If Spain at large had attributed the misfortunes of 1909—the war in Melilla, the outbreak in CataluÑa, the suspension of the Constitution, the attacks on the country made by the foreign Press—to the influence of Don Alfonso, the throne would have been in greater danger than at any time since the expulsion of Isabel II., for the whole nation was roused to indignation by the general conduct of the Clericalist Ministry then in power.

But happily for Spain, and indeed for Europe, since civil war in the Peninsula would be an European disaster, not even the most violent of the Republicans or Socialists taxed the King, the Queen, or any member of the Royal Family with indifference to the feelings of the people or a disregard of the sufferings of the poor.

A fact not recognised in England is the extent to which conscription tends to consolidate the Monarchy in a country where the King, the head of the Army, enjoys personal popularity among his working-class subjects.

Under an unpopular ruler conscription would probably lend itself to the speedy establishment of a Republic. But every year that King Alfonso lives he binds the Army, which is the very flesh and blood of the nation, more firmly to himself by ties of personal affection. And personal affection is a stronger force than political conviction alone ever has been or ever can be.

In the seventies the Army stood for liberty and the Republic against Carlism and Ultramontanism, until Alfonso XII. was brought from his English college and offered to the nation which had seen his mother dethroned, as the mass of the nation always will believe, at the instigation of the Church. It was his mother’s personal popularity with the masses which made her son’s path comparatively smooth, notwithstanding the chaos of conflicting interests among which his lot was cast. His own honesty of purpose, his devotion to his people’s welfare, the Spartan simplicity of his private life, and the personal charm which he, in common with all his race, possessed, gave him a higher place in the affections of the nation than is at all realised outside of Spain, and the greatest hope expressed for King Alfonso XIII. by the poor is that he may take after his father. “He was a man,” they say. It was for the father’s sake that all parties agreed to call a truce during the anxious months that followed on his premature death, until his son was born, and it would be difficult to say how many times, while Queen Maria Cristina held the reins of Regency, the memory of her dead husband may have turned the tide in favour of their child, when the Ultramontanes would have used the national unrest to the profit of the proscribed branch.

From the day that Alfonso XII. breathed his last, the Ultramontanes have consistently tried to represent the Queen Mother as closely attached to their party. The accusation is manifestly absurd. No mother would support a policy directed in the interests of a Pretender before that which maintains the rights of her own son. It is, indeed, a matter of history that in order to give the Opposition no excuse for agitation, Canovas, with true patriotism, recommended the grief-stricken Regent in the early days of her widowhood to entrust the Government to his opponents, the Liberals under Sagasta, in order to avoid a contest, so that to the latter fell the duty of proclaiming to the waiting nation the birth of Alfonso XIII., on May 17, 1886.[10] Canovas would not have acted thus had there been any real doubts of the loyalty of the Liberal party.

The Imparcial, in an article dealing with SeÑor Maura’s assertion, immediately after his fall in 1909, that the Conservatives are the only bulwark against revolution and the only support of the Throne, recalled this fact, and added that “without the Liberals the Throne would not exist now, because the Liberals rescued it from revolution after it had been shaken by the bloody attacks of Carlism. Without Sagasta, without Castelar, the Spanish monarchy would not be.”

Yet so persistently has the story of the Queen Mother’s clericalist leanings been repeated by those interested in its acceptance during the twenty-three years that King Alfonso XIII. has been on the throne, that the mass of the people still believe that she defers to the Jesuits even in matters in which their interference cannot fail to injure the King in the eyes of his people—a preposterous misconception, which cannot be corrected too soon. Quite lately I heard a working woman say:

In one town where I had some acquaintances among the clergy, I was struck by the malicious things that were said by them about the young Queen, and especially about her relations with the Queen Mother. Not long before I went there I happened to have heard a very pleasant account of the private life of the Royal Family from a foreigner, entirely outside of politics, who was for a short time employed in one of the palaces while the Royal Family were in residence. His description left no doubt at all as to the happiness of their home life.

With this in my mind I did not feel greatly concerned at being informed by various Ultramontanes that “Queen Victoria was on the worst terms with the Queen Mother, who had never forgiven her for having been brought up a Protestant,” and that “Maura had refused to let her go to England after the Barcelona affair, because she was so miserable in Madrid that she had declared she would never return to Spain if once she got back to her own country.”

No one who has seen the young King and Queen together believes this kind of thing, although it has been repeated in clericalist circles ever since the marriage. But, unfortunately, comparatively few of their subjects have the opportunity of seeing them, and during the last half-year of the Maura administration photographs and picture postcards of the Royal Family, which formerly were on sale everywhere, became noticeably absent. Throughout the three months that the press was censured it was almost impossible to find an illustrated paper containing any picture of the King, the Queen, the Queen Mother, the Infanta Maria Teresa, or the Royal children. During that time everything that could tend to recall the King and Queen to the minds of the people and increase their popularity was suppressed. My attention was first called to this state of affairs by finding that in one large town not a single picture postcard of King Alfonso could be bought. The shops had sold out their last year’s stock, and no new photographs of any kind had been issued since the war broke out.

It would have been natural that portraits of the Queen should appear in connection with the War Fund initiated by her Majesty and taken up with enthusiasm all over the country. But no. A portrait and several pictures of the Marquesa de Squilache, who acted as honorary secretary, were published, showing that lady at work in her office, distributing money to applicants, &c. But I have not been able to discover that any such pictures appeared with the young Queen as the central figure. The Marquesa de Squilache is a philanthropist whose fame deservedly extends all over Spain, and the admirable organisation of the fund was certainly due in a great measure to her clear-headed and business-like methods. But she would be the first to acknowledge that the Queen, and not herself, should have been represented in the picture-papers as the head and front of this effort to alleviate the misery caused by the war. It is difficult to believe that the marked omission of her Majesty’s portrait in the illustrated papers during the clericalist Press-censorship was accidental, while at the same time a series of thirty-six postcards of Don Jaime of Bourbon in the Castle of Frohsdorf was being freely advertised in Madrid.

The War Fund, initiated and presided over by the young Queen, was perhaps the first charitable appeal ever issued direct from the Court to the nation, without the intervention of the Church. At first it was stated that applicants for relief from this Fund must bring certificates of birth, baptism, marriage, &c., from their parish priests. [11] But the Heraldo, one of the leading Liberal-Monarchist papers, pointed out that such a condition would deprive all those who had been married by the civil authority of participation in the Fund, and put in a further plea for the children of soldiers not born in wedlock. The Queen and her committee of ladies decided on the widest interpretation of the family limitation, and at an early stage in the war relief was given to a child whose father was at the front, although the mother did not bear his name. This broadly charitable decision commended the Fund warmly to the mass of the people, for, as already shown, the prohibitive cost of the marriage licence in many, if not all, the Spanish dioceses compels numbers of decent couples to use the civil rite or none. Thus the decided action taken by, the Queen and her committee, notwithstanding the recommendations of the Church, endeared Queen Victoria EugÉnie to thousands of mothers who, if the first conditions proposed had been made obligatory, would have been without the pale.

The interminable lists of subscribers, appearing day after day and week after week, and the innumerable small subscriptions, often not exceeding ten centimes, and sometimes falling as low as five, proved how whole-heartedly the poor gave of their penury, and various incidents which occurred showed a real spirit of self-sacrifice in the wage-earners. Such was the action of the cigarette-makers of Seville, the two thousand women of all ages whose fame has been so often sung in the opera of “Carmen.” They were ordered to make up several thousand boxes of cigarettes with the legend “For the Army at Melilla.” They immediately asked to be allowed to do the whole work gratis as a tribute to the Army; and on being informed that this could not be permitted, because the consignment was a gift to the troops from the Company which rents the tobacco rights from the Crown, the cigarreras volunteered to forfeit a whole day’s pay, to be given to the Queen’s Fund for the Wounded. Numbers of these women are mothers of families, and many of them have only three or four days’ work weekly, at a wage ranging from 75 centimes to pesetas 1.50, so that a whole day’s pay was a serious consideration to them. Nor were they by any means alone in their generosity, for many industrial guilds, companies, trade unions, and civil servants, such as, e.g., the minor post-office officials and telegraph operators, also gave a day’s wage.

Judging from the results of previous appeals to the public for charitable purposes, it is safe to say that the enthusiastic response to the Queen’s Fund was due in a great measure to the national confidence that the money would be well and wisely administered under her Majesty’s auspices, for it is a melancholy fact that similar confidence is not felt by the poor in the case of subscriptions raised under the patronage of the Church.

I have quoted at random a few observations from among many betraying animus against her Majesty on the part of the priests. Here is another, which shows why they dislike the young Queen so much. I met one day in a mountain village a Franciscan friar who had come from a neighbouring city to deliver a course of sermons. He mistook me for a Frenchman, and therefore had the less hesitation in enlarging upon the evils that the King’s marriage would bring upon the country. One remark particularly impressed me, as expressing in a few words the attitude of the Church towards education.

“She will do untold harm by trying to introduce her English ideas about the education of women. The women of Spain have quite as much education as is good for them. More would only do them harm.”

In this connection it seems worth while to mention that what most appealed to the working women (who certainly are not over-burdened with education) in relation to the birth of the Prince of Asturias was the announcement that the Queen intended to nurse her baby herself, instead of following the old-fashioned custom, universal among the upper classes, of employing a wet-nurse. This is not the place to discuss the unhappy, results of the system on the general health and morale of the nation. But the announcement was seized upon by the poor as bringing the royal mother into close contact with themselves.

“Have you heard that she is suckling her child, just as we do?”

And when soon after it was stated that “owing to the Queen’s state of health, and having regard to the duties of her position” the infant Prince had been handed over to a wet-nurse like any other rich man’s child, a sigh of disappointment went up.

“You see, the doctors would not let her do as she wished. Health? Rubbish! Any one can see that she is the picture of health. But what would become of the commissions the doctors get from the wet-nurses for recommending them if the Queen put wet-nursing out of fashion?”

The Queen was not blamed for relinquishing her maternal duties. Every poor mother believed that she would have nursed her baby, had the decision rested with her. This is characteristic of the attitude of the mass of the people towards both the King and the Queen. Whatever they do that is worthy of respect and admiration is taken as fresh evidence of their intrinsic virtues. But whatever happens in regard to them that does not please the country people is attributed to the malign influence of those who stand between them and their subjects.

I was struck by the popular comments on the announcement that Don Alfonso was not going to Melilla, among which this was one:

“Do we not know that he is dying to go? He is young and brave, and he loves our soldiers. It is Maura who forbids him to go to the war.”

A suggestive remark was made by a journeyman plumber with whom I had a long conversation while the war was at its height.

“No doubt he would have liked to lead the Army. He is brave enough. But kings are too expensive to be risked in that way. If we have a king he may as well be taken care of.”

“You do not seem a very enthusiastic Monarchist,” I said.

“I? Monarchist! I am republican to the bones.”

“Ah! Then I suppose you would like to turn Don Alfonso out of the country?”

“I? Why? What harm has that boy done me? Everybody likes him.”

And he seemed quite puzzled by the smile I found it impossible to repress at this exposition of “republicanism to the bones.”

For fully a year before the fall of the Maura Ministry anecdotes of the charity and generosity shown by the King, the Queen, and the Royal Family were growing rarer in the papers which had formerly supplied these little pieces of information to the many people who like thus to be brought into contact with the home life of their rulers. The omission was introduced so gradually that at first no one noticed it. But when soldiers returning from the war talked of gifts sent out by the Queen, and other evidences of active sympathy shown by the Royal Family, it was realised that no steps had been taken to make these things known to the public at home. The King’s gift of thirty thousand solar topees out of his private purse was one instance. The Queen’s present of thousands of warm vests to wear under the uniform was another. Queen Maria-Cristina, and the Infanta Maria Teresa (who by her gentleness and unassuming manner has won for herself an affectionate nickname among the poor of Madrid), as well as the Infantas DoÑa Isabel, DoÑa Paz (Princess Louis of Bavaria) and DoÑa Eulalia, the King’s aunts, all devoted themselves during the war to working with their own hands for the soldiers, besides giving generously to the Queen’s fund, but not a word of this appeared in any of the papers. I heard something of their work from private sources: the public heard nothing.

It may be suggested that the ladies of the Royal Family, who are instinct with patriotism and love of their fellow-countrymen, may have preferred that their charities should pass unpraised by the nation. But even were that so, one would expect that the expenditure of some £11,000 out of the King’s private purse would have been reported far and wide, especially since it had been impossible to conceal that the troops were suffering severely from want of proper headgear in the tropical summer of North Africa. But beyond the bare announcement that the King had ordered this immense number of sun-helmets to be procured for the troops in urgent haste, from abroad, because they could not be purchased at home, no comment was made on an act of truly royal generosity. A Liberal paper said that information on the subject was held back by ministerial instructions “until a suitable time for publication arrived,” but beyond the bare fact of the number given and the price said to have been paid, no further details were ever published. The Conservative organs confined themselves to commenting unfavourably on the size, shape, and colour of the new headgear, and one of their correspondents turned the whole affair into ridicule, describing the soldiers in the new helmets as “having the appearance of walking mushrooms, which destroyed all that had hitherto been picturesque in the campaign.” But when the illustrated papers brought out one picture after another in which the men were seen wearing these solar topees, and the soldiers began to write home to their families that “the King’s helmets” not only protected them from the sun by day, but kept their heads dry and warm while sleeping on the damp ground by night, the people scored another black mark against SeÑor Maura, crediting him with a deliberate intention to conceal evidences of the King’s care for the soldiers from the people at home.

The vests sent out by the Queen were never mentioned at all by the Press. Yet my informant, a returned soldier, told me they must have numbered thousands, for, said he, “there seemed to be enough for all of us; at any rate, all I knew had them.”

It was thanks to these, he said, that there were not many more fever patients when the torrential rains of October fell on an Army destitute of winter clothing and even of sufficient sleeping accommodation, so that for nights at a stretch “men lay on soaked mattresses or blankets only, sunk in a bed of mud.” “The Queen’s vests kept us warm in the middle, and that helped us to bear the wet and cold,” he said.

Why was the Queen’s gift, equally with the King’s, treated with such discourteous silence under the Press censorship of the Clericalist Ministry? It was not for want of space in the papers, nor for want of goodwill on the part of the editors, for full particulars were given of innumerable generous offerings by commercial houses and private individuals, and column after column was daily filled with names of subscribers to the War Fund, which was designated “The Patriotic Fund presided over by H.M. the Queen,” or “The Patriotic Fund under the Committee of Ladies,” according to the political bias of the paper publishing the lists.

If anything had been wanting to arouse national enthusiasm for the Queen, her prompt action in initiating this fund would have provided it. To English people it seems natural that the Queen should undertake the work, for the Queen of England has been for many a long day regarded as the head and front of charity organised on behalf of the nation. But Spanish women, accustomed for centuries to bow to the dictates of the Church, had come to believe that what the Church looked on coldly could not be carried out at all, and least of all by a woman. The Church, with certain exceptions, stood aloof from the Queen’s Fund on the pretext that men of peace might not aid in any matter connected with war. The nation translated this into a protest on the part of the Ultramontanes against a national work of charity headed by a Queen who is not popular with the priesthood. And the response to the Queen’s appeal for the sick and wounded is not only a testimony of the love of the nation for the Army, but also evidence of its confidence in the Monarchy as opposed to the Ultramontanes.

A pretty incident in regard to another royal gift made on the first visit of the young King and Queen to a certain large provincial town may be worth relating. The usual largesse of so many thousand pesetas to the municipality, for the poor, was announced in the newspapers when they left. But by chance I heard how much farther their unannounced charity had extended. They had given a considerable sum to a convent in each district of the city to buy bread for the poor, and of this no notice was taken by the papers. I heard of it from a journeyman painter, whose sick wife had received two loaves.

“Her aunt is portress at the Convent of ——, so she was able to get her share. Everybody in our parish was very pleased. The only thing we should have liked better would be to receive the bread from the King’s and Queen’s own hands, so that we might have thanked them as they deserve. But such a crowd of people would have gone to the palace that the Queen would have got very tired, which was no doubt the reason why they did not give us the bread themselves.”

Strangely enough, the Queen’s Protestant upbringing, which prejudices the Ultramontanes so strongly against her, has just the opposite effect upon the people. They look upon her as being, like themselves, a victim of clericalist injustice, and so deep-rooted is the conviction that whatever the Jesuits object to must be good for the people, that the knowledge of their oppositions to the marriage would have been sufficient in itself to secure her a welcome from the proletariat.

But her hold upon the masses goes deeper than this. The peasants appreciate, far more than many of the upper classes seem to do, the vital importance to the nation of a settled Dynasty and Constitution. They know that for many years the Monarchy hung on a thread, while the frail life of a little child was all that preserved Spain from the chaos that another conflict between Republicans, Carlists, and Monarchists would have produced. Therefore when King Alfonso grew up, married, and became the father of an heir to the throne, the rejoicing of the nation was heartfelt and sincere. The discussions which arose in 1905 on the death of the poor young Infanta Mercedes, the King’s eldest sister, as to whether her son was or was not entitled to be Prince of Asturias in the absence of a direct heir, had aroused all serious-minded Spaniards to the ever-present dangers that would take shape in action should King Alfonso die unmarried or childless. So that when the birth of the little Prince of Asturias—the first son born to a reigning King of Spain for over a century—was speedily followed by that of a second, the poor, always the worst sufferers from civil discord and changes of Government, learnt to look upon the young Queen who has given these hostages for peace to the nation, with a feeling compounded of admiration and affection. And each fresh child that comes to fill the royal nurseries seem a fresh bulwark to the State in the eyes of the working classes, who remember how their own flesh and blood were thrown to the dogs of war time after time by opposing forces during the century when Spain had either no King or no Crown Prince.