discipline that I felt proud to be among them. I was sorry and ashamed to see those sea-sick boys ordered into action, but now I am glad to remember what I saw my compatriots do that day.”
The naval officer spoke of an incident in the early days of the war, before the foreign correspondents had reached the scene of action. But for some time the censors, both at the front and in Madrid, had made it impossible for the truth about the campaign to be told; and England, at any rate, was for several weeks allowed to remain under the impression that the Spanish rank and file were a cowardly lot, driven into action at the point of their officers’ swords. That impression was corrected as time went on, and it is, I believe, now generally admitted that the Spanish troops do not lack courage.
In Spain the conscripts join at the age of eighteen, and serve three years with the colours, when they are drafted into the first reserve. But those who can afford it may buy exemption from service for 1,500 pesetas (say £60), and from this source the Government makes an income estimated in the Budget for 1909 at pesetas 12,800,000 (about £512,000). Naturally the well-to-do always buy themselves out, as do also a certain number of the more prosperous of the working classes in the industrial towns. Señor Maura’s Government, not long before they went out, suddenly made an order calling on all those who had already bought their exemption to pay another 500 pesetas or join the colours at once, a proceeding which, differing as it does in no respect from highway robbery, naturally caused a good deal of indignation. No one likes to be called on to pay a second time over for what he has already bought; and in the case of the workmen, who generally secure themselves against service by means of one of the numerous insurance companies formed ad hoc, the premiums they had already paid were of course thrown away, and few indeed of them could produce 500 pesetas at a moment’s notice.
A scheme is on foot for doing away with the present unjust system, and making service compulsory on all alike. It provides for six months’ instead of three years’ service with the colours, the term to be extended, in the case of the illiterate, until they can read and write.
This scheme obtained from the first the support of the whole Liberal, Radical, and Republican Press, but the opposition of the Clericalists must always be counted on in Spain, and the proposals most obviously beneficial to the nation are usually those which meet with the strongest opposition. Another popular clause in the scheme affects the officers, whose pay is small. At present the officers live where they can: they have no mess, and their quarters in barracks are so much the reverse of luxurious that a lieutenant in a smart regiment apologised for not asking me to visit him there, as he, knowing our English customs, would have liked to do, because, said he, “it is not fit for an Englishman to see.”
It is now proposed, in order to reduce the cost of living in the Army, that quarters and a mess shall be provided for the officers in barracks. Most Spanish officers have to live on their pay, and even a captain in the cavalry only gets about £140 a year. On the other hand, their social expenses are very small, subscription dances, dinners, sports, and the numerous calls on the purse of a British officer being unknown in Spain.