“In the name of religion outraged, and society menaced with total ruin ... and in the name of our own personal independence, closely bound up with the faith in our souls, let us go to the Catholic meeting to protest against the ignorance of those who desire to separate us from all other civilised nations, tearing faith and Christian morality from the souls of the young, together with all decency, all virtue, and every quality necessary to human dignity.... We unite our voices with those of all Catholics, speaking through the mouths of the most eminent men of science, to condemn this monstrous birth engendered by error and lies.”
The Liberal element in Bilbao is strong, and naturally great indignation was created among the working classes by these insults to their politics and religion. Down to that date there had been no lay school in the city, but now it was announced that one would be opened immediately.
The noteworthy feature of this meeting was a denunciation of the Conservatives by a Carlist speaker, who included them with the Liberals in his fulmination against the “cowardly incendiaries of Barcelona,” urging the Catholics “to have done with patient endurance and enter upon the period of action.” The result of this was that the Conservatives of Bilbao refrained from sending any representative of their party to the banquet given after the meeting to the orators who had spoken at it, thus definitely dissociating themselves from the policy of the Clericalists in their city.
I have made special mention of two of these demonstrations against the lay schools, one because of its magnitude and importance, the other because of its results. To chronicle more of them would be tedious and unnecessary. The campaign against these schools is unceasing: the defence is by no means equal in vigour to the attack, and is limited to articles now and then in the Pais and an occasional meeting in their support. Whether this apparent indifference is due to weakness on the part of those who uphold the lay schools, or to a feeling of strength which can afford to despise the fulminations of opponents, I am unable to say. It is a quarrel, as the satirist says,
“Ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum.”
THE ARMY, PAST AND PRESENT
