The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1897-01-08
UNREASONABLE SPANISH PRIDE.
Blind Prejudice the Governing Force
Among the Nations Rulers.


Blind Prejudice the Governing Force
Among the Nations Rulers.
Europe presents no spectacle more ex-
traordinary than the contrast between
the nerve of the Spanish people and
their incapacity in action. For 1S
months they have endeavored to con-
quer revolted colony 1000 miles
away, and have in the effort used and
consumed resources such as it was hard
Iy believed outside of Spain that they
could have called up even to resist in
yasion.
They have actually forwarded to Cuba
100000 regular troops, sufficiently
equipped, q force nearly three times as
great as that with which this country
met and quelled the Indian mutiny of
1857, and more than three times as
great as the white garrison which holds
the Indian empire. The army, sufficient,
one would think, for a defensive war
against France, accomplished nothing,
but the Spanish statesmen lose neither
heart ror hope. They are wholly I'M
checred by victory, they know that
their soldiers die like flies, and they
are told every week that the rich is
land is becoming a desert, that three
fourths of it is going out of cultivation,
that the settlers are quitting in thou
sands, while those left behind are JOIN
ing the insurgents, that the whole en-
penses of the island must be borne for
years by Spain, and that every month
increases the chance that the American
republic, with its limitless resources
for war, will intervene; and still, with
a tenacity which Englishmen cannot
but admire, they refuse to relax their
hold. Be the results what they may,
they will make no terms till the rebels
have submitted Internationally.
The fissure between parties in Spain
is deeper than a political fssure ever
was in this country, but upon this sub
ject the parties act together, scarcely
differing even as to means. Pitt was
never tirmer than Senor Canovas, and
never better supported by a packed
parliament, which nevertheless repre-
sents the dominant feeling of the coun-
try. If the conscripts die, the Spanish
premier sends more conscripts. If the
peasants or the city mobs object to
their dispatch, both are silenced by
an unhesitating appeal to the military
law, which makes resistance to the con-
scription one of the most deadly of of
lenses. If the Philippines rise in in
suIrection, the premier offers to send
an army there also, even an army of
cavalry, if that will be the army most
required. If the people of the United
States mutter Or threaten interference,
the premier ransacks the world for
cruisers ready built, or builders who
will build quickly, giving enormous
prices, in two cases $75O,0O0 per ship,
for the needed vessels. If the treasury
is harassed, he sells everything that is
available-monopolies to the Roths-
childs, privileges to the railways, pref
erences to the dealers in bonds. He
even ventures to leave the troops in the
island unpaid, and for four months no
soldier there has seen the color of coin,
and has been fortunate if bread and
garlic have been served with any regu-
arity. The one thing which Senior
Canovas will not do is to listen to pro-
posals for compromise, the time for
which, indeed, has now at length passed
away.-London Spectator,