Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 301, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1913 — ME OWN SAVAGES [ARTICLE]

ME OWN SAVAGES

Madrid Paper Urges That Spain Care for Its Own. 4 Hpraldo Declares Illiteracy In Alfonso's Kingdom Amounts to National Disgrace—l2,ooo,ooo People > Cannot Read or Write.

Madrid.—ln an article headed “Spain’s National Disgrace,” the Heraldo de Madrid (newspaper) says: “Out of the total population of some 19,000,000 that Spain possesses, 12,000,000 can neither read nor write. In thousands of villages and small towns in the. interior of the country no one knows how to read or write.

“There are in Spain 30,000 rural villages without schools of any kind, and many thousands which can only be reached by a bridle path, there being no high roads nor railway communication of any kind. Attendance at board schools is voluntary, not obligatory. Seventy-six per cent, of the children in Spain are illiterate, and this is especially noticeable in the capital. “With such facts, such shameful ones, before us as the foregoing we have embarked on a mission (which is costing the country millions) to civilize Morocco. If it were not sad it would be laughable. Let us first set ourselves to educate and tame the innumerable savages we have among us before attempting to civilize Morocco.

“And this is Spain in the twentieth century! Would that heaven would send us a minister with the temperament and energy of Lloyd-George! Will those in power in Spain never awake to the real needs of the country?” * In this connection it is interesting to note that the first battalion of the King’s Own regiment has recently gone to join the army in Morocco, and that among the officers accompanying it was H. R. H. the Infant Don Alfonso de Bourbon, the Infanta Eulalia’s son and the king’s cousin. The little prince of the Austrias, heir presumptive to the Spanish throne, is honorary colonel of the regiment. He addressed the following telegram to, the captain commanding the bat taiion: "Greatly Regretting that my tender years do not allow me to place myself at the head of my regiment, which is about to take the field in Morocco, I salute my comrades and brother officers, not forgetting the .rank and file, wishing them all good fortune and occasions 'to add new laurels to their famous regiment”