SPAIN: Burning at Both Ends

(2 of 2)

The government's troubles were not limbed to Catalonia and the Basque provinces. Far in the south there were riots in Seville and Malaga. As they had in April, a few frightened families hurried to the British safety of Gibraltar.

One of the strongest defenses of the Republican government in Spain is the calmness with which the average Spaniard takes any major political development. Spaniards have a very vivid sense of the past; only a small portion have any acute sense of civic responsibility. They are not excited by their republic, by their riots, because there was a Spanish republic before. (It lasted two years.) There have been revolutions and riots since the memory of man.

Despite church-burning young men, Spain is a deeply religious country. The Jesuits are its strongest religious order. The average Spaniard was not impressed by the threat of expulsion of the Jesuits because he remembered that the Jesuits had been expelled, not once but many times before, and they always came back.

Because the Society of Jesus has always been accused of concerning itself unduly with political matters, it has always attracted more bitter enemies than any other Catholic organization. In 1767 Carlos III drove the order out of Spain, its mother country, and in 1773 he persuaded Pope Clement XIV to suppress it entirely. The order was restored by Pius VII in 1814; the Jesuits were back in Spain in 1815. In 1835 they were kicked out again; they came back in 1852. Out they went with the revolution of 1868; they were back again by 1875 only to be threatened with expulsion once more in 1912.

Head of all the Jesuits is a white-headed Pole, Superior Wlodimir Ledochowski, who lives in Rome in quarters very handy to the Vatican. The Superior's Assistant for Spain, Fernando Guttierrez del Olmo, lives in Rome too. In Spain itself there are five Provincial heads. To Their Reverences last week's news seemed like old times. They knew what to do. While the government tried to make up its mind whether or not to publish the expulsion order, they issued orders to their priests to pack up, prepare to leave Spain. Those who wished to remain were to leave their monasteries, wear civilian clothes, but continue their devotions and offices privately.