The Church of Spain asserts that its mission is peace, and as has been said, supported the assertion, when Queen Victoria initiated the patriotic fund for the sick and wounded at Melilla, by declining as a body to contribute, on the ground that men of peace would be stultifying their office if they supported a war fund. When it was pointed out that the healing of the sick and the binding up of wounds, however incurred, was as much the Church’s mission as the preaching of peace, the reply was given that the priests as a class were poor men who could not afford to give away money. It may be remarked that what they call their poverty is so well recognised by the working classes that they never dream of applying to their parish priests when they are in distress; they say it would be useless to do so, because “the priests do nothing without securing their fee in advance.”

But for a body whose first duty, on their own showing, is the preaching of peace, it cannot be denied that the Religious Orders, if not the secular clergy, are distinctly militant.

While Maura was in office nothing about priests and firearms would have been allowed to appear in the papers, but about a fortnight after his fall the Pais asserted that previous to the Barcelona outbreak the Carlists and Jesuits had accumulated a great quantity of arms in some of the small towns in CataluÑa, which were subsequently conveyed at night from one religious house to another in Barcelona. And, said the Pais, while the local authorities were imprisoning luckless working men who neither possessed weapons nor made any sort of revolutionary movement, the contraband purchase of arms was still going on, “the priests and the Religious Orders shamelessly lending their aid to it, and the people keeping silence because they believe that every Government, whatever it may be called, is either friendly to Carlism or is afraid of it and cannot or will not interfere with it.”

On reading this article (which the Ultramontane organs did not contradict) I was reminded of a story which had been told me three months before by one of my working class friends. A pious old woman, the wife of a small shopkeeper in a town where there are many religious houses, went one night to a service at a church attached to a monastery.[15] The weather was hot and the old woman tired. She fell sound asleep in a dark corner and woke at midnight to find the church empty and the doors locked.

Recognising at once that she had no choice but to stay where she was until morning, she was looking about for the most comfortable bench on which to pass the night, when she saw a light in the sacristy communicating with the monastery and heard steps approaching. Fearing lest the fathers should accuse her of being there with intent to rob the church, she crawled under a bench and lay trembling. From this position she saw a number of monks and priests file into the nave, form up in ranks, and go through various military exercises under the command of one of the number, who looked and spoke like an officer. The drill continued for some time, and after it was over the unwilling witness had to stay where she was until the doors were opened for early Mass, when she made her escape, ran home as fast as her poor old legs would carry her, and related what she had seen to her husband and neighbours. This was told me by a lad who sold fruit to the husband, who declared that he had heard it from the old woman herself.

At the time I paid no attention to the story, knowing how the dramatic instinct of the Spaniard lends itself to exaggeration in repeating anything that appeals to the imagination, and thinking that the whole thing might have been a dream. But later on I found reason to think there might be some basis of fact in what was related by my young fruit-seller. When the Pais article appeared I was told, in the course of a conversation about it, that a priest in a neighbouring town had said in the hearing of my interlocutor—of course unaware that he was listening—that his party were all armed and prepared to shoot “on sight” every one whom they knew to be inimical to them, directly the opportunity offered. And thenceforward for some weeks constant reports of the arming of friars and their lay allies—the “Young Catholics,” “Luises,” and other such associations—were published by the one party and denied by the other with equal frequency.

In this connection the following passages from an article in the Correo EspaÑol are rather significant.

“In Barcelona ten Carlists sufficed to prevent the burning of a church, and put the mob to flight, so that they left in the hands of our friends the weapons they were carrying in pursuit of their vandalic designs” [an incident already referred to]. “And there are 100,000 brave men such as these in Spain.... We are prepared for all! all!! all!!!” (in crescendo capitals). “The fight, which inevitably had to come sooner or later, has now begun between Catholics and sectarians, between civilisation and barbarism, and we must not stop till we have destroyed them.”

It all reads like transpontine melodrama, and as such I at first regarded it. But when day after day announcements appeared that new Carlist clubs were being opened in one small town after another, when SeÑor Llorens returned from his second sojourn with the troops, loaded with plans, sketches, reports, and what not, relating to the campaign and the general condition of the Army there, and openly announced that he had obtained them for Don Jaime, and when, although the people were shouting songs of defiance to the Carlists and their “King,” the militant “Catholic Association of Social Defence” announced that it had increased its working class membership from 31,000 to 200,000, one began to wonder whether the Carlist “army” might be something more than comic opera.[16]

The stories related of secret arming and drilling in the churches at night are obviously not capable of verification by a layman and a foreigner,[17] but that the Jesuits in Barcelona were armed before the revolt began, and used their arms with skill, seems certain. A near relative of one of these warlike men of religion told me that they had twice driven back the mob by firing from their balconies, so it seems fair to assume that when the newspapers talked of the shooting down of the crowd by the Jesuits they had some ground for their statement. Civilians in Barcelona found in the possession of arms were arrested, even though they had not used them, but it does not appear that the Jesuits incurred any penalty for using their weapons on the mob.

One mysterious feature in the events of that week has never been cleared up, and possibly never will be.

On the first two days of the rioting there was fighting about the barricades which had been raised in many of the central streets, but the scarcity of firearms among the rioters was noticeable, a large number of them being without arms of any kind. Mainly, no doubt, in consequence of this, the struggle was practically over by the third day, after which there was no more street fighting, the troops occupied the city, and the attack on the Religious Orders, which might so easily have spread all over Spain, was at an end.

Yet, notwithstanding that the fighting was over, shooting from the roofs of the houses went on for two days more. No one ever saw those who fired: the shots came from invisible persons concealed behind the parapets and other sheltered positions. And, what was the more remarkable, whether the shooting was in working class districts, or, as was frequently the case, from houses in those quarters of the city where rich men live, the noise of the report and the bullets which were found were always the same. The “man on the roof” invariably used a Browning pistol, a weapon not easily procured by a poor artisan. Thirty, forty, fifty such shots would be fired in succession, the troops would hurry up to the roof from which the bullets came, find no one there, and see nothing suspicious, yet hear the rattle of the shots again as they returned to their duty in the street below. A civilian who ran up the stairs from the ground floor in one of the “haunted” houses told me that although several shots were fired as he ran, no one was to be seen above, except a young priest professedly on the same errand as his own.

It was said that among the many people arrested there was at least one priest. But nothing more was heard of him, and whether he was released as innocent, or allowed to disappear, was not revealed to the public.

No one has yet explained who organised the expensively-armed sharpshooters who displayed such remarkable skill in firing from an elevation without being caught in the act. The people believe that they were members of the clerical party whose object was to exasperate the troops against the rioters who were supposed to be firing at them, and thus to bring about a fight in which the whole town should be involved. Meanwhile Don Jaime was to convert the mÊlÉe into an organised revolution against the established order of things, which should spread from Barcelona all over CataluÑa, and from CataluÑa throughout Spain. This, for what it is worth, is the popular explanation of one of the most mysterious features in the “anarchist” rising of July, 1909.

But the people go farther still. They attribute not only the incidents of July, but the whole of the political unrest in CataluÑa to the underground activities of the Carlists and their allies the Ultramontanes. It is firmly believed by the unlettered peasantry, who read or listened to the accounts of the beginnings and endings of the “Red Week,” that the emissaries of the Pretender planned and carried out every incident that led up to the general strike with which the rioting began.

The protest against the calling out of the reservists—the greatest error of the many committed by the Government at that time—was said to have been engineered by the Carlists. It was not spontaneous and found no real echo in the feeling of the nation.

The next step was to proclaim a general strike, but even then there was so little idea among the working classes that anything like violence was intended, that women and children strolled out to the meeting-place as for an outing, with the men who were unconsciously being led into action which was to brand them as revolutionaries and assassins.

To this day no one has been able to say how or why the rioting began. The only thing clear is that the great majority of the strikers expected and intended to proceed peaceably to formulate their demands, although no one knows exactly what these were to be, for no formal report of the strikers’ complaints, or even of the factories they worked in, has ever been published.

The Civil Governor, SeÑor Osorio, objected to the calling out of the troops, and fell into permanent disgrace with Maura and his Cabinet for saying that but for the undue harshness employed by the military authorities, the rising would never have attained serious proportions. He was dismissed from his post—perhaps inevitably, since he had not foreseen events. It is worth noting that the week before the riots the Government had expressed themselves as perfectly satisfied with the tranquil condition of Barcelona under SeÑor Osorio, and had withdrawn most of the troops in garrison in the province.

Meanwhile the Ultramontane Press never wearied of repeating blood-curdling tales of the awful scenes of carnage, rapine, and sacrilege, brought about by the teaching given in the lay schools, a hundred of which, they said, Maura had been compelled to close in order to put an end to a system of education which produced such horrors: and since the Opposition newspapers were not allowed to publish a line without the sanction of SeÑor La Cierva, the Minister of the Interior, the nation, had it read the Ultramontane papers, would have supped its fill of uncontradicted libels upon the working people of CataluÑa. But the nation does not read the Ultramontane papers. The Press of that party, indeed, admits the exiguousness of its circulation by pathetic appeals to the faithful to furnish money for the propaganda which in Ultramontane opinion constitutes the only hope of arresting the crimes born of the instruction given in the lay schools, and fostered by the seditious labours of the Liberal. But although the people closed their ears to the fulminations of the Church papers, the hand of the Church lay heavy on all Spain in 1909, for the continual reports of bombs and arrests, and the whispered tales of the secret drilling and arming of “good Catholics,” kept everybody on the rack, fearing they knew not what. The slow progress of the campaign in Melilla, the constant arrival of shiploads of sick and wounded, and the impossibility of obtaining trustworthy news of what was really going on, filled the cup of anxiety, and every one was in low spirits, for every family had friends or relatives in the war.

Meanwhile Don Jaime, in his castle of Frohsdorf, was occupied in editing a verbose document which he published later on, addressed “to those loyal to me.” The gist of this was that as long as Spain was engaged in war he would make no move, but that when the flag waved victorious he would remember that he had to fulfil unavoidable duties imposed by his birth. “And,” said he, “social order, shaken by the revolution, is tottering to its foundations. And this not so much from the attack of anarchical crowds as from the cowardice of the powers who make compact with them, delivering themselves as hostages in order to save their life and property. In the violent struggle which is approaching between civilisation and barbarism I yield to no one the first place in the vanguard in the fight for society and the country.”

Curiously enough, an incident in which the nation at large took very little interest nearly proved the last straw. This was the execution of Ferrer.

Everything had been done beforehand to excite the public over the affair. Columns upon columns of matter prejudging the case had filled the Ultramontane Press for weeks, while the Sociedad Editorial and the republican Pais were accused of complicity with the prisoner because they pointed out that the publication of incriminating documents alleged to have been found in his house, before the Court had pronounced them genuine, was contrary to all the principles of justice. In Republican and Socialist circles this action on the part of the Government—for copies of the documents in question were sent to the Press by persons in Government employ—produced the indignation that might be expected—indignation that probably was counted upon to bring about an outbreak of violence. But the mass of the people, thanks to their lack of education, knew and cared very little about Ferrer and his alleged offences against society.

While all Europe was excited about the fate of the founder of the lay schools, the Spanish people, believed abroad to be seething with anarchy and sedition, were peaceably if dispiritedly pursuing their usual avocations, only interested in Ferrer, if they took any interest in him at all, as another victim of the tyranny of the Church, whose “tool,” as they call Maura, had brought Spain so low.

This was because the Sociedad Editorial, and especially the Liberal, laboured as indefatigably to keep the temper of the people within bounds as their opponents on the Ultramontane press laboured to produce irritation. At one period in the protracted controversy I wondered whether the editors or staff of the Sociedad Editorial could actually be unaware of the lies spread broadcast concerning the political party for which they stand, so temperate in quality and so limited in quantity were their comments on the foreign campaign against the honour of the Spanish nation. But I soon came to understand that it was not ignorance of what was going on, although the Censorship used all its wits to keep foreign newspapers out of the Liberal-Monarchist newspaper offices. It was the deliberate policy of the wise and far-sighted Liberal-Monarchist party to keep their working-class readers in the dark about the Ferrer incident, because they knew that if the mass of the people became aware of the attack upon their honour, a civil war between the Ultramontanes and the people would have broken out within a week.

It seems impossible to doubt that the desire of those who pull the strings that work the Ultramontane party leaders was to provoke such a war. The declaration of the Correo Catalan that a hundred thousand good Catholics were ready to follow the example of the Jesuits who fired on the crowd in Barcelona and to “go all lengths” against the forces of “anarchy” bears no other interpretation. The Liberal-Monarchists, who know that in any such war the people would stand as one man for the King and the Constitution against the Ultramontanes with the hated Pretender at their head, might have been excused had they dallied with the idea of sweeping out the Religious Orders by force, and thus settling once for all the eternal quarrel between the State and the Church of Rome. But no such course of action would have been admitted as possible by Moret, who is, and will remain while he lives, the spiritual if not the ostensible leader of his party. Well aware that he was offending the more advanced and impetuous among his followers, and that he was being accused of lukewarmness in defending the Liberal party from attacks both at home and abroad, Moret firmly pursued his lifelong policy of conciliation instead of provocation, and it was thanks to his firmness alone, during the last three months of Maura’s rule, that Spain was not once more thrust into the horrors of internecine strife.

The week before Maura’s Government fell the Radical and Republican party in Madrid demanded permission to hold a meeting on the following Sunday, to protest against what they considered the illegality of a trial in which witnesses for the defence were not summoned. The organising committee frankly stated that whether Maura gave leave or not, the demonstration would equally take place.

What might have happened had the Ultramontane Government still been in office on the day of the demonstration, no one can pretend to say. But in the meantime the climax came and the Maura Government fell, amid general rejoicings. The demonstrations took place, not only in Madrid but in all the large towns, and were in every case conducted with the most perfect order. Their original object seemed to be lost sight of in the satisfaction at the change of Government. The speakers said very little about Ferrer, because Ferrer was of so little interest to the people; in the majority of cases the demonstrators limited themselves to a protest against Maura’s policy and a demand that he should never hold office again.

The Religious Orders were, or professed to be, in a state of panic terror when the demonstrations were announced. They declared that they expected violence, incendiarism, and robbery; treasures of gold and silver work, images, paintings, &c., were removed to private houses for

safe keeping; and the general exhibition of alarm on the part of friars, nuns, and parish priests made them a laughing-stock to the working classes for the month during which the demonstrations continued. The Civil Guard were sent, at the request of the ecclesiastical authorities, to assist the friars in their projected self-defence and to instil courage into the trembling nuns, and the garrisons were everywhere kept in barracks in readiness for attacks which nobody dreamed of making. A Civil Guard told me, with a twinkle in his eye, that he and his companion had sat up all night in the portal of a convent, knowing all the time that they might just as well have been in their beds for all the danger the convent was in. No doubt many nuns seriously believed their houses to be in peril, although the Jesuits must have been perfectly aware of the truth, and it is not easy to find words in which to characterise the folly, to say no worse, of a policy which tries to forward its ends by permitting women cut off and completely ignorant of the world to spend hours of misery anticipating dangers which their leaders must know to be imaginary.

It cannot, however, be denied that the deep-seated and chronic hostility of the people to the Religious Orders became manifest all over Spain, as reports of panic-stricken friars spread from mouth to mouth, converting their traditional dread of the Church into a feeling of contempt. The working-class Spaniards fear the underground action of the Church because they know it may mean starvation for their wives and children. But it was something new for them to see the “long skirts” fleeing from CataluÑa in fear of their lives, and the spectacle led to open exhibitions of scorn, which are a new feature in the history of the Church in Spain.

There were not wanting either journalists or private persons to hint that the alarm shown by the Religious Orders at the demonstrations against SeÑor Maura was fictitious, and a renewal of the Catalonian riots would have suited their plans. It was said that the slightest hostile action on the part of the working classes would have been made the signal for a Carlist rising, and that numbers of priests and monks, as well as civilians of that party, were armed in readiness for such a contingency.

This was why the organisers of the demonstration so urgently appealed to their followers not to be provoked into recrimination by “persons subsidised by the other party, who would place themselves among the demonstrators with the intention of causing disturbances.” They thought it necessary to warn the public that what might seem the merest act of personal aggression on the part of an ordinary loafer might really be the initiation of an organised plan to raise a serious revolt. And they prayed their friends to bear in mind that persons committing such acts of aggression might be the secret agents of the Jesuits, and therefore on no account to be induced to retaliate. These appeals were issued in leaflets which were distributed by the thousand in all the towns where demonstrations were to be held, and no doubt contributed largely to the self-restraint and good conduct of the crowd everywhere.

If the organisers were justified in believing that the Jesuits wanted to create disturbances, the angry and exceedingly untruthful comments on these leaflets in the Ultramontane Press might be accounted for. They were described as deliberate incentives to the usual list of crimes—incendiarism, sacrilege, &c.—and “good Catholics” were ordered to destroy any that fell into their hands without reading the infamies uttered by the “anarchist canaille.” Naturally the description given by the Clericalists of their opponents’ circular only excited the curiosity of the “good Catholics.” The “good” working man read the paper with the added interest given by its prohibition, and finding nothing criminal in it, went with the rest to the meeting to hear what it was all about. It is quite likely that the Church’s anathema of the essentially constitutional leaflets issued in most of the industrial cities on the first two Sundays of November, 1909, resulted in making new converts to Liberalism among the small minority of working men who till then were still following the dictates of the priests.