• We desire to treat everything said by the King
of Spain with respect, for we recognise in him a Sovereign of honour and good faith, and believe that he is inspired by the highest devotion to his country. We acknowledge also the great difficulties of his position, and we are aware that it is even more difficult for a Sovereign than for an ordinary citizen to endure unmoved foreign criticism of the action of his country. At the same time, we cannot refrain from noticing that King Alfonso's apology for the action taken in the case of Ferrer has exactly the ring of the apologies for the action of the French Courts-Martial and Government during the Dreyfus agitation. Yet at the present moment there are few patriotic Frenchmen who do not admit that a great wrong was, in fact done ; that Dreyfus did not receive a fair and just trial either at the first or the second Court-Martial, and this though the patriotism and good intentions of the men who tried him were undoubted. Stevenson says somewhere that many people seem to think that honesty is as easy as blind-man's-buff. Certainly justice is not, and blind-man's-buff is too apt to be the ruling condition at a Court-Martial engaged, like that at Barcelona, in trying not a military but a civil offence.
Previous page
