deep feeling of indignation and grief that pervaded the country. It has found a freer expression outside of the Grand Duchy than within its boundaries. Wherever the human heart is beating in sympathetic harmony with universal progress, the oppressed Finnish people have found moral support. In spite of this, one by one the Finns have been deprived of their hereditary rights and privileges. To the Finns this new order of things seems appalling. It is like the drawing of the veil of the dark ages over their beloved country. They have lost everything that is dear to the human heart: their language, their religion, and their independence. They can do nothing but mourn in silence and mortification, for a strict Russian censorship prevents the expression of their just indignation and grief.
The present condition of Finland is apathetic. Last fall the loss of crops was almost complete, and pestilence and famine are devastating the country, which has been drained of its vitality by an excessive migration and military conscription. The young men of Finland are forced to serve five years in the Russian Army, and the country is suffering from a lack of men to till the soil. The credit of the country has been mined, and panic is spreading rapidly. Wholesale migration of the more thrifty has made the already difficult problem of readjustment more complicated. Those who remain behind are literally suffering from physical, intellectual, and moral starvation. There is left nothing to refresh, fertilize, and energize the nation's vitality. The Finns are utterly helpless. In this sad extremity of their people the best men of Finland are exerting their utmost in the endeavor to alleviate suffering and infuse hope and inspiration among the masses. The young Finnish party has become exasperated by the humiliation that has been heaped upon the long-suffering people of their native land, and its leaders have advised active resistance. The old Finnish party has adopted the policy of passive resistance and protest. But the inroads upon the constitution of Finland, in the form of imperial decrees, rules, and regulations by the Governor-General and his subordinates, have been so many and so sweeping in their character that even the most conservative are beginning to lose patience. As long as the unconstitutional acts affected only the political life of the people, many were able to bear it, but when the new rules attacked the time-honored social institutions and customs, indignation could no longer be suppressed. For instance, the order to open private mail caused a general protest. The postal director and his secretary refused to sign the order and resigned. No less obnoxious was the order forbidding public meetings and directing the governors of the different provinces of Finland to appoint only such men to fill municipal rural offices as will be subservient to the Governor-General. The governor of the province of Ulrasborg resigned, while several other provinces were already governed by pliant tools of General Bobrikoff.