Portugal of the Portuguese

by Aubrey F. G. Bell

Processions.

These and other real grievances as well as many petty restrictions, such as the prohibition of processions, of services and ringing of bells between sunrise and sunset, mark a narrow spirit which has made it impossible for the whole of the North of Portugal to sympathise with the Republic. Dr. Costa has been the Royalists’ great asset. “Oh, but there is no such prohibition,” say the Democrats; “the law does not forbid processions.” It contents itself with rendering them impossible. Clause 57 runs: “Ceremonies, processions, and other external manifestations of religion will only be permitted where and in so far as they are an inveterate custom of the majority of the citizens of a district, and must be immediately and definitely forbidden in places where the faithful or other persons without a protest on their part make the processions an occasion for provoking tumults and disturbances of public order.” Thus the procedure is simple. You have only to throw a stone at a priest or other person in a procession. If the faithful protest there is a tumult, if they fail to protest there has been a disturbance of public order. The procession is henceforth forbidden. Yet to deprive the people of these simple pleasures is a kind of sacrilege. In the remote villages they have few others. Those who know to what an extent in Latin countries these ceremonies partake of a secular as well as a religious character realise the sadness which descends upon a village when docked of its processions. They are the villager’s theatre as well as his prayer book. The men, it is true, can substitute the tavern, and the women do not count. Let them stay in their black kitchens, often as dirty and airless as the taverns, and mind their pots and their pans.

A Religious Revival.

That the Republic could be so blind to its own interests as to adopt these Jacobin courses would be strange indeed, were it not that evidently the interests of a party had been preferred to those of the Republic. Recently (i.e., before 14th May, 1915) a far more moderate attitude and methods more conciliatory have been adopted, but in the question of religion fresh legislation, as well as a new spirit, will be required. All men of sense, from the President, Dr. Arriaga, downwards, recognise that the Law of Separation will have to be altered in a more moderate direction. In this connection A Republica (6th March, 1914) used the following words, in connection with the Amnesty of 1914: “To grant an amnesty to priests who have acted illegally because their religious conscience bade them oppose certain clauses in the Law of Separation is merely to say to these priests, ‘You leave prison to-day in order to come back to it to-morrow.’” When Dr. Affonso Costa became Prime Minister in 1913 revision of this law was promised, but during his year of office it was not revised. Under his successor, Dr. Bernardino Machado, discussion of the Law began, but still it was not revised. Its revision would, however, be assured, were it realised that the Republic by violent anti-clericalism is defeating its own objects. For—not to mention the wholesome discipline of the Roman Catholic Church and its democratic tendency—such anti-clericalism is in danger of driving moderate Roman Catholics into something like fanaticism and of creating a religious revival.

Illiterates.

The census of 1911 gives the number of illiterates in Portugal as 75·1 per cent. of the entire population (men, 68·4 per cent.; women, 81·2), and this at least is not the fault of the priests, since religion was taken out of their hands in 1834. This extraordinary figure of 75·1 includes small children; excluding children under seven the figures are 69·7 (men, 60·8; women, 77·4). The progress has been slow in the last twenty years. In 1890 the total percentage of illiterates was 79·2 per cent. (1,762,842 men and 2,238,115 women). In 1900 it was 78·6 (1,855,091 men and 2,406,245 women). In 1911 the number of men who cannot read or write was 1,936,131, and of women 2,541,947; or, excluding children under seven, 1,370,571 men, 1,989,906 women. The Republic was ushered in with pompous phrases concerning education. In a few years there were to be no more illiterates, in a few years there was to be a school to every two kilomètres throughout the country. But there has been danger of more attention being given to the show than to the substance of reform, and of education becoming more and more a whited sepulchre. Yet apart from mistakes made and hollow promises put forward for foreign consumption, but quite meaningless in Portugal, one must admit that the Republicans realise the importance of education and have a sincere desire to diminish the number of illiterates (as though that in itself were a great gain!), and may hope that their efforts in the matter of education will be more successful in future than they have been in the past. The institution of night schools and itinerant masters is no doubt a step in the right direction.

Primary Schools.

The method adopted has been to draw up ideally excellent decrees, and the hope is presumably that they will gradually work down into touch with the facts of Portuguese life. Meanwhile they tend to remain mere pieces of paper. The decree of 29th March, 1911, reforming primary education is little more. Primary education was transferred from the control of the State to that of the local authorities, which tend to neglect it altogether. The failure of the municipios to pay the schoolmasters had been already manifest when primary instruction was entrusted to them in 1881, and they were empowered to levy a special tax for the purpose. The law of 1911 made education compulsory and neutral in the matter of religion. It had been compulsory since 1878, with the results already described. The Republicans boast that they have created a large number of schools, over 900 primary schools in three years, but in reality it would have been better to see to an improvement in the condition of the 6,000 existing schools, and to the payment of the schoolmasters’ salaries. The foundation of a school in Portugal is a very simple affair, almost as simple as the issuing of a decree. It consists in fixing on a room or a house in a village which might be used for that purpose and—there the matter generally ends. Neither books nor furniture nor masters are provided, and that not from any carelessness or indifference but because there is no money to pay for them. Thus, Snr. Antonio Macieira, Minister for Foreign Affairs in Dr. Costa’s Government, declared in a speech made on 28th March, 1913, that to replace the 115 schools of the expelled religious congregations the Republic had created 991 new schools. Of these 991, he continued blandly to state, 556 were non-existent. The Monarchy had not neglected education, even though it cannot claim to have founded schools at the rate of half-a-dozen a week. In 1772 the number of primary schools was 526, and rose to 720 fifty years later. Between 1839 and 1868 new schools were created to the number of 1,422, and in the next thirteen years 965, so that in 1881 the total stood at 4,472, with some 200,000 school-children.[30] In 1900 the schools were 4,520; at the end of 1906 there were 5,226, or about one per thousand inhabitants. The pity was that they were for the most part in hired unhealthy buildings, and that the ill-paid or unpaid schoolmasters taught as badly as they were paid. Other decrees concerning education were more practical, as that of 1905 insisting on physical drill in the schools, or that of 1907 assigning a hundred contos a year to send students abroad. As to the condition of the school-buildings, even in Lisbon, says a Republican paper (A Republica, 17th April, 1914), “there are State schools in small flats in the midst of the deafening noise of the street, without light, without air, without hygiene, without anything to attract the miserable children who attend them.”

Minister of Education.

The Republic has founded a Department of Public Instruction with a new Minister and all the subordinate officials. Dr. Theophilo Braga at the time gave it as his opinion that it would only serve to provide posts for half-a-dozen political friends of the Government—anichar meia duzia de amigos politicos. The department existed in 1870 and again in 1890. In both cases it proved expensive and unsatisfactory, and was chiefly notable for giving further scope to empregomania and bureaucracy, more than 600 candidates applying for posts in 1890.[31] Snr. Machado notes the despesas de installação of the new department and its esperança a toda a gente, i.e., it spread hope far and wide not of an improvement in education but of a new chance of becoming a Government official.[32] It is true that in the past sums contributed by local administrative bodies to the State for the purpose of education, sent by them to the Department of the Interior which embraced that of Education, were not infrequently diverted to the more pressing needs of the Government and spent on something quite unconnected with education. In future, at least, they will be spent on maintaining the new Department of Education.