Defenders of Democracy Part 24

Henrique Lopes De Mendonca

of the Academy of Science of Lisbon, speaking at Lisbon in May, 1917.

Translation by L. E. Elliott.

Portugal

Lisbon, 18th August, 1917

I have received your letter of August 2nd, in which you ask me, as representing Portugal, to send a message to the American people to be printed in the book "Defenders of Democracy," and state that a distinguished Portuguese official has been good enough to mention my name to you as that of "an authoritative writer on Portuguese affairs."

I am sensible of the honor done me, but not being a citizen of Portugal, I dare not presume to speak for that country.

A foreigner however, with friends in both the camps in which Portuguese society is divided, may perhaps be able to state some facts unknown to the American public and of interest at the present time.

And first let me remark that the entry of America into the war, which is a pledge of victory for the Allies, has been a surprise and a relief to the Portuguese, who are by nature pessimists. We Anglo-Saxons are considered to be mainly guided in our conduct by material considerations--did not Napoleon call the English "a nation of shopkeepers"?--and the saying "Time is money" is frequently quoted against us; hence hardly any Portuguese imagined that America would abandon the neutrality which seemed commercially profitable, and even after the decision had been taken, few though that the United States were capable of raising a large army and of transporting it overseas.

Now that America and Portugal are fighting side by side, in a common cause, it is well that they should understand one another.

For all their differences of race, religion and language, their ideas are similar. The Portuguese being kindly, easy-going folk, hate militarism and the reign of brute force which is identified with German "Kultur." As they prize their independence and know their weakness, both inclination and necessity lead them to the side of the powers who may be supposed to favor the continuance of their separate existence and the retention by them of their colonies; as they have a keen sense of justice, and respect their engagements, they feel and have shown their sympathy with violated and outraged Belgium and with the other victims of German aggression.

Why then, it may be asked, did they not support whole-heartedly the Government of the Republic when it determined to take part in the war? The answer is simple.

They felt that their first duty was to protect their colonies, threatened by the enemy, and that in a war where the combatants are counted by millions, the small contingent that Portugal could furnish would be of little weight on the battlefields of Europe.

Unless treaty obligations and considerations of honor forced them to be belligerents, they considered that as Portugal was poor and had relatively to population almost the heaviest public debt of any European Country, they ought to remain neutral--that this view was mistaken is daily becoming clearer to them, thanks in part to the propaganda of the Catholic paper "Ordem" and the official Monarchist journal "Diario Nacional," which have insisted as strongly as the Republican press on the necessity of Portuguese partic.i.p.ation in the war, in accord with her ancient traditions. He who risks nothing, gains nothing. By her present heavy sacrifices for a great ideal, Portugal wins a fresh t.i.tle to universal consideration, and by helping to vanquish Germany she defends her oversea patrimony, which the Germans proposed to annex.

I have said that the ideas of the United States and Portugal are similar. But the pressing needs of Portugal are a competent administration, public order and social discipline, which Germany possesses to a remarkable degree, and admiration of these has laid Portuguese Conservatives open to the charge of being pro-German.

Many of them judge from experience that the desiderata I refer to cannot be secured in a democracy, while a few of them have gone so far as to desire a German triumph, because they foolishly thought that the Kaiser would restore the monarchy. None of them, I think, sympathize with German methods; but they have suffered from a century of revolutions, dating from 1820, and attribute these disasters to the anti-Christian ideas of the French Revolution. In America that great movement had beneficent results, as I understand, which only shows that one man's drink is another's poison.

Divergent ideals and other considerations led Portuguese Conservatives to throw their influence into the scale in favor of neutrality, but now that their country is at war they have accepted the fact and can be trusted to do their duty. At the front political and other differences are forgotten and the soldiers, whatever their creed, are honoring the warlike traditions of their race and reminding us of the days when Wellington spoke of Portuguese troops as the "fighting-c.o.c.ks" of his army.

By organizing with great efforts and sending a properly trained and equipped expeditionary force to France, the Government of the Republic has deserved well of the country and the Allies, and I believe that it has unconsciously been the agent of Divine Providence.

The men, when they return will bring with them a firmer religious faith, the foundation of national well-being, and a higher standard of conduct than prevails here at present; they may well prove the regenerators of a land which all who know it learn to love, a land, the past achievements of whose sons in the cause of Christianity and civilization are inscribed on the ample page of history. Portugal which produced so many saints and heroes, which founded the sea road to India and discovered and colonized Brazil, cannot be allowed longer to vegetate, for this in the case of a country means to die.

[signed] Edgar Prestage

Roumania

An Interpretation

A Serbian politician, conversing with a traveler from Western Europe, mentioned the words "a nice national balance;" and when the other, bored to death with the everlasting wrangle of the turbulent Balkans, tried to lead the conversation to Shakespeare and the Musical Gla.s.ses, away from Macedonia and Albania and "komitadjis"

and Kotzo-Vlachs, the Serbian remarked with a laugh that the nice national balance of which he was speaking was not political, but economic and social.

"You see," he said, "we Serbians are born peasants, born agriculturists, men of the glebe and the plow. The Roumanian, on the other hand, is a born financier. Gold comes to his hand like fish to bait.

He comes to Serbia to make money--and he makes it."

"But," said the Western European, "isn't that rather hard on the Serbian?"

"No! Not a bit! For it is the young Serbian who marries the Roumanian's daughter, and the young Serbian girl who marries the Roumanian's son. Thus the Serbian money, earned by the Roumanian, is still kept in the country. You know," he added musingly, "the Roumanians are a singularly handsome, a singularly engaging people.

I myself married a Roumanian."

"A rich Roumanian's daughter, I suppose?"

"Heavens, no! A poor girl."

And he added with superb lack of logic:

"Who wouldn't marry a Roumanian--be she rich--OR poor!"

WHO WOULDN'T MARRY A ROUMANIAN?

The secret of the Balkans is contained in that simple rhetoric question.

For, clear away from the days when the Slavs made their first appearance in Southern Europe and, crossing the Danube, came to settle on the great, green, rolling plain between the river and the jagged frowning Balkan Mountains, the proceeded southwards and formed colonies among the Thraco-Illyrians, the Roumanians, and the Greeks, to the days of Michael the Brave who drove the Turks to the spiked gates of Adrianople and freed half the peninsula for a span of years; from the days when gallant King Mirtsched went down to glorious defeat amongst the Osmanli yataghans to the final day when the Russian Slav liberated the Roumanian Latin from the Turkish yoke, the Roumanian has held high the torch of civilization and culture.

Latin civilization!

Latin culture!

Latin ideals!

Straight through, he has been the Western leaven in an Eastern land.

Geographically, the Fates were unkind to him.

For he stood in the path of the most gigantic racial movements of the world. His land was the scene of savage racial struggles.

His rivers ran red with the blood of Hun and Slav, of Greek and Albanian, of Osmanli and Seljuk. His fields and pastures became the dumping-ground of residual shreds of a dozen and one nations surviving from great defeats or Pyrrhic victories and nursing irreconcilable mutual racial hatreds.

But the old Latin spirit proved stronger than Fate, stronger than numbers, stronger than brute force. It proved strong enough to a.s.similate the foreign barbarians, instead of becoming a.s.similated by them. It was strong enough to wipe out every trace of Asian and Slavic taint. It was strong enough to keep intact the Latin idea against the steely shock of Asian hordes, the immense, crus.h.i.+ng weight of Slave fatalism, the subtleties of Greek influence.

The Roumanian is a Roman.

His cultural ideal was, and is, of the West, of Rome of France--AND of Himself; and he has kept it inviolate through military and political disaster, through slavery itself.

Roumania has remained a window of Europe looking toward Asia as surely and as steadily as Petrograd was a window of Asia looking toward Europe.