SPAIN AND ENGLAND

IN 1911 I had an unforgettable conversation with a distinguished Spanish civil engineer, who before he died was decorated by our Government in recognition of his services to our cause in the Mediterranean during the European war. This was Don Luis Molini, at the time Chief Engineer to the Seville Port and Harbour Works. He had recently returned from Melilla, where his Government had sent him to report on the possibility of converting the Mar Chica into a harbour of refuge for international shipping, often so hard pressed by the dreaded Levanter on those inhospitable North African shores. Spain was then recovering from her Moroccan campaign of 1909, and there seemed to be no new war cloud on the horizon. Yet Señor Molini, in a prophetic mood, talked long of what the next war would be and the part Spain might play in support of England were the two countries allied.

'Your Foreign Office would think us ridiculous,' he said, with that proud humility which has led so many unthinking foreigners to imagine that Spaniards misprise their own country, 'if after our colonial disasters we suggested that we could be useful to England, the queen of colonising countries. Yet a glance at the map shows what Spain could offer. The fate of the next war, be the belligerents who they may, will depend finally on naval action. If Spain had the support of the British Navy and England had the command of our ports and coaling stations in the Mediterranean, on the Atlantic, at the Canaries, and at Fernando Po, their enemies would stand no chance: the combination would be invincible.'

Last August I was visiting my friend and neighbour Don Manuel de Burgos, ex-Minister of Gobernación (Home Office), and one of those brilliant exceptions, so often referred to by King Alfonso, among the self-seeking bureaucracy overthrown by the coup d'état. He told me that he intends to devote his whole time and strength henceforth to the promotion, direct and indirect, of the good understanding between Spain and England, because he regards this as the best bulwark for the future peace of Europe. I quoted what Don Luis Molini had said to me on

the subject, and asked Señor de Burgos if he thought that, had such a situation existed before the war, the European tragedy might have been averted. Quien sabe?' said my friend. And then, raising his head, he added: 'At least there would have been no German submarines in the Mediterranean.'

L'Information, discussing the Spanish royal visit to Rome, said that, thanks to her neutrality in the war, Spain has lost the power to intervene in European affairs, so Italy now takes her by the hand to lead her again into the European concert, and Spain in return consents to support a Mediterranean policy convenient to Italian interests and projects. Other French papers spoke plainly of the suspicion that the Spanish-Italian approximation is directly aimed against French interests in the Mediterranean, and even a part of the English Press allowed a certain fear to appear between the lines that Britain's highway to the East might be interfered with by any redistribution of naval strength in the Mediterranean.

It is to be presumed that these unfortunate expressions of distrust of Spain's good faith are merely newspaper propaganda made at the dictates of political influences which set more store on their private ends than on the peace of Europe. The Quai d'Orsay, as well as our own Foreign Office, must know very well that there is no foundation for such distrust, the manifestation of which may well make those authorities murmur : Save me from my friends!' Spain has sufficient status, pace L'Information, to take long views of what suits her own foreign policy without needing any other Power to lead her by the hand; while if we study her geographical situation together with her commercial statistics, it becomes abundantly clear that neither France nor England need be afraid that she wishes to estrange herself from her nearest neighbours and best clients. Her attitude to England, however, appeals more closely to me than does her feeling for France or Italy, for I am an Englishwoman who has spent half a lifetime here and have learnt to know and love Spain second only to my own country. I propose, therefore, to limit myself in this article to the consideration of her friendship for England, leaving other aspects of her foreign policy to writers more competent than I to deal with them.

When Don Luis Molini sketched to me the advantages of a close approximation between Spain and England, political intrigue reigned supreme, and, as we afterwards discovered, German preparation for the war was already well advanced here. The primary object of my interview with Don Luis was to obtain information for The Times about the world communication with Seville which will develop when the Tablada Canal-then just begun-is opened to large ocean-going steamers, for this inland

port is at present closed to any but moderate-sized vessels on account of the sudden bends and shallows in the upper reaches of the Guadalquivir. Señor Molini said I was the first journalist, Spanish or foreign, to approach him on that ground. All the rest had come with their own political fish to fry. From 1914 the canal works hung fire to an extent heart-rending to the engineers and shareholders and the Seville public in general. This was because it did not suit certain elements, hostile alike to England and Spain, that Seville, a port particularly favoured by British shipping on account of the number of British and AngloSpanish enterprises established in the region, should rise to eminence in international traffic by means of this canal. These elements had long fixed on Barcelona as the eventual depôt for vast trading operations in the Mediterranean, and they had no idea of permitting Seville, eighty kilometres inland on the MadridZaragoza-Alicante trunk line and three days nearer to the Western countries, to become, as she certainly will in due time, a Spanish Liverpool for England, the United States, and Spanish South America.

Our Foreign Office may be very certain that Seville would always oppose any policy tending to diminish commerce with our country. The Sevillians have not forgotten how the paralysis of British shipping during the war reduced thousands of their wharfside population to starvation. When the submarine campaign was at its height and Spanish as well as Allied ships were daily being torpedoed, this busy port was often literally empty, and phthisis, anæmia, and fever, due to hunger and misery, were producing a generation of hopelessly invalided children. The Armistice came in time to save many lives on the banks of the Guadalquivir, as in all the other Spanish ports, but the former prosperity has not returned, and it is only too well recognised by the dock labourers how much their well-being depends on the full resumption of traffic with England.

Another port of great importance to our international trade is suffering at least as much as Seville from the war and the stagnation of business due to existing conditions in Germany. This is Huelva, on the estuary of the Odiel, several miles above its embouchure into the Atlantic.

It does not seem to have been realised at home how for a prolonged period in the war we and our Allies depended on the supplies of copper for munitions from the Rio Tinto and Tharsis mines, which ship all their ore from this modest, but down to 1914 rapidly extending, little town of 20,000 inhabitants. The estuary of the Odiel even in its present condition, hardly touched by the hand of man, forms a magnificent, almost landlocked harbour where vessels of all sizes can find anchorage. As I

write comes the announcement that ten of our war craft, including a cruiser, are to visit Huelva next month, and before the war broke out the traffic, especially with England and Germany, was steadily increasing. Thus it happened that several large German ships were anchored here from August 1914 to the end of the war, and it is known that German submarines were in touch with them throughout. It was impossible for the port authorities to prevent this, for the estuary below the harbour works, as they now are, is one great expanse of unreclaimed marsh land, and it seemed as if it would have been so easy for the enemy vessels to engineer the destruction of the Rio Tinto and Tharsis private piers that some of my fellow-countrymen, who believed that Spanish neutrality was pro-German throughout, can even now hardly understand why those constructions, vital to our success, were not blown up at an early stage of the war. It was because Spanish vigilance, exercised on our behalf, so effectually supported that of the British companies that no enemy agent could approach near enough to use a bomb.

Later we had further evidence of Spain's regard for British interests and British susceptibilities in this district. It was reported that there was a project to establish a Zeppelin depôt as the headquarters of a direct line to Buenos Aires on a certain headland at Palos de la Frontera, commanding the estuaries both of the Rio Tinto and Odiel. This headland is a strategic position which would lay our mineral traffic here absolutely at the mercy of a hostile air force radiating from it. My authority for the story was no less an authority than the owner of the soil, who sent me a private leaflet relating to it. So I wrote to ask Señor de Burgos what was being done, for his estate lies near Palos, and I knew I could implicitly rely on whatever he told me. His reply was that he was not aware that such a scheme had been seriously contemplated by the German company, but, be that as it might, the Spanish Government would never consent to anything which might conceivably disturb British friendship with Spain in the future.

All this occurred under the old Administration. Now let us see how Seville and Huelva, ports so closely linked up with British interests, are faring under the Military Directorate of which General Primo de Rivera, Marques de Estella, is the President.

I have already indicated how the Tablada Canal works were hampered by political hostility down to the fateful 13th of last September, which assuredly should be a red-letter day in future Spanish and Anglo-Spanish calendars. Under the new régime Seville was the first to receive attention among numerous applicants for Royal Decrees relating to port and harbour improvements, and the canal works are already in full swing again under

the chief engineer who succeeded Señor Molini, Don Jose DelgadoBrackenbury, who, as his name indicates, is English on the mother's side. There is now no docking of the Government grants, hitherto so difficult to obtain payment of, for the construction of the fine new waterway, and it is to be opened in 1927, when the IberoAmerican Exhibition is to take place in the magnificent buildings being erected for the purpose along the Paseo of Las Delicias, the Hyde Park of Seville. As for Huelva, its Port and Harbour Board had been imploring successive Governments for at least twelve years past to authorise the extensive new wharves which became continually more necessary to allow of the natural expansion of the provincial trade, for Huelva is the port of embarkation not only for the many mines lying round, but also for the rich agricultural district at the south-west of Estremadura, fed by the Huelva-Zafra Railway, which belongs to an English company. But all efforts were fruitless; it seemed that she was destined to be the Cinderella of Spanish ports to the end. Suddenly all is changed the construction of the new wharves has been authorised by a Royal Decree, and hard on the heels of this notice, which has sent the whole province into the seventh heaven, comes the announcement that the South American republics have organised calls by a series of war vessels, of which one is to come in each month of the year to offer the homage of the countries colonised by Spain at the shrine of the race, La Rabida and the port of Palos, whence Columbus sailed to discover the New World. The call of the blood manifests itself more insistently every year, as was practically proved during the last Moroccan campaign, when Spanish America sent millions of pesetas for the Spanish Red Cross besides supplying contingents of volunteers for the front. But never has the way been made quite so smooth for acts of filial devotion to the mother-country of the Spanishspeaking peoples as now under the Military Directorate.

The Zeppelin threat to British interests here has vanished. Instead of being run with capital supplied from Berlin, as was stated would be the case at the time of the Palos canard, both the capital and direction of the great direct airship line to Buenos Aires are Spanish and Spanish South-American, and Captain Hererra, the engineer responsible for the project, has spent a considerable time in England in friendly consultation with our own air experts, while waiting for the previous Governments to decide on the emplacement and other details of the scheme. Long enough he waited under the old Administration, and probably would be waiting still but for the change that has come over Spain. Now the Royal Decree is signed, and work will shortly be begun, not on the estuary of the Odiel or Rio Tinto, but in the much more suitable valley of the Guadalquivir, near Seville,