For fully a year before the fall of the Maura Ministry anecdotes of the charity and generosity shown by the King, the Queen, and the Royal Family were growing rarer in the papers which had formerly supplied these little pieces of information to the many people who like thus to be brought into contact with the home life of their rulers. The omission was introduced so gradually that at first no one noticed it. But when soldiers returning from the war talked of gifts sent out by the Queen, and other evidences of active sympathy shown by the Royal Family, it was realised that no steps had been taken to make these things known to the public at home. The King’s gift of thirty thousand solar topees out of his private purse was one instance. The Queen’s present of thousands of warm vests to wear under the uniform was another. Queen Maria-Cristina, and the Infanta Maria Teresa (who by her gentleness and unassuming manner has won for herself an affectionate nickname among the poor of Madrid), as well as the Infantas Doña Isabel, Doña Paz (Princess Louis of Bavaria) and Doña Eulalia, the King’s aunts, all devoted themselves during the war to working with their own hands for the soldiers, besides giving generously to the Queen’s fund, but not a word of this appeared in any of the papers. I heard something of their work from private sources: the public heard nothing.
It may be suggested that the ladies of the Royal Family, who are instinct with patriotism and love of their fellow-countrymen, may have preferred that their charities should pass unpraised by the nation. But even were that so, one would expect that the expenditure of some £11,000 out of the King’s private purse would have been reported far and wide, especially since it had been impossible to conceal that the troops were suffering severely from want of proper headgear in the tropical summer of North Africa. But beyond the bare announcement that the King had ordered this immense number of sun-helmets to be procured for the troops in urgent haste, from abroad, because they could not be purchased at home, no comment was made on an act of truly royal generosity. A Liberal paper said that information on the subject was held back by ministerial instructions “until a suitable time for publication arrived,” but beyond the bare fact of the number given and the price said to have been paid, no further details were ever published. The Conservative organs confined themselves to commenting unfavourably on the size, shape, and colour of the new headgear, and one of their correspondents turned the whole affair into ridicule, describing the soldiers in the new helmets as “having the appearance of walking mushrooms, which destroyed all that had hitherto been picturesque in the campaign.” But when the illustrated papers brought out one picture after another in which the men were seen wearing these solar topees, and the soldiers began to write home to their families that “the King’s helmets” not only protected them from the sun by day, but kept their heads dry and warm while sleeping on the damp ground by night, the people scored another black mark against Señor Maura, crediting him with a deliberate intention to conceal evidences of the King’s care for the soldiers from the people at home.
The vests sent out by the Queen were never mentioned at all by the Press. Yet my informant, a returned soldier, told me they must have numbered thousands, for, said he, “there seemed to be enough for all of us; at any rate, all I knew had them.”
It was thanks to these, he said, that there were not many more fever patients when the torrential rains of October fell on an Army destitute of winter clothing and even of sufficient sleeping accommodation, so that for nights at a stretch “men lay on soaked mattresses or blankets only, sunk in a bed of mud.” “The Queen’s vests kept us warm in the middle, and that helped us to bear the wet and cold,” he said.
Why was the Queen’s gift, equally with the King’s, treated with such discourteous silence under the Press censorship of the Clericalist Ministry? It was not for want of space in the papers, nor for want of goodwill on the part of the editors, for full particulars were given of innumerable generous offerings by commercial houses and private individuals, and column after column was daily filled with names of subscribers to the War Fund, which was designated “The Patriotic Fund presided over by H.M. the Queen,” or “The Patriotic Fund under the Committee of Ladies,” according to the political bias of the paper publishing the lists.
If anything had been wanting to arouse national enthusiasm for the Queen, her prompt action in initiating this fund would have provided it. To English people it seems natural that the Queen should undertake the work, for the Queen of England has been for many a long day regarded as the head and front of charity organised on behalf of the nation. But Spanish women, accustomed for centuries to bow to the dictates of the Church, had come to believe that what the Church looked on coldly could not be carried out at all, and least of all by a woman. The Church, with certain exceptions, stood aloof from the Queen’s Fund on the pretext that men of peace might not aid in any matter connected with war. The nation translated this into a protest on the part of the Ultramontanes against a national work of charity headed by a Queen who is not popular with the priesthood. And the response to the Queen’s appeal for the sick and wounded is not only a testimony of the love of the nation for the Army, but also evidence of its confidence in the Monarchy as opposed to the Ultramontanes.
A pretty incident in regard to another royal gift made on the first visit of the young King and Queen to a certain large provincial town may be worth relating. The usual largesse of so many thousand pesetas to the municipality, for the poor, was announced in the newspapers when they left. But by chance I heard how much farther their unannounced charity had extended. They had given a considerable sum to a convent in each district of the city to buy bread for the poor, and of this no notice was taken by the papers. I heard of it from a journeyman painter, whose sick wife had received two loaves.
“Her aunt is portress at the Convent of ——, so she was able to get her share. Everybody in our parish was very pleased. The only thing we should have liked better would be to receive the bread from the King’s and Queen’s own hands, so that we might have thanked them as they deserve. But such a crowd of people would have gone to the palace that the Queen would have got very tired, which was no doubt the reason why they did not give us the bread themselves.”
Strangely enough, the Queen’s Protestant upbringing, which prejudices the Ultramontanes so strongly against her, has just the opposite effect upon the people. They look upon her as being, like themselves, a victim of clericalist injustice, and so deep-rooted is the conviction that whatever the Jesuits object to must be good for the people, that the knowledge of their oppositions to the marriage would have been sufficient in itself to secure her a welcome from the proletariat.
But her hold upon the masses goes deeper than this. The peasants appreciate, far more than many of the upper classes seem to do, the vital importance to the nation of a settled Dynasty and Constitution. They know that for many years the Monarchy hung on a thread, while the frail life of a little child was all that preserved Spain from the chaos that another conflict between Republicans, Carlists, and Monarchists would have produced. Therefore when King Alfonso grew up, married, and became the father of an heir to the throne, the rejoicing of the nation was heartfelt and sincere. The discussions which arose in 1905 on the death of the poor young Infanta Mercedes, the King’s eldest sister, as to whether her son was or was not entitled to be Prince of Asturias in the absence of a direct heir, had aroused all serious-minded Spaniards to the ever-present dangers that would take shape in action should King Alfonso die unmarried or childless. So that when the birth of the little Prince of Asturias—the first son born to a reigning King of Spain for over a century—was speedily followed by that of a second, the poor, always the worst sufferers from civil discord and changes of Government, learnt to look upon the young Queen who has given these hostages for peace to the nation, with a feeling compounded of admiration and affection. And each fresh child that comes to fill the royal nurseries seem a fresh bulwark to the State in the eyes of the working classes, who remember how their own flesh and blood were thrown to the dogs of war time after time by opposing forces during the century when Spain had either no King or no Crown Prince.