Burning at Both Ends

The Tradicionalista Club, Basque royalist society, attempted to hold a meeting last week in Bilbao. Socialists, Communists, Republicans attempted to break down the doors, and the fun began. Civil Guards were called out, four people were killed, three wounded. Mobs wrecked a Catholic newspaper, hurled gasoline on the doors of a Jesuit monastery and attempted to burn it down. Inside the monastery somebody fired on the mob. As another crowd stormed the jail and attempted to lynch the 70 Tradicionalistas who had taken refuge there, 30 artillerymen saved their lives. Police searched the convents and monasteries of Bilbao for hidden arms. Socialists held a public funeral for the victims of the riot, and declared a general strike.

Excited by stories of the gunfire coming from Bilbao's monastery, the government of Premier Manuel Azana drew up a long-contemplated decree abolishing the Jesuit order in Spain, confiscating all its property, estimated at $30,000,000 exclusive of security and trust holdings in the name of individuals, said to amount to $70,000,000. President Alcala Zamora signed the order. Jesuit superiors were expecting it, novices were ordered to pack up and get ready to leave the country, but suddenly the government grew timorous. Days passed, the decree was not published in the official gazette.

In Catalonia at the other end of the Pyrenees, Syndicalists and Communists have been waiting for many weeks for a chance to rise. Bilbao was their signal. In Barcelona a swiftly thrown police dragnet arrested the organizer of a general strike, an Italian named Duriti, and dozens of assistants, seized truckloads of pamphlets and posters. Trouble centered further north, about the manufacturing town of Manresa, where 410 years ago St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, spent a year in a cave preparing his Exercitia Spiritualia.

Miners and textile workers cut all telephone wires and cables out of Manresa, then seized thousands of pounds of dynamite from the Iberian Potash Works. Up and down the valley spread the revolution. Soviet flags went up over Berga, Alto, Gironella, Puigreig, Salient, Cardona. Excited crowds rallied to Leon Trotsky's old slogan: "EUROPE IS BURNING AT BOTH ENDS!!" Rich farmers and mill owners were kidnapped. Peasants were threatened with death.

Back in Madrid Premier Azana swore mightily: "Por Dios! I am sick of this business! I'm going to give them back as good as they send. The anarchist movement started outside Spain but I am going to finish it here. We have rounded up about fifty of their leaders, tonight they are in jail, tomorrow they will be on their way to the colonies to cool their heels."

Five battalions of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, a battery of artillery took the field and Manresa and the other towns were invaded. The "Catalonian Workers' Republic" fell as quickly as it had risen. Most of the inhabitants were heartily glad to see the soldiers. By nightfall troops were playing hide and seek in the mountains with the last of the revolutionists. In Barcelona the government chartered the liner Buenos Aires, loaded it with political prisoners and ordered the captain to sail without any destination until he received further orders by wireless.

The government's troubles were not limbed to Catalonia and the Basque provinces. Far in the south there were riots in Seville and Malaga. As they had in April, a few frightened families hurried to the British safety of Gibraltar.

One of the strongest defenses of the Republican government in Spain is the calmness with which the average Spaniard takes any major political development. Spaniards have a very vivid sense of the past; only a small portion have any acute sense of civic responsibility. They are not excited by their republic, by their riots, because there was a Spanish republic before. (It lasted two years.) There have been revolutions and riots since the memory of man.

Despite church-burning young men, Spain is a deeply religious country. The Jesuits are its strongest religious order. The average Spaniard was not impressed by the threat of expulsion of the Jesuits because he remembered that the Jesuits had been expelled, not once but many times before, and they always came back.

Because the Society of Jesus has always been accused of concerning itself unduly with political matters, it has always attracted more bitter enemies than any other Catholic organization. In 1767 Carlos III drove the order out of Spain, its mother country, and in 1773 he persuaded Pope Clement XIV to suppress it entirely. The order was restored by Pius VII in 1814; the Jesuits were back in Spain in 1815. In 1835 they were kicked out again; they came back in 1852. Out they went with the revolution of 1868; they were back again by 1875 only to be threatened with expulsion once more in 1912.

Head of all the Jesuits is a white-headed Pole, Superior Wlodimir Ledochowski, who lives in Rome in quarters very handy to the Vatican. The Superior's Assistant for Spain, Fernando Guttierrez del Olmo, lives in Rome too. In Spain itself there are five Provincial heads. To Their Reverences last week's news seemed like old times. They knew what to do. While the government tried to make up its mind whether or not to publish the expulsion order, they issued orders to their priests to pack up, prepare to leave Spain. Those who wished to remain were to leave their monasteries, wear civilian clothes, but continue their devotions and offices privately.

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