The Spanish Nations and Their Increasing Interest To Us

In statistics furnished by the New York "World" Almanac the number speaking German throughout the world is given as 13o,ooo,ooo. This is quite incorrect; the number is about 95,000,000, unless perchance all those who have a smattering of German, in whatever country they may be, are included. In the Spanishspeaking world the aggregate population is about 83,000,000, made up of 20,000,000 in -Spain, 31,400,000 in South America and the West Indies, and, 8, 73 5, 000 in the Philippines.

There are no two European languages, possibly, so closely resembling one another as Spanish and Portuguese; and those speaking Portuguese number 39,000,000, additional, i.e., 15,000,000 in Portugal and its colonies, and 24,000,000 in Brazil.

Of all those speaking European languages, 27 percent speak English; 17 percent speak Russian; 16 percent speak German; 13 1/2 percent speak Spanish; 12 percent speak French.

You will see that Spanish occupies a very important place. If we include the very closely allied Portuguese language, Spanish-Portuguese stands next to English.

When we consider the area of Spanish-speaking countries, they increase in consequence; for their total area is over 5,000,000 square miles; while the area of Portugal and its colonies with Brazil is over 4,000,000 square miles. And we must not forget that area is intimately associated with possibilities of expansion and resources, and therefore with future greatness. How clearly we recognize this in Canada. The area of the British Empire is over 13,000,000 square miles; that of the Russian Empire about 9,000,000; France and its colonies about 4,000,000; Germany, 208,780 and German colonies when she had them, 1,134,000; Austria, 134,634; Hungary, 125,400.

It is not necessary for me here to refer to the importance of South American trade.

Spanish world with Portugal, exports to Britain, $440000,000; Imports from Britain, $254,000,000. Germany exports to Britain, $235,000,000; Imports from Britain, $180,000,000.

Recently the importance of the Spanish language has received signal recognition.

In England, Spanish chairs have lately been founded in the Universities of Leeds and London. (It is rather amusing to learn that the German prisoners on the Isle of Man are studying Spanish.)

In the United States, however, the drift to Spanish is singularly marked. Of course English and Spanish are the languages of the Western hemisphere; and no doubt Spanish is taken up in the United States largely from utilitarian and trading reasons. It has recently been given a more conspicuous place and is receiving more attention in American Educational Institutions; especially remarkable is the attention given it in secondary schools in the Union, corresponding to our High Schools and Collegiate Institutes; still more remarkable is the fact that in these schools in some places it is crowding out German.

Let us descend to details. In the high schools of Cambridge, Mass., where the population is 110,000, there are Boo pupils taking Spanish.

The number of students taking Spanish in the University of Chicago has increased threefold in eighteen months.

The attendance in Spanish at the University of Michigan has increased as follows: in 1914 it was 110; in 1915, 225; in 1916, 450; i.e., doubling each year.

The Central High School, Detroit, has 236 pupils in Spanish with more asking for instruction; and those taking German is decreasing.

In the De Witt Clinton High School, New York City, there are 1,234 pupils taking Spanish out of an attendance of 5,000; and the attendance in German is decreasing.

In the Commercial High School of Brooklyn there are 2,000 in Spanish; and in the High School of Commerce of Manhattan about 1,700, and these facts are only illustrative of what is going on all over the United States.

We must also remember that Spanish is a comparatively easy language, and that German is difficult. Under equally favourable conditions English or Spanish would always drive German out. I believe that in two or three generations the large German colony in Brazil will find itself speaking Spanish or Portuguese; though recently that colony has tried to draw other Germans to it on the ground that they would not be called upon to learn a new language, as they would have to do if they emigrated to the United States.

Spanish is spoken of as the most stately of languages, and its literature is one of the great European literatures. We recall the great names of Cervantes, Lopede Vega and Calderon. In recent writing the works of Galdos and Pio Baroja deserve to rank with the best recent writers in French and English.

I may remind you of Longfellow's and Mrs. Hemans' charming translations from the Spanish. Spain furnished the inspiration for a large part of the first Canto of Byron's Childe Harold.

In the reign of Philip II. the Spanish Empire consisted of Spain, the Netherlands, the greater part of Italy, practically all of South America, a large part of North America and of the West Indies, vast possessions in the East Indies and in Africa (of the present United States it possessed Florida, Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico; i.e., about one-third of the United States). It was the greatest Empire in the world, and Philip unquestionably was the most powerful monarch.

What an opportunity, you would say, for the creation of a vast and enduring colonial empire. And so it was. Unhappily Spain had never taken to itself liberty, that pearl of great price.

The first part of her empire to fall away were the Netherlands and her Italian provinces. But that in reality was an advantage. You will recollect that England at the time possessed half of France; but fortunately lost it, until Calais alone remained. Then in Mary's time Calais also went; and Shakespeare could speak of England as

" This precious stone set in the silver sea

Which serves it in the office of a wall."

And Tennyson

"Compassed by the inviolate sea."

Imagine England in Napoleon's time embarrassed by having to defend Calais.

Some stupid people attribute the decline of Spain to the defeat of the Armada. Spain could easily have recovered from the loss of a fleet. Nor was it the loss of her European possessions that brought about the decline of Spanish power. The decay of a nation, like the decay of these bodies of ours, is usually due to internal causes. You will die, a thousand to one, from something that goes wrong within you. So it is with nations.

Talleyrand, the distinguished French statesman, was accused of always betraying his political associates. He was a favourite with Louis XVI.; he was a political leader with the revolutionists; he was in the confidence of Napoleon; when Napoleon went to Elba he was again accepted by the Bourbons; and so on. (We have never had any rapid-change artist equal to him in political life in Canada.) Well Talleyrand was accused of always betraying his friends. He boldly retorted,--"I never abandoned a party until the party had abandoned itself." What a splendid defence of an unprincipled line of conduct. He almost justifies himself. And so it may be said, Fortune never abandons a nation until the nation abandons itself.

Spain declined, not because a blow was struck from without, but from malignant growths within,political corruption, want of political insight in its rulers, inability to comprehend the spirit of liberty, domestic quarrels, absence of the spirit of sacrifice.

And though the defeat of the great Armada occurred in 1588, and though the declension of Spanish power is often dated from that event, Spain's colonial Empire did not begin to fall away until two centuries after that, until the beginning of the nineteenth century; and 1811 may be taken as approximately the date of the loss of her colonies.

The spirit of the French Revolution was in the air, and had penetrated to the Spanish' colonies in the new world. They thought they ought to be republics too, though Heaven knows they were ill-fitted for that form of government. Spain's only conception of colonial administration was the levying of exorbitant taxes and the collecting of exorbitant duties. And when rebellion became possible through Spain's European troubles (18oo-i8I5), the colonies fell away like worm-eaten apples from the parent tree.

But had the history of Spain been different, had she cultivated the spirit of liberty and instructed her people in constitutional government, as did England, what a splendid colonial Empire she might now have, and how different the history of South and Central America and Mexico would have been.

Spain is a "Niobe of Nations," to use Byron's words in speaking of Rome. Niobe, you will recollect, in Greek mythology was the mother who had her children taken from her. Niobe in mythology turned to stone, and Spain almost suffered petrifaction. But, as I have tried to impress upon you, I believe a brighter day is dawning in the Spanish world; and it may even happen as time goes on, that a confederacy may be formed of Spanish-speaking countries as has often been proposed. But as today we contemplate those scattered fragments of a once mighty and world-wide empire, how fervently we thank Heaven we are the offspring of Britain, and how fervently we repeat the words of Sir John MacDonald, "A British subject I was born, and a British subject I shall die."

We should form a false notion of the character of the Spanish people if our judgment were formed by what we have read of the Spanish inquisition, and by what we know of bull fighting.

They are a kindly, warm-hearted people.

It must be remembered that for centuries they were in contact with, were oppressed by, and fought against the Moors, a non-Christian people. The consequence of this was that they formed very violent views as to what their attitude should be towards all who differed from them in religion. Such were considered alike the enemies of God and man, and were deserving of extermination as they had exterminated or expelled the Moors, unless they consented to change their faith. I think the centuries of struggle with the Moors explains the excesses of the Spanish inquisition.

Bull fighting is of course a brutal form of amusement. The authorities and clergy have tried in vain to stop it. To stop it would possibly provoke a revolution. It is not the simple matter that putting an end to drinking is in Ontario. If they could import bull fights in bottles from, say, Paris, it very possibly would not mean a revolution.

Kindness to animals is a neglected part of Spanish education. The dogs look neglected; the asses and mules look neglected. There is a S.P.C.A. in Gibraltar, as might be expected, but not farther north.

It is extraordinary to what extent the so-called sport dominates the Spanish people. Seville, a city of about 150,000 people, has a bull ring, most substantially constructed, capable of holding 25,000 spectators. The bull rings of Spain would hold 2,000,000. Women are not very much in evidence in the more expensive seats, from which one judges that ladies of the upper and middle classes do not as a rule attend.

Bull fighting is not more brutal than fox hunting. The animal is of course provoked in various ways, but death at the end, where a straight two-edged sword is plunged between the shoulders, comes instantly. The goring of the horses is the more brutal part of the affair.

Of course the intrinsically brutal thing is that thousands of people should gather in holiday garb to see anything killed, "Butchered to make a Roman holiday," as Byron says of the gladiatorial combats. However, there it is,--a national institution. Yet I feel myself justified in saying that the Spanish are a kindly people.

It may interest some of you young fellows when I say that I think I never saw anywhere so many good-looking women as I saw in Spain. It may also interest some of more mature years. Beautiful teeth, due to eating the hard-crusted bread; beautiful hair, due perhaps to going without hats or bonnets; eyes like velvet; olive complexions. Yet somehow I got tired of seeing such a monotonous uniformity of colour, especially as they usually dress in black. They take no exercise, and therefore soon lose their figure, becoming stout,--as our Toronto women are destined to become through use of automobiles and street cars.

Travel is inexpensive. I think the mileage ticket that took Mrs. Baker and myself from one end of Spain to the other, with many side trips, cost only $65.00, and that meant first class. The trains are slow, but the grades are often steep, and you feel safer when not carried at a high speed.

The hotels in the cities are very good and not expensive. I was advised to take a box of Keating's Insect Powder with me, but never found occasion for its use. You have not baths attached to your bedroom, but you can always get a huge jug of hot water (agna caliente), and the man who cannot keep clean with a gallon of hot and a gallon of cold water each morning, and a sponge, is not accustomed to bathing. The floors of the bedrooms are tiled, so that you may regard the whole room as a bath.

Tipping of course prevails, but a small tip goes a long way,indeed the smallest tip is gratefully received.

Cabs are cheap. You can go from one end of Madrid to the other for about 40 cents, including tip to the jehu.

I wish I could take you on a journey through Spain with the lantern slides I have had made, converted into movies. I content myself with mentioning two or three places of interest.

Toledo is situated on a great rocky bluff overlooking the Tagus which surrounds it on three sides. It is the Canterbury of Spain. I think it is the most interesting city of Spain, almost of any country. The trouble about Toledo is that when you have seen it all other cities seem modern. Romans, Visigoths, Saracens and Christians have all occupied it, and have all left their mark. The streets in the main are so narrow that carriages cannot be used on them. Tall houses, almost windowless on the side next the street; a court inside of course, but the door opening to it like the door of a fortress. The cathedral goes back 700 years, and is most imposing both externally and internally. The cloisters in the church of San Juan of the Kings are perhaps the most magnificent in all Europe.

The narrow streets are defended on the ground that such afford more shade than wide ones, which in a warm country is important. The women with their huge jugs at the public fountain, exchanging gossip and waiting for their turn, are most picturesque. The streets are so crooked that even a designer of Rosedale would be bewildered. The view from the terrace by the Military College is very fine, but marred by the absence of trees in the far-stretching landscape,-a defect in nearly all Spanish landscape. Toledo is associated with the exploits of the Cid, that half mythical hero.

No cathedral in Europe can equal the Spanish in the richness of their furniture. Spain enjoyed enormous wealth when the world contained great artists, which of course explains the marvels of the Prado, the great picture gallery of Madrid.

No Canadian would start a city on the site of such a rock as Toledo. We place cities so that railroads may enter them, that they may be drained inexpensively, that boats may approach them. When Sir George Foster was talking here the other day of the rocks at one of our Pacific termini, I thought of Toledo. However, Toledo was properly placed for the age in which it was built, when defence was the first consideration.

In Granada you will be interested in the snowcapped summits of the Sierra Nevada; in the green valley, due to irrigation works that date back to the days of the Moors; in the distant pass in the mountains known as El ultimo suspiro del Maro, where the defeated Moorish monarch, Boabdil, turned to have a last view of the beautiful city that had been his home, and wept. His masculine mother upbraided him with, " Why weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man." When a man looked sad the Arabs used to say, " He is thinking of Granada."

In Granada, in the Cathedral, is the most magnificent interior, I think, I have ever seen. But it is the famous Alhambra that will attract you most at Granada. That you may not be disappointed in it you should give full rein to your imagination, prepared by previous reading. Load yourself up with Lalla Rookh, The Light of the Harem, Paradise and the Peri, The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra and Conquest of Granada, The Arabian Nights, Prescott's Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.

You ascend a magnificent avenue between rows of elm trees said to have been presented by the Duke of Wellington. Down both sides descend streams of water making an eternal music. The charm of water, in fountains, streams or pools is all over the place. The orientals well knew its fascination,witnesssuch metaphors as

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks." "With joy shall we draw water from the wells of salvation." "Like the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land."

imagination play, and fancy you encounter a cavalcade of Moorish Knights with their picturesque headdress and flowing garments on graceful Arabian horses. If you go to this avenue at the proper season and at night you will hear the singing of countless nightingales, or bulbuls as the orientals call them.

You proceed to the Alhambra, and you must recollect that it is not a single palace but a fortified eminence including two palaces, a citadel and many private residences. The architecture is not imposing. The charm is the decoration, which consists of geometrical forms with remarkable colour schemes, chiefly in stucco. The religion of the Moors, you will recollect, did not permit them to use graven images, human or animal. These are not even representations of plant life. The columns are slim and do not add to the impressiveness of the place, Here again your imagination may people the colonnades, and alcoves and fountain seats with picturesque Moorish figures, and dark-eyed odalisques.

You are shown where Washington Irving lived for a time that, through seeing it under various conditions, by pale moonlight, gilded with the evening rays, or brightened by the rising sun, he might absorb the spirit of the place and charmingly write of it.

From various points you get magnificent views of the city below and the great valley in which it is placed; and you will not wonder that the Moors loved it, and that it was a heartbreak to be compelled to surrender it to Ferdinand and Isabella, the crescent yielding to the cross.

Leaving the Alhambra you proceed farther and ascend higher to the Generalife, the summer residence of the califs. You advance through a magnificent avenue of cypress trees. Generalife is unspeakably charming,--exquisite gardens, tanks of bright green water, the music of running streams, climbing rose trees flinging out cataracts of bright roses, divine views of the surrounding country. Some scandals associated with Moorish days will be related-you have observed that a scandal is never too old to cease to be interesting-and as you gaze on the languorous enervating beauty about you, you will probably say apologetically to yourself, " How could they help it?" The words of Claude Melnotte in the " Lady of Lyons" may come to you,--

"A palace lifting to eternal summer Its marble walls, from out a glossy bower Of coolest foliage musical with birds whose songs should syllable thy name. At noon we'd sit beneath the arching vines, and wonder why Earth could be unhappy, while the Heavens Still left us youth and love."

You will feel you could stay there forever; and though forced to leave, you will never forget the charm of the gardens of the Generalife.

It is an abrupt change from the bright sunshine of the Generalife to the overwhelming gloom of the Escorial (Escoria, slag; and therefore, "the place of ashes"). A railway journey of a couple of hours takes you from Madrid to the famous Escorial. It was built by Philip II., him of Armada fame, from 1563 to 1584, i.e., 21 years in construction.

A vast amphitheatre of desolate hills, with this great monastery-church-palace in the centre of the plain below, its gloomy granite walls seem to chill even the genial Spanish sunshine.

Philip was a morbid ascetic, a gloomy fanatic; and no man ever worked his character into a building more thoroughly and completely than Philip has worked his into the Escorial. It has stood for 300 years. Its massive granite walls will stand for 30,000 years; and Philip's character will still fling its shadow on it, still haunt its halls and corridors like a ghost.

There Philip, though the absolute monarch of two worlds, the most powerful potentate on earth, was plain " Brother Philip," a monk in his own monastery. His father, Charles V., you will recollect, gave up the proudest throne in Europe to become the occupant of a cell in an out of the way monastery.

You are shown Philip's small and bare bed and sitting rooms, with a little cloister at the side looking down on the chancel and altar of the vast church, so that unseen he could participate in the solemn service as it progressed below. The plain bed, table and other furniture suggest the man who had abandoned all the vanities of this world. It was but a step to the narrowness of the coffin. Here he heard with equal stoicism the news of the victory at Lepanto arid the tidings of the defeat of the great Armada.

In the Escorial there are literally acres of the most gorgeous tapestry in the world; and there are many, other artistic treasures and architectural beauties of fadeless interest; but the part that will impress you most is the little octagonal chapel beneath the high altar where on shelves in marble coffins the monarchs of Spain find their last resting place. And you will come away feeling that after life's fitful fever you would sooner rest in some quiet country churchyard, where the sun shines, than in the gloomy if splendid mausoleum where repose the monarchs of Spain. It was a country churchyard that inspired the tender pathos of Gray's Elegy.

I trust that our friendship with Spain may grow; and that Spain may see it is to her interest to become, like the other Latin nations-France, Italy and Portugal-a member of the Entente Cordiale. We can forgive Spain for having, three hundred years ago, tried to conquer us, especially as she failed.

I have mentioned the Spanish Armada, and I close with an historical parallel not foreign to the times. Thrice in history has Britain been assailed by the greatest force that imperial power could assemble or human genius direct. In each case the attack has been made by the world's greatest military power; in each case that power has been in pursuit of world-wide empire; and in each case that power has regarded Britain as the sole obstacle to its acquisition of universal empire.

The first assault was defeated in the disasters that overwhelmed the great Armada.

The second was crushed at Trafalgar when the combined fleets of the enemy were destroyed; for Waterloo saved rather the rest of Europe.

It is our destiny at the beginning of the twentieth century to witness the third attempt on the life of our Empire; and it will be our destiny to witness its defeat, not by a brilliant engagement like that at Trafalgar, where Nelson as in a chariot and horses of fire was carried to eternal fame, but by a process of attrition wrought by those vast watchful monsters that rest not day or night as they toss on the rolling waters of the North Sea; while our boys elsewhere help the fleet again to save the rest of Europe, and civilization, and Christianity.

A vote of thanks was heartily carried.