Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-09-20
CHECK TO REVOLUTION
King Carlos of Portugal Can
Venture Outdoors.
BUT WATCHES POLITICIANS
The Wholesale Arrest of Republican
Leaders.
GRAVE ISSUE FORCED TO A HEAD
Work Of Senior Franco-Portugues
and Dictatorship System-Strength
of Reds in the Cities.
'pecial Cablegram TO The Star.

| lea 10 the arrest or thirty republican lead
ers. 1t is believed that this action on the
part of the government will bring to a
head one of the gravest political struggles
fought out in Portugal since constitutional
| government began. Don Carlos dissolved
| the cortes which had become little more
than an arena of corrupt factions and took
| the strong, but necessa y step of refusing
to name date for the convoking of a new
| parliament. He swept out OF Office for the
| time being both of the parties who held
| and quilted office by arrangement changed
| places with the mechanical regularity of
| the figures in Dutch clock, and bat
| tened with equal rapacity upon the coun-
| try.
Each of them in the last few years had
| obtained majoritias by the usual manipu-
lation at the polls in a land where the
! vast majority of people never go near the
ballot boxes. Each of them has failed to
govern against the obstruction of the as
sembly enpo-arily defunct, and the grow
ing violence and daring of the republican
agitation. Each of the regular parties
now excluded from Office and its sweets
begged in turn to be intrusted with die
tatorship. King Carlos could have in
trusted it to either without seeming to
range himself against the other. He was
impartial between them, and the peasants
with the more solid class in the towns
were weary of both But in Portugal as
elsewhere, the kings government had to
be carried
Don Carlos called to his aid a new
man-young, brilliant and fearless This
was Senior JOao Franco. He had been for
time minister of the interior in the party
of the regenerators who correspond to
conservatives, so far any names aS zee
with realities in Portuguese party-poli-
tics. The other organization is that of the
progressists, who believe that they are the
more liberal section of the two.
Senior Frances Program.
Senior Franco separated himself from
his old associates and formed a new party
of men whose program might be described
as national liberal, or liberal un.onist-
one of those combinations of a strongly
patriotic creed with enlightened domestic
principles, by which the best work in the
policy of all the great countries has from
time to \time been done. Senior Franco
could form following in the country, but
he could carry no parliamentary seats
against the power of the regular machines.
He had proved his independence by trench
ant criticism even of the court.
In May of last year King Carlos took the
decisive step of entrusting him with the
formation of a cabinet over the heads of
both factions, regenerators and progressists
alike, who believed they had consecrated
right to alternate in Office at convenient
periods.
Senior Franco became a premier without
a party. He is exercising what is called
the dictatorship until he can make one. He
be the salvation of Portugal if this min
lister, prepared to devote his life to the
campaign against waste, corruption and
incompetence, were able to rally round him
d sufficient number of followers to create
the basis of a reforming majority in a new
cortes In spite of the interested declara-
tons against tyranny which have been
published throughout Europe by the eX-
members of the late Portuguese duma, lb-
erty-loving minds must not be unduly ex-
cited by the term dictator"
Dictatura a Recognized Institution.
In Portugal the dictatura is a recognized
Institution, and means only that countries
which cannot be governed through parlia-
ments must sometimes be governed with
out them until the national spirit brushes
facuon or the cabalS of office-seekers re-
turn to a better mind. For more than a
generation after the peninsula war the
Portuguese were governed by nothing mt
relationships of one kind or another Now
they are no longer chronic, but they are
recurrent. The dictatura is always held in
reserve, and most governments have been
compelled to have recourse to 1t for longer
or shorter periods, even under the pariia-
mentary regime of the last half-century
The process is less agoniZing and more use
ful than the name suggests. The people are
as different under the occasional regime
of administrative despotsm to the wrath
of the party which does not happen to be
the one in power as were the medieval
England.
a ministry conducting affairs by a
dictatorship legislates as d rule without
parliamentary assistance, carries its meas
ures without the aid of opposition, en-
forces them without asking a majority for
superfuous expression of its support,
hoidS elections at a suitable time, appears
before the chastened cortcs recall ID by
these methods into life and asks and re-
ceives in due course an indemnity for all
its nominally illegal proceedings. Senior
Franco is in different position and may
be able to carry to the end a really thor
plant. He is a premier without a party in
the orthodox sense. That is by far ttle
most hopeful fact in the situation. With
this dictator the work is not necessary, but
unweicome, Interruption of the office seek
ers opportunist game.
Stopping Vicious System.
Senior Franco is overhauling the accounts
and revising the whole system OF national
bookkeeping. lie is stopping the vicious
system of supplementary credits by which
the handsome balance regularly :announced
upon the production of every budget was
turned into another deficit before the end
of every session. He is putting down
sinecures and pluraities. He is also putting
down with an unfinching hand, as he is
titled to do, tlle republican movement c:l
cited to fever during the last two or threr
years by sympathy with the Russian revo-
luton ana that hySterica! idolatrT of the
dui1a To which unrefiectiug democrats have
given way in every land under heaven.
The true character of tn" revolutionary
movement in Portugal WAS shown last No
venber, when the republican d putty, Senior
Alfonso Costa. attacked the person of Don
Carlos and apostrophiscd him in the cortes
as follows: IS nhor. go; Withdraw out of
the land lest prison be your portion" And
when called to order the deputy continued:
Il take back nothing For less than King
Carlos has done the head OF Louis XVI
rolled on tn. scaffold." TO emphasize the
serious significance of this incident the
Spanish republicans dispatched to Lisbon
enthusiastic kilograms of Congratulation.
The great strength of the reds in Portugal
is in the two principal cities. Lisbon and
Oporto They have no hold uron the
peasants. The republicans, in word. are
a small minority of the popula ton. There
is Doubt that they can be grappied WIKI
succ -sstully.
Struggle Must Be Waged
There is scarcely less doubt that the
struggle must lie waged some time ana had
best be fought out now, and there Will be re-
joicing if the conspiracy of assassination
happily discovered and foiled carries for