Arizona republican. [volume] (Phoenix, Ariz.) 1890-1930, 1898-06-10
NO PEACE FOR SPAIN.
Internal Complications That Are Ger
tain to Follow

The worst part OF the whole affair
for Spain is that, as we have said, the
/ Spanish government cannot rely upon
its own people. Already greatly irri-
! tated by the failure to defend the
! Philippines, they will, We should fear,
consider the impotence Of the Atlantic
fleet a final proof of the incompetence
of their government. Nations are
never satisfied to wait YEARLY till a
waiting policy succeeds, particularly
If waiting involves taxation to the
bone. There will be risings in every
corner of Spain, gravely increased in
seriousness by the bitterness of the
hundred thousand families which will
consider quite naturally, though unfair
ly, that their children, the soldiers now
in Cuba, have been deserted by the
mother country. 1t will be necessary
to strengthen the executive, if only
for the restoration OF order, which.
when Latin people is excited, goes so
rapidly to pieces, and we may, we
think, rely on it that the army, now
the only organism in Spain retaining
full vitality. will insist upon a mill
tary dictatorship. Already, indeed, a
COMMITTEE or junta of generals has
been formed in Madrid, ostensibly to
protect military interests, but really
to take care that when the hour arrives
the regiments should not fire upon one
another, but that the army shall act
as a whole. About the direction in
which it will act there is much uncer-
tainty, but it seems clear that any mill
itary dictatorship must maintain order,
that it must have some foothold other
i itc D,,,- Il i
venture to proclaim himself king of
Spain-and that it must continue the
war, the bad management of which
will be the excuse for the pronuncia-
miento.
We still incline, therefore. to the be-
! lief that the queen regent will retire.
that the new regent will be a soldier
possibly man at present little
known out of Spain-and that he will
issue his DEGREES in the name of the
child king There will, however, be
no peace, and we are bound to add that
the symptoms of discomfort which
NAV produce more radical convul-
| sion begin to multiply. In Spain, as
in Italy, there are evidences of almost
lnexpiicable economic trouble To use
an inaccurate but Ineligible smile,
wave of pauperism is passing over
the land. Such a trouble is natural in
Barcelona, which was maintained by
its monopoly of Cuban trade, and has
lost it; but there is bitter suffering, ac-
tual want of the means of healthy ex-
lstence in many other cities, and at
least some of the agricultural prov
inces- No man except the Osmanli
bears hunger patiently; and the man of
the Mediterranean states, conscious OF
fertile land and of a certain richness
in the nature round him, grows furious
under the pain, which he attributes
either to the neglect or the malice of
his superiors. Under this impulse the
people when they rise fight hard, they
direct their attacks against the well-to-
do, and they are hardly to be appeased
till they have shed blood In fact.
though we suppose the army can and
will maintain order, the social revolu-
ton in Spain. the demand, that is, that
property be in some measure at least
redistributed, may have commenced.
We shall see, but of this much we feel
almost assured, that a much more des-
potic regime of some kind will be in
troduced, that it will continue the war.
and that its watchwords, even if it is
republican, will be 'stubborness' and
fresh alliances" Those who expect
the overthrow of the government are
doubtless right; those who look for
the downfall of the dynasty as we'll as
of the government may be right; but
those who look for peace as result
of either event reckon, we believe,
without the Spanish people and its sec
ond executive agent, the Spanish army.
London Spectator.