argued, is at best a costly luxury, a burden which a poor country can hardly support. At worst it is a tyranny, controlled by the enemies of honest business, the Socialist masses. Industry can very well live without a Government, since the Government needs business men much more than business men need the Government. Temporarily a theory of the non-intervention of the State in industry was preached which was in singular opposition to the actual facts. While the new Manchester theory was being proclaimed officials of high rank and of low were working confidently with secretaries of employers' federations and agents of trade unions in committees created for the control of exports, where they issued licences and regulated prices behind the back of the public. This was called "the self-government of industry." The new Manchester school would have preferred to settle all industrial quarrels by agreement between the employers and employed. The State should not interfere. For there was always the danger that the influence of the not immediately interested public would in some way prevail with the Government and disturb the heartfelt harmony with which employers and employees were prepared to cut their straps out of other people's " leather."'

The industrial State which was the apparent goal of this philosophy has never yet come to anything. Even supposing the employees can be bribed or intimidated into supporting the idea, it is difficult to see how it can ever permanently succeed. For, apart from the despised consumer, there is not, in fact, any bond of interest uniting the various industries as such. Their interests are opposed; the interests even of various sections in the same trade-like the weavers and spinners in the cotton trade-are opposed. Public policy, if these are to be guiding lights, resolves itself into a perpetual conflict of rival greeds broken only by ignoble agreements and unprincipled compromises. It is not a true view even of industry itself, for the consumer is as much an element in any true vision of industry as the producer. To ignore the selling end is to ignore the very object of industry. As a matter of fact the theory of the industrial State in Germany was a makeshift-it was an afterthought, due to the necessity which the capitalists felt for some intellectual basis for their resistance to the Socialist State. While the State was their friend and protector nothing had been heard of the industrial State; it was only when the State became, or was thought to have become, the enemy of the business interests that the new doctrine was evolved, and it shows all the weaknesses of its origin.

Democracy has little to fear, in the long run, from any of the rival theories which have arisen to challenge its authority. Neither the dictatorship, whether of the individual or the proletariat, nor the idea of an industrial commonwealth based purely on material VOL. XCVIII-No. 586

31

production, is likely permanently to displace it. Many of its difficulties are temporary and will disappear with the exceptional circumstances which have occasioned them. But one at least of these difficulties is not temporary. The minorities problem is formidable, because it threatens as nothing else does the real principle of democracy. The opposition of Ulster to Home Rule before the war showed the nature and gravity of the minority problem. Supposing a compact minority, strong in its conviction. that its cause is right, to be prepared definitely to challenge. the principle of majority government and to resist it if necessary by force, what is to be done? How, even in less extreme circumstances, is the democratic principle to be applied to the case of such minorities? If they are given parliamentary rights corresponding to their own large claims, they may be in a position to reverse the whole conception of democratic government by enforcing their will upon the majority, or at best by so restricting and paralysing the working of the constitutional machinery that the majority cannot effectively express its will. Yet anything short of this still leaves it open to a minority convinced of the absolute justice of its cause to claim that it is being trampled upon, and to declare its determination to resist tyranny by force. The war has done nothing to resolve this dilemma; it has even intensified it. Signor Nitti may exaggerate when he says that it has created seventeen Alsace-Lorraines where there was but one before. But the vigour with which the doctrine of self-determination has been proclaimed has certainly made more evident the fundamental difficulty of democracy without really providing an effective solution. It is an international as well as a domestic problem, and its real gravity could scarcely be better stated than in the concluding words of Dr. Bonn's brilliant book:

If mankind becomes convinced that the revolt against the inequality within the State and the revolt against the inequality which exists between different States cannot be side-tracked by any agreement, if no way can be discovered to alter peacefully the existing order, force will continually be born again out of despair. . . . If the spirit of the industrial autocracy wins the lordship of mankind, the crisis of democracy will become the crisis of mankind.

STUART HODGSON.

1925

THE PATRIOTIC UNION OF SPAIN: ITS
PROGRAMME AND ITS IDEALS

MUCH has been said about the new organisation created out of the old political chaos in Spain, and many erroneous conceptions of its aims and intentions have been accepted abroad among that vast public which, not knowing the Spanish language, has never yet been able to form a just idea of the Spanish character, the Spanish mentality, or what is meant by Spanish patriotism. Thus a sketch of the true signification of the Union, drawn from its fountain-head, should have the interest of actuality for English people honestly desirous of learning the truth amid the welter of falsehood and misrepresentation sedulously spread by elements employed in preaching ruin and revolution throughout the civilised world.

I have drawn my sketch from speeches delivered at a great banquet given to General Primo de Rivera, President of the Military Directorate and also President of the Patriotic Union, on his return from Morocco after the victory of Ajdir, on the 16th of October. The whole country desired to render their tribute to the great soldier: the town councils throughout the country were subscribing to present him with the insignias of the Grand Crosses of San Fernando and of Naval Merit, the two highest honours attainable by a Spanish soldier or sailor; petitions to the King were being organised asking that the titles of Duke of Ajdir and Prince of Alhucemas should be bestowed upon him, and a public welcome comparable only to that of Wellington after Waterloo was in preparation for his arrival.

Fully to appreciate the national gratitude to Primo de Riveragive him what titles you may, that is the name by which he will always be known to and worshipped by the millions of Spain-it would be necessary to have lived, as I have, in intimate contact with the life of those millions for the last twenty years or so, to have seen the homes desolated by the endless campaigns in Morocco, to have watched through those frightful days and nights in July 1921 with the families of officers and men assassinated at Igueriben, Anual, and Monte Arruit. Never as long as I live shall I forget one such night spent with the brother and sister of a

second lieutenant just after a private telegram brought the news that the boy had had his head cut off by his captors, and that the mother was dying in Madrid after having been daily at the War Office for a fortnight trying in vain to obtain information from the Government of the fate of her boy. One must have seen, as I have done, mothers of another class year in and year out, when lots were drawn for conscription, weeping and wailing aloud in the conviction that the lads who drew 'high numbers would be sent to Africa and never come home again; and one must have listened, as I have listened, to the stories of prisoners ransomed at long last from the power of Abdel Krim, of the awful scenes that preceded their captivity, of the unnameable tortures inflicted on officers and men alike in their eighteen months' confinement in hovels which would have been unhealthy even as pigsties, of their being kept for days at a time without food or water sufficient to sustain life, while condemned to work, officers and men alike, as navvies on the road from Abdel Krim's 'staff headquarters' at Ajdir to his second commandancy' at Ait Kamara on the way to what is now his final place of refuge at Targuist, of how once for ten days at a stretch their general (Navarro) was chained up with an iron collar round his neck.

All this Ajdir has meant to Spain, and this is why Spain went mad with rejoicing when the news came that Ajdir was conquered, and this is why Primo de Rivera is to Spain to-day what Wellington was to England when he freed the English people from the eternal nightmare of Napoleon, as the Spanish hero has freed Spain from the nightmare of Morocco. And this is why the nation wanted to pour out its gratitude on him, when he returned after Ajdir, with every conceivable tribute, public and private, of its almost delirious affection and respect.

But Primo de Rivera, with the modesty characteristic of truly great men all the world over, refused the national homage. He said that he was very grateful, but the thanks of Spain were due not to him but to the splendid army he had had the singular good fortune and the great honour to command. The presentation of the insignia of his new honours was taken out of the hands of the town councils, for the King himself presented them, all wrought in diamonds, and pinned them on his breast in his first private interview with the General on his return to Madrid. Little has transpired of what passed at that interview; we only know that it was most cordial' on the part of His Majesty. It would be. Is it not common knowledge that King Alfonso's one regret in the brilliant victory is that he was not present throughout the whole campaign? As for the titles, the General has somehow contrived that these suggestions, like all others tending to exalt him personally, shall be, let us say, 'Press-censored' out of the public

eye. He has said that, grateful as he is for all these evidences of the undeserved gratitude of the nation to himself, he begs that no 'homage' to him personally may materialise until he finally returns from Morocco, after handing over the high command to his successor, General Sanjurjo, leaving the problem solved in the political as well as military sense. And he so contrived matters that the first great outburst of national enthusiasm was actually dedicated, not to him, but to the army, for he sent representatives of the Battalion of the Infante, who had covered themselves with glory in the ten days' siege of Kudia Tahar-twenty-two men of that battalion having resisted the siege of 2000 rebels provided with all the most modern material of war for ten long days, when Abdel Krim, or rather his German, Turkish, and Russian advisers, made a tremendous attack in that sector, hoping thereby to compel troops to be drawn from the operations at Alhucemas. They did not succeed, for Spain has troops enough to deal with the rebels wherever they may present themselves; but the relief operations gave rise to some hard fighting, in which acts of gallantry almost as noteworthy as the defence of Kudia Tahar itself were witnessed. Thus, when the ten survivors of those heroic twenty-two defenders of Spain's honour in the little hill fort were sent home with the rest of their battalion, the General seized on the occasion to divert the eyes of the nation from himself to his African army, and on October 10 a triumphal procession, which began at Ceuta with their embarkation for home, culminated in Madrid with such rejoicings as I have hardly seen equalled throughout my long residence in Spain. Every arm was represented; but, after the group of Kudia Tahar heroes who held the place of honour, those who attracted most attention and called forth the most vociferous welcome were the officers and men of the Foreign Legion-about 80 per cent. of whom are Spaniards-and the martial contingents from the native police and the native Harcas, great, tall fellows splendid in their Moorish dress, who bore living witness to the cordial relations between Spain and the loyal African allies of her protectorate.

All this and more, far more, is enshrined in the victory of Ajdir for the Spanish people, and in the name of their hero, Primo de Rivera. And while Spain did homage with all her heart and soul to the victorious army, their General had broken his journey to the capital at Ronda to hand their colours to the Ronda Somaten; and when eventually he reached Madrid, he slipped into the capital unobserved, having left the train at Aranjuez and motored quietly to his own house, whence he went to the palace and received his medals from the King before the public at large knew he was among them.

One act of homage, however, he could not refuse to accept,