A CONSCRIPT.
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CHAPTER X
THE ARMY, PAST AND PRESENT
It is allowed that great abuses were committed by those in power during the long war in Cuba, which ended with the struggle in the United States and the final expulsion of Spain from the last of her American colonies, and it is common knowledge that the munitions, provisions, and all the supplies of the Army fell lamentably short of what was required. It may be imagined, therefore, that the survivors of these long years of warfare brought back stories of experiences little calculated to inspire their friends with confidence in the governing classes, who were responsible for such shortcomings. Fully to appreciate the difference between the sentiment of the Army to-day and what it was so late as 1901, when the defeated troops from the lost colonies came home with their tale of suffering, it is necessary to show what convictions have had to be changed and what prejudices overcome by Don Alfonso before he could win the place which he now holds in the affections of his soldiers.
I will only deal with the rank and file, whose loyalty is even of more importance to the nation than that of the officers. My own impression is that, after making all due allowance for differences in politics and traditions, the great majority of the Spanish officers to-day are staunch supporters of the Monarchy and the Constitution they have sworn to uphold. But beyond putting on record my private opinion, formed on the utterances of officers of all arms, I do not propose to deal with this side of the question.
It was natural that reminiscences of the Cuban and American Wars should be continually brought forward during the operations in Morocco, and that the popular expectation of the treatment the troops would there receive should be based on what took place in Cuba; and it was inevitable that the unlettered mass of the community, agitated as they were in the early days of the war by rumours of wholesale massacre and tales of thousands of dead and wounded, should have imagined that their friends and relatives were once more being sacrificed without mercy on the altar of political corruption. Not long ago I heard the following conversation among a party of working people who were entertaining a soldier at a tavern on the eve of his departure for Melilla.
“Poor fellow!” said a stout elderly matron, with a tear in her eye. “So young and so good-looking, to be killed by the Moors!”
“Don’t distress yourself, Señora,” said the lad, a slim, active young fellow. “I’m going to make mincemeat of at least eight before they kill me, and I shall be in no greater danger there than up at the mines of ——, where I was knocked to pieces by a landslide. Three months I’ve been in hospital, and it’s just like my luck to be called out to Melilla the moment I get out. I’m not afraid. If they kill me it can’t hurt more than that landslide did.”
“He’ll sing a different song when he gets out there,” remarked an elderly man gloomily. “I know how the soldiers are treated—not enough to eat, and that bad, no clothes, no beds, and no cartridges to put into their rifles when they go into action. I saw it with my own eyes in Cuba.”