Spain: What it was, and what it is [pp. 397-407]

Spain: what it Was and what it Is.
SPAIN: WHAT IT WAS AND WHAT IT IS.
A NATION vegetating on old memories; a people for two centuries priestridden, just beginning to awaken and
shotw some signs of the enlightenment of the age; a government
liable to change every twenty-four
hours; an empty treasury shifting
from one to another incapable ministry; and, above all, a ridiculous pretension and holding to such an Old
World phrase as national honorsuchl is the ordinary run of opinion
on Spain. What is it coming to?
VWhat is its destiny? Has it a destiny
in these busy, practical days? Or is
its life played out long ago, and the
nation simply drifting downwards into
the yawning gulf of insignificance
where many another has been swallowed up?
Have Catholics an intercst in the
question?
Yesterday, when mention was
made of Spain, the enlightened
world lifted up its eyes and hands in
pious protestation against such an
outrage on our nineteenth century of
civilization. A superstitious race
given to the worshipping of graven
images, hoodwinked by the priests,
those inveterate enemies of progress;
no free-will among them; no understanding; nothing but memory. Today all is changed. The dawn long
delayed of enlightenment has come
at last to the unhappy land -has
come accompanied by the usual
signs. Churches have been rifled, the
sanctuary has been desecrated, the
Jesuits have been scattered, nuns and
monks have been robbed of their
homes and driven naked into the
world, blood has flowed freely,
murder has been done. So, to-day
the world smiles, and rubs its hands,
and hopes better things for Spain.
That it was a great nation we all
acknowledge, and the title is a true
one. It was not alone a mighty nation; those buried under the Eastern
sands were mighty nations, yet their
workings in this world were as barren
of fruit as the shifting covering that
has hidden them away,without an oasis
to redeem their barrenness. China
might be called a mighlty nation, but
it has walled itself in from the world
by the most narrow-minded and selfish policy, and we have had to fight
our way through good and evil up to
our present standard without a helping hand from it. Russia is a mighty
nation, and we look anxiously to the
development of its vast power, but up
to the present its only effect on the
world has been that of brute strength.
But Spain has been pre-eminently a
great nation; that is, a nation that
has done much for its own and others'
development, in all that can make
peoples sound, intelligent, prosperous,
and happy.
Looking back at its history as far
as we can look back, we find the same
characteristics in the race as we find
to-day; above all, that intense, allabsorbing nationality which has kept
it unmixed and unconquered. Hannibal courted its alliance; the Roman
failed ever to subdue it thoroughly.
Great stubborn resistances to the Empress of the World stand out now and
then in clear relief from that dim
background-awful sieges wonderfully sustained, where the women
play an equal part with the men. We
shall always find these Spanish
women leading the van in the hour
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