¹ Alcalá Galiano says that “German agents in Spain have offered great things. William II is going to be our Messiah. So great is his love for Spain that he is going to return us Gibraltar, give us Portugal and cede us Morocco; to reconcile the clergy and punish the Quirinal for its treason he is going to reëstablish the temporal power of the Church. With this insane enthusiasm and this Quixotic reasoning, Germanophilism has become an absurdity.”

² Notable indeed was the increased ardor of the support to the Allies afforded by the chain of Liberales, printed in Madrid, Seville, and Barcelona, and of the Correspondencia de España shortly after the visits to Spain of Lord Northcliffe and John Walters, editor and manager, respectively, of the London Times, and active members of the British propaganda committee.

³ Galdós, who is an ardent admirer of England, recently expressed his conviction that the secret of that nation's success as a colonizing power, as contrasted with the failure of Spain, has lain in the autonomy and the absolute liberty of worship and government conferred upon her subjects by the former country, while Spain lost her colossal empire through religious intolerance and bureaucratic centralization. In the same spirit, Galiano has repeatedly expressed his love for England, “the home of liberty, religious, political, and individual, controlled as she is by electoral sincerity and not by a parliamentary farce manufactured neither by ministers as in Spain nor by a fictitious popular assembly like the Reichstag, dominated by the Kaiser and his chancellor.” The Countess Bazán has labored diligently in behalf of the French Red Cross. Blasco Ibañez has been with the French army for two years making observations and writing therefrom-a history of the war. Professor Altamira has shown his pro-Ally sympathies in a recent book, Felipe Trigo has done the same in his Crisis of Civilization, and Professor Uñamunú lectures and writes in behalf of the Allies.

⁴ As a contrast to this point of view, Prof. Uñamunú's characterization of the German attitude toward Spain is interesting. In this connection he says: “In regard to us, the Spaniards, however much we may complain against the treatment of the English and French, we must confess that the Germans have not treated us either with disdain or without it. Plainly, they ignore us. For the German nation the Spanish people do not exist, except indistinctly as distant savages with warm blood who live among themselves in cafés or playing the guitar beneath the shade of orange and palm trees; but if they were our neighbors, as the French are, you would hear: ‘God free us from such neighbors.’“

⁵ Alcalá Galiano states that fascination for the versatile personality of the Kaiser was a large factor in determining the attitude of the Spanish military element. “His theatrical character, intolerant of a rival, and particularly antagonistic to Theodore Roosevelt, makes him the victim of an indescribable feverishness; he changes his attitude every instant: now we see him dressed as an admiral, a general, a hunter, a yachtsman, a warrior, a sovereign, a citizen. The Kaiser seems indefatigable, he parades his soldiers, he reviews his fleets, he makes political discourses, he reads his Bible, talks about himself and God, entertains himself in his idle hours in the modest occupation of a carpenter, patronizes the opera, composes ballets, and to demonstrate his omnipotence, stages them in the Imperial Opera.”

⁶ Alvarez Alcalá Galiano expresses wonderment at the attitude of the Spanish clergy in the following terms: “in the aristocratic center of London there is a Catholic cathedral, and in the district of Whitechapel there lives quietly a veritable plague of foreign anarchists: this contrast reveals to us the spirit of political and religious liberty which England breathes without endangering the public order. The British Empire has known how to be great without making war on its people or automatons of its citizens. There can be no question but that the anti-clerical campaigns of the French government have contributed largely to the fostering of hostility among the Spanish clergy against the neighboring republic and the cause of the Allies. But do they forget England's benevolence toward the Catholics? Are they ignorant of the great number of emigrated orders established in England? Up to now the government of England has given all kinds of facilities for opening colleges and building churches, but this political attitude may change brusquely if the idea is generated that the church of Rome is hostile to the allied cause. It is certainly to be hoped that in the interest of their religion the Spanish Catholics will moderate the impetus of their opinion.”

⁷ The German agents in Spain have not failed to remind the church and the country at large that socialistic Belgium gave open support and sympathy in 1909 to Francisco Ferrer, the Barcelona anarchist, who led a rebellion against the church and the Spanish government. Brussels and Antwerp, they assert, have been properly chastened for raising contributions to support Ferrer in his revolt, and, after his death, for erecting a statue in his honor.

⁸ Spain has not departed from the policy laid down for her in 1896 by the eminent Spanish economist, Joaquin Costa, who advised that “Spain should maintain cordial relations with Germany, but nothing more. Neither friendliness nor hostility should exist between powers so heterogeneous or distant, one from another. Their alliance is not suggested by history, geography, attractions of race or common interest.”

⁹ In 1914, shortly after Dato's pronouncement of neutrality, Count Roman-ones published a circular which enjoyed a wide circulation, entitled Neutralities Which Kill. The theme of this publication was that the war presented to Spain an opportunity to identify herself with the Entente Allies, and thus to revive herself as a power, to rehabilitate her army, her navy, her credit, her commerce and possibly her colonial empire. The adoption of a neutral attitude, on the other hand, was the rejection of a grand opportunity, sounding, as it did, the death-knell of Spain as a power.

¹⁰ “On account of the problem of the Mediterranean,” he said, “we must remain in the north of Morocco; on account of the problem of the Mediterranean, principally, we must develop our military and naval efficiency at the bases of Cadiz, Cartagena and the Balearios ; on account of the problem of the Mediterranean, both Conservatives and Liberals maintained the agreements of 1904, 1905, 1907 and 1912; and on account of the problem of the Mediterranean, is imposed upon us the policy of approximation to those nations, with which, since the beginning of the reign of Alfonso XIII, we have maintained the most friendly-relations.”

¹¹ It is a well-known fact, notwithstanding repeated official denials by the Spanish ministries of marine and war that, excluding the Canaries, there are at least two and probably three German submarine bases off the coast of Spain. These are located near Cartagena, in the Balearic Isles and probably near Vigo or Coruña. Launches and rafts with oil and provisions for the submarines have been repeatedly seized by the coast guards, powerful chemicals and explosives for the inutilization of German ships in Spanish ports have been landed from submarines and seized by the government, and numerous arrests have been made of German agents who have been seen to land from submarines. The press has taken the matter up and exposés were made by the Correspondencia de España (editions of February 27 and March 8, 1917).

As a guarantee of Spain's neutrality, the Liberal of February 7, 1917, demanded the seizure by the government of all wireless stations, in order to prevent German agents from informing the submarine commanders of the departure of ships. It petitioned that all Germans in Spain should be kept under government surveillance, that the ninety-two German ships scattered about in different Spanish ports should be congregated in certain centers and guarded, that frontier roads and bridges Should be guarded to prevent German agents from destroying them, thus interfering with Franco-Spanish communication, and finally that zones 50 kilometers wide should be established on the French and Portuguese frontiers and all Germans kept out of those areas.

¹² Nevertheless, in his speeches on the 18th and the 30th of last September he spoke of the present as a favorable opportunity for the recovery of Gibraltar either by diplomacy or by force. He alluded to the possibility of reducing Gibraltar in a short time with a few long-range Krupp guns and the mobilization of five hundred thousand men before that place, which he believed would capitulate in a few hours.

¹³ Cenamor, , Los Intereses Materiales de España en la Guerra Europea, Madrid, 1916, p. 206.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Spain has failed to follow out any of these recommendations. Indeed, all of the foreign services of the Spanish transatlantic and Philippine steamship lines have been reduced, while the greater part of Spain's insufficient mercantile marine confines itself to the coastwise trade. Since February 1, trade with the Allies has become almost extinct, for Spanish ship companies refuse to send their vessels to sea when the government cannot protect them and will not permit them to defend themselves. The prosperous port of Bilbao has to rely on British ships to carry the ore away, and the mineral is rapidly accumulating; efforts have been made by the British to buy or lease Spanish ships, but this the government will not permit.

In the same way the Spanish orange trade would be ruined were it not for the constancy and fearlessness of the British and Norwegian shipping companies. During the month of February, thirteen British and Norwegian ships left Valencia and Alicante with fruit, and all of them reached their destinations in safety. During the same period not a single Spanish ship essayed the venture. Up to the present time Spanish ships aggregating a displacement of 65,000 tons have been sunk by German submarines. Of these, two, the San Leandro and the Medea, were laden with oranges destined to Holland and England respectively.

In order not to destroy Spain's fruit industry entirely, England has conceded to the latter country the right of exporting to Holland, Norway and Sweden the same amount of fruit that is purchased by those countries in time of peace, in this way guaranteeing that the fruit shall not reach Germany. The German government, on the other hand, has ordered her submarine commanders not to sink Spanish ships destined to neutral ports provided they bear certificates of destination signed by German consuls. Most of the ships sunk, however, have been carrying iron and copper ore to England, or English coal to Spain or Italy.

¹⁵ Speaking of Spanish commerce and influence in Latin America, Hermógenes Cenamor (op. cit. pp. 124–125) says: “Our commerce with America is elusive. It is of no value to Spain that she has exercised absolute dominion in that continent for centuries. Nothing it has served her that her inhabitants are of Spanish origin and that the greater part of her commerce is in the hands of Spaniards.” Cenamor comments that notwithstanding these advantages, Spain occupies a minor place in the American trade and he predicts that she will ultimately lose the spiritual and racial advantages which, she now holds. He says that the United States will teach Spain a sad but unforgettable lesson by her commercial penetration in the South American republics. He comments that the United States has celebrated two Pan-American conferences since the war began, and even Germany has found time to create an economic league under the. presidency of Dr. Dernberg in Central and South America with the purpose of fomenting the industrial interests of Germany there. France has also sent various commercial missions, while Spain has done nothing.

¹⁶ “It is difficult to understand,” continues Galiano, “considering the spiritual and material bonds, every day closer, between Spain and the great Argentine Republic, how the government of His Majesty should fail to accede to the desire of the majority of the Spaniards residing there, and to raise our legation to the category of an embassy.” After referring to the increasing cordiality of the sentiments between the two countries as shown by the hospitality and friendly welcome accorded Spanish artists, writers and professors, the large emigration from Spain to the Argentine, and the ties of blood, language and literature uniting these two countries, he expresses his regret that some governments gain more there by astuteness than Spain does by her sympathies, adding that “though public opinion saw with indifference that our (the Spanish) legation in Washington was made an embassy, it would welcome such a change in our legation in Buenos Ayres with great satisfaction.” Galiano, , España ante la guerra Europea, pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Zulueta in the New York Times, about September 16, 1916.

¹⁸ Although recent events have exhibited the mistaken character of some of the sentiments expressed above, and have, moreover, removed the United States from the possibility of participation in the peace conferences as a neutral, these expressions are so accurate in expressing the Spanish attitude that it seems best to leave these citations as they were originally written just prior to the entrance of the United States into the conflict.