Evening star., 1936-07-30
Revolt Course
in Spain Is
Familiar
1881 Turnover Failed
to Guard Liberties
of People.
BY DOROTHY THOMPsON.

A s SPAIN rocks with civil war
~ one is moved to ask what ex-
~ plains the weakness of the
= Spanish republic, which, es-
tablished in 1881, seemed at the time
a liberal white hope.
The Spanish revolution has followed
a pattern now all too familiar. Con-
servative Spain, represented by the
monarchy, betrayed itself as incompe-
tent, frivolous, lacking in character,
discipline, social conscience and hence
in prestige. The Moroccan War was
really to prove fatal to the dynasty,
because 1t delivered the power in
Spain into the hands of the military
in the person of Primo de Rivera
Against this raw military dictatorship,
there was a popular revolt. 1t was led
by the flower Of Spanish intellectuals;
its spiritual fathers were the grea.
Spainards and great Europeans of con-
temporary thought, such men as Una
muno and Ortega y Gasset, and its
first cabinet was formed of rebels who
were in jail. They issued from prison
in 1881 to proclaim the Spanish re-
public and set up a government of
extreme liberalism, which glorified the
things which the liberal intellectual
most prizes-education free speech,
a free press and assembly. the di-
vorce of church and state. protection
for all minorities, bountiful conces-
sions to labor, while generously allow
ing the forces representing the church.
the army, the nobility and intrenchec
tradition to continue to exist, however
curtailed. The first republican cabinet
recalls that of Count Michael Karolyi,
who was to prove to be Hungary 5
Kerensky. It represented the intel
tectual elite of Spain, plus labor-the
trades unions and the Socialists.
But the civil liberties so generously
accorded the people of Spain were not
used to support the Republic of the
Men Of Good VIII. Socialists, Com
munists and Radical Sydnicalists-
trade unionists who believed in direct
action-were not satisfied with pro-
gram of peaceful evolution through
education The generous free speech
accorded was used both by the Right
and by the Left as means for con-
tinual and virulent agitation, and very
soon the oponents Of oppression be-
came, themselves, and in the half
hearted way of bad conscience, op-
presSors in vain attempt to maintain
some public order. The government it
self was full of division. Next to the
radical labor leader, Caballero, sat Ia
mora, a pious Roman Catholic. who
objected violently to the dissolution Of
the Order of the JesuitS. And finally
the real leader of the cabinet, Azana, a
liberal who believed in free speech.
even for those who were bent on de-
stroying 1t, was outvoted and over
thrown in Parliament. AZana had
thought that one could change the
essential feudal structure of his coun-
try without revolution. This failed. He
outlawed the church, but he did not de-
stroy it; he abolished titles Of nobility,
but not the mobiles; he made grandi-
ose constitution on paper, but lacked
men with the skill, experience and
ruthlessness to carry 1t out. And while
he struggled against the still vital
vestiges of the old regime, he was
forced to suppress bloodily radical
uprising near Cadiz. This led to his
downfall.
q X II
The government of intellectuals and
Men of Good Will fell to government