THE PORTUGAL OF SALAZAR

{

THEPORTUGAL OF SALAZAR

By

MICHAEL DERRICK

LONDONSANDS : THE PALADIN PRESS

15 KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W .C.2AND AT GLASGOW

PRINTED IN GUERNSEY, C .I ., BRITISH ISLES,BY THE STAR AND GAZETTE LTD. FORSANDS : THE PALADIN PRESS, IS KING ST .,

COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C. 2

FIRST PUBLISHED 1938

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONEPAGE

I Introductory - 13U Portugal - 23

CHAPTER TWOI The Record of the Republic 33II The Man from Nowhere - 44III Salazar -

- 5 1

CHAPTER THREEPrinciples and Practice of the CorporateState -

- 61

CHAPTER FOURThe Political Structure -

- 103

CHAPTER FIVEPortugal is not " Fascist "

- 129

NOTES TO THE CHAPTERS 153

I

" WE DO NOT ASK FOR MUCH . AN UNDERSTAND-ING AND CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE FATHERLANDAND OF NATIONAL UNITY; OF THE FAMILY, THEPRIMARY SOCIAL UNIT; OF AUTHORITY AND OFOBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY; OF THE SPIRITUALVALUES OF LIFE AND OF THE RESPECT THAT ISOWING TO MAN; OF THE OBLIGATION TO LABOUR ;OF VIRTUE AND OF THE SACRED NATURE OF RELI-GION-THAT IS WHAT IS ESSENTIAL IN THE MEN-TAL AND MORAL FORMATION OF A CITIZEN OFTHE ' ESTADO NOVO'.

" WE ARE OPPOSED TO ALL THE INTERNATIONAL-ISMS, OPPOSED TO COMMUNISM, TO SOCIALISM, TOLIBERTARIAN SYNDICALISM ; WE ARE OPPOSED TOALL THAT DISINTEGRATES, DIVIDES, OR DISSOLVESTHE FAMILY; WE ARE OPPOSED TO THE CLASSSTRUGGLE . WE ARE AGAINST THOSE WHO KNOWNO COUNTRY AND NO GOD; AGAINST THE BONDAGEOF THE WORKERS, AGAINST THE PURELY MATE-RIALIST CONCEPTION OF LIFE, AGAINST THE IDEATHAT MIGHT IS RIGHT. WE ARE AGAINST ALLTHE GREAT HERESIES OF OUR AGE, ALL THE MOREBECAUSE WE HAVE YET TO BE CONVINCED THATTHERE IS ANY PART OF THE WORLD WHERELIBERTY TO PROPAGATE SUCH HERESIES HAS BEENTHE CAUSE OF ANYTHING GOOD : SUCH LIBERTY, INTHE HANDS OF THE BARBARIANS OF MODERN TIMES,SERVES ONLY TO UNDERMINE THE FOUNDATIONSOF OUR CIVILISATION."

OLIVEIRA SALAZAR

CHAPTER ONE

I

C H A P T E _R

O N E

INTRODUCTORY

O UR generation has witnessed the final collapseof the economic Liberalism which prevailed in

the nineteenth century ; and with our generation andthe next lies the task of reconstructing Europe . In-ternationally, the period- of unrestricted private enter-prise and competition has ended in deadlock andconfusion. And in all countries capitalism has left'as its legacy a class of property-less and irresponsibleworkers, destined, , despite an overproduction result-ing from unique technical achievement, to lead sub-human existences in conditions of poverty andsqualor.

The age of laisseztfaire, laissez-passer, has of neces-sity given place 'to an age of planned economy ; andparallel to the collapse of economic Liberalism hasbeen the failure of political Liberalism . In their placethe new totalitarian ideologies, are emerging . Thereis the Marxist totalitarianism, which would eliminatefrom society all classes save the workers and fromlife all spiritual values, and would itself provide thebe-all and the end-all, of human existence ; and there

I3

THE PORTUGAL

is the totalitarianism of the new nationalisms, whichwould discipline the individual to an almost mysticalconception of the State .

The conflict of ideologies to-day resents the grav-est threat to the peace of the wore but there is oneman in Europe who, more than any other, has shownthat totalitarianism is not the only alternative to un-disciplined individualism, class exploitation, and therule of plutocracy, and that there is a possible formof social and economic Order that is not the imper-sonal order of the new ideologies. Oliveira Salazarhas, during the past ten years, brought into being inPortugal a Christian and Corporate State which pro-vides justice for the long-exploited working classeswithout preaching the appalling doctrine of the classwar, which provides order in the nation without arro-gating to the State functions which do not properlybelong to it, and which appeals to Nationalism withdue regard, for the responsibilities of the Nation as acomponent part of a common European whole.

The Corporate conception of society is inits essenceas old as Europe and the Faith, and the neo-Corpora-tism of Salazar is no more than an attempt to super-sede what is known as Capitalism by buildingaccording to the principles that were rejected whenCapitalism began. In its essence it is no more thanan organic conception of society which does not for-get the Rights of Man, but which remembers alsowhat have for so long been forgotten : the Duties ofMan, The component parts of society are disciplined,but they are self-disciplined ; the State regulates thecommon whole in the common good, but " the Stateis no more than an artificial mechanism at the service

I4

OF SALAZAR

of that natural organism which is the communitythose who in it exercise power have only duties to-wards society, which alone has rights ".I The medie-val Guilds were corporate bodies, integral parts ofsociety, alike protecting their members from othersand others from their members. Neo-corporatismseeks to restore such bodies to society, in some formsuitable to the very changed needs and conditionsof contemporary life and civilisation . It seeks to re-assert that every Right can be expressed converselyas a Duty, and that every man has a duty towards hisneighbour, towards the community 'into which hewas born .The C rate State of the New Portugal, of the

Portugal of Salaaar, is an attempt towards the estab-lishment of that sane corporative system of whichPope Pius XI speaks,' the p"rindples of which havelong been advocated by the Catholic school of de Munand Vogelsang and de la Tour du Pin. But it is anideal towards which even in England we have wit-nessed many approaches from various angles . Wehave seen the Guild Socialists, led by Mr . A. J. Pentyand Mr.- A. R. Orage, whose ideas may be tracedback to Ruskin. Maitland introduced into Englandthe writings of Otto Gierke, who taught the organicnature, the Real Personality, of the integral parts ofsociety. And Professor Maynard Keynes has ex-pressed himself in favour of a form of economicorganisation remarkably close to the system of cor-orations : rather than State Socialism he would see

` the growth of semi-autonomous bodies within theState-bodies whose criterion of action within, theirown fieldis solely the public good as they understand

Is

THE PORTUGALit, and from whose deliberations motives of private ad-vantage are excluded-bodies which in the ordinarycourse of affairs are mainly autonomous within theirprescribed limitations, but are subject in the last resortto the sovereignty of the democracy expressedthrough Parliament ".3

Thanks chiefly to misuse of the word " Fascism " byleft-wing propaganda, there is a general impressionabroad that Corporatism implies Imperialism, or aconviction that guns are more necessary than butter .It is not accurate to refer to Germany as a CorporateState; Italy is a Corporate State, but she appears toreject the international aspect of the corporate prin-ciple. Internationally, she still seems to plead laissez-faire, laissez passer. Nor is it true that Corporatismimplies etatisme, or economic nationalism, or anyform of neo-paganism. What it does imply it is thepurpose of this book to tell, for in contemporary Por-tugal may be seen the truest attempt that has yetbeen made towards a realisation of corporative theory .There is Fascist corporatism in Italy and pseudo-cor-poratism in Germany; there is crippled corporatism inAustria, there are the beginnings of corporatism inSwitzerland, and there has been corporative experi-ment in Bulgaria and elsewhere . But the work ofSalazar constitutes an experiment unique in modernEurope .

It is true that since the summer of 1936 the war inSpain has given rise in Portugal to a state of nationalemergency, which has compelled Salazar to take somemeasures that he would not have countenanced dur-ing the eight years of comparative tranquillity inwhich he held office previous to that war . Conditions

16

OF SALAZAR

of national danger do not permit any political experiment to take its natural course, least of all one whichseeks to reduce the functions of the State to a mini-mum. It is, the threat from the German frontier thathas crippled the corporative experiment of Schuschni and the martyred Dollfuss in Austria . ' ButS azar did enough during those eight years to showthat he is bringing into being in Portugal a genuinecorporatism ; a corporatisme d'association, as dis-tinct from a corporatisme d'etat . It is not true tosay of the New Portugal that the State has arrogatedto itself anything beyond the things which areCaesar's .

Europe to-day is threatened with a war of ideologies .But the real and ultimate issue is not the issue be-tween Fascism and Communism : That is not theissue in Spain. Fascism is something Italian, as Nazi-ism is something German and Soviet Communismsomething Oriental; whateverr emerges in Spain willbe different from all of these, as essentially Spanish asthe Portugal of Salazar is Portuguese. The issue thatis being fought to the death in Spain is the issue whichis before Europe . It is this : will that which emerges beChristian, or will it be pagan or (which is worse) purelyatheist and anthropocentric? It can be put as simplyas that. Those who condone the Spanish Govern-ment against which General Franco has led Spain inrevolt think it is merely godless ; those who fear itthink it hates God. At present there is every indica-tion that Franco will win .

That is the second important reason why considera-tion should be given to the Portugal of Salazar . WhenFranco has won, there will be an inevitable period of

17

B

THE PORTUGALmartial law ; for a long time there must be sporadicunrest, and guerilla warfare will be carried on inthe eastern provinces . But gradually the New Spainwill emerge ; and there is every indication that it willfollow closely the lines of the New Portugal .4 Francois a man much nearer in blood, and probably muchnearer in every way, to Salazar than to Mussolini.He will be influenced much more by the Spanish andPortuguese. integral corporativists, and even by menlike Bottai and Manoilesco the Rumanian, than by themodel of Italian Fascism. At all events, no cleareridea of what the Spanish Nationalists are fighting toachieve in the material order can be gained than bystudying the Portugal of Salazar . Every political ex-periment must be conditioned by the nature of thepeople with whom it is concerned . There are manydifferent peoples in the Iberian Peninsula, of whom thePortuguese are one . They are much more akin to theCastilians than are the Catalans, but Castile is theheart of Spain. Any Corporate State that arises inSpain willtake its nature from the people of Spain, andwill `be closely akin to the Corporate State of theneighbouring people of Portugal .

There is no natural frontier between Spain andPortugal, and, although, with the exception of a briefperiod at the dose of the sixteenth century, Portugalhas been an 'independent nation for eight centuries,there -are, apart from history, no greater reasons forher independence 'than there are for the independenceof Catalonia or the Spanish Basques. That is not tosay that it would not be a terrible crime . if Portugalwere forcibly incorporated in Spain . But GeneralFranco is the declared opponent ; of regional autono-

12

OF SALAZARmies in Spain, and reports have reached Lisbon ofmaps seen pinned to the wall at military headquartersat Burgos and Salamanca in which Portugal appearsas a Province of Spain. It is unlikely that there w issubstance in these reports, or that General Franco in-tends at any date to challenge Portuguese independ-ence. Nevertheless, the possibility cannot be ruledout . If when the civil was is over, General Francoproves to be unduly under the influence of Italy, as isfeared by many ; and if Italy is then still continuingher policy of opposing British naval power in theMediterranean, it is conceivable that, after an intervalfor national recuperation, a military offensive againstPortugal will be launched. For the basis of PortugueseForeign Policy is and will remain her British alliance .The mouth of the Tagus providess what is probably thefinest natural harbour in Europe, and it has been vir-tually at the disposal of the British fleet 'ever' sinceBritain had an interest in the Mediterranean . Theharbours of Portugal are of the utmost importance toany Power concerned in the Mediterranean; indeed,according to Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, "Lisbon is the keyto the Mediterranean."S

In the possible but, it is hoped, improbable eventof an Italo-Spanish offensive being launched againstPortugal at some future date, Great Britain will there-fore be vitally interested . Moreover, she will bebound by treaty to go to the assistance of Portugal .

In speculating thus about the possible evil results toPortugal of excessive Italian influence accompanyinga Nationalist victory in Spain, it should not be for-gotten that the victory of international Communismwould have presented her with a much more certain

ig

THE PORTUGALmenace . " A union of Iberian Soviet republics-thatis, our aim," said Largo Caballero to, the Americanjournalist Edward Knoblaugh. "The Iberian penin-sula will again be one country. Portugal will come in,peaceably we hope, but by force if necessary. . . .Lenin declared Spain would be the second Soviet Re-ublic in Europe. Lenin's prophecy will come true .shall be the second Lenin who shall make it come

true." If any such onslaught had been made, Portu-&al would equally have had the right to demand theintervention of Great Britain . Let this be remem-bered by those who so bitterly denounce GeneralFranco, the defender of Portugal as well as of Spainfrom the Comintern .

There is no doubt that the present years are ex-tremely critical ones for Portugal, and the Anglo-Por-tuguese alliance provides the third important reasonwhy attention should be given in England to Salazarand his work. That alliance is the oldest in Europe .On October 25, 1937, Lisbon celebrated the sevenhundred and ninetieth anniversary of the first- co-operation of the English with the Portuguese againsta common foe.

In 1147 Affonso Henriquez, the first King of Por-tugal, took Lisbon from the Moors, with the assistanceof some English Knights on their way to the secondCrusade, and an English monk of Winchelsea becamethe first Bishop of Lisbon. The citadel then capturedis still known as the Castle of St . George. Six cen-turies ago, on May 9, 1386, the English_ and Portu-guese signed a Treaty at Windsor, "for ever" ; andalthough the alliance dates really only from the timeof Cromwell, it has endured to this day : the des-

ao

OF SALAZAR

tinies of two Atlantic European nations have beenlinked together. The English navigators followed thegreat Portugueseuese discoverers of the age of PrinceHenry the Navigator (whose mother was an Englishwoman) to found the British Empire . When a Portu-guese princess of the Royal House of Braganza mar-ried Charles II of England, she brought to Englandas her dowry Bombay, an important base in India,and Tangier, which was England's first naval base inthe Mediterranean. The alliance was renewed ageneration later by the Methuen Treaty, and the Eng-lish gentry, to the great detriment of their health butto the benefit of an historic friendship, began to drinkpor t, instead of claret. A century later, British andPortuguese fought together to drive Napoleon fromthe Peninsula, and in 1916 they were fighting togetherin Flanders. To-day the alliance is as secure as ever,and is strengthened by important commercial bonds .In February 1938, a British naval and military mis-sion will visit Portugal to investigate the present pos-sibilities of collaboration in war should the necessityarise .The connections between Great Britain and Por-

tugal, then, are of the closest. In 1933, when the new

p

Portuguese Constitution was approved by a nationallebiscite, The Times wrote in a leading article that

` the course of the new regime will be followed withthe greatest sympathy and interest in this country "6That was nearly five years ago ; yet practically nopublic interest has been shown ; while public sym-pathy has been steadily diminishing ever since warbroke out in Spain and the Comintern began to putabout the legend, at once accepted, that Portugal is

21

THE PORTUGAL

"Fascist" and a satellite state of Italy. Despite theprophecy of The Times, this brief book represents thefirst attempt that has been made by an En glishmanto understand and to describe the mind and work ofSalazar.

It is its purpose to indicate what is the real natureof contemporary Portugal . It will attempt also toindicate what contemporary Portugal is not . M.Mihazl Manoilesco has done some valuable debunk-ing in his book Le Siecle du Corporatisme? Hemakes clear five important things about corporatism

(i) That modern corporatism must necessarily bevery. different from, and is not to be confusedwith, the medieval Guild system .

(2) That it cannot be confounded with Fascism, inspite of the progress, which, in the exclusivelyeconomic form, it has made under that re-gime.

(3) That it is not a hypocritical instrument for theconsolidation of the existing social conditionswith all their iniquities .

(4) That it does not restrict itself to the organisationof the material forces of the nation only, butthat it constitutes the sole means of integratingevery aspect of the national life .

(5) That it does not mean the mobilisation of 'theegotism of groups against the national interest,but, on the contrary, the acceptance of the prin-ciple of the common good . .

22

OF SALAZARWe would not say that we agree in all things with

M. Mandilesco; and we think, for instance, thatSalazar would not countenance the degree of etatismethat appears in his exposition of corporative theory .Nevertheless, these five caveats must be borne wellin mind by all who would understand the corporatismof Portugal and Salazar .

IIPORTUGAL

Portugal has an area on the mainland of Europe of34,254 square miles, and an Atlantic coastline ofsome 350 miles. Her population in 1930 was 6,826,000,and is to-day probably about seven millions, since thebirth-rate, although declining, is still substantiallyhigher than the death-rate.' Although in area she isabout the same, her population is therefore consider-ably greater than that of Ireland. In many ways, how-evr Tortugal may be compared to Ireland : she looksout on to the Atlantic, from the western edge ofEurope, and her people are people of the Celtic frin ge.Many travellers have been reminded of the Irish bythe Portuguese, and to many, the Portuguese landscape has been strangely reminiscent of Ireland. ThusMr. Douglas Goldring wrote recently : " Portugal is asmall, compact, and manageable (sic) country aboutthe size of Ireland, which in a q ueer indefinite wayit resembles. At least, I found myself constantlythinking of Ireland as I travelled through it, althoughthe d,Werences between the two countries are oh-

23

THE PORTUGALvious .."9 Or again, Mr. Aubrey Bell writes in whathas become a standard work about the Portuguese'° :" In some measure, those who know the Irish peasantknow the Portuguese. . . . Indeed, if you take theIrish peasantry, add hot sun, a spice of the East, andh rhaps something of the negro's vanity and slightold on life, you have the Portuguese. The quick

intelligence, the dregming melancholy, the slynessand love of intrigue, the wit and imagination are here,and the power of expression in words . Generosity,too, and habits as unpractical as could be desired ."

And since this is a book about the present conditionof Portugal, rather than about the Portuguese eo ple,we will leave it at that : that none can know the Por-tuguese without visiting their country, but that thosewho know the Irish will know also the Portuguese insome degree .

You get very different ty pes in different parts ofthe country, of course-the dwellers in the high landsof Beira and the Minho and Tras os Montes ; thefarmers of the Alemtejo, the land beyond the Tagus ;the excitable algarvios of the south; and so on-butthe Portuguese have been an independent people foreight centuries, with the exception of sixty uneasyyears between i 58o and i 640, and that could not havebeen so had they not been a race apart from Spain .There are many peoples in Spain, and it is im possibleto say (I write in December 1937) when again they willlive under a common rule ; but the Portuguese aredifferent from them all .

We will not attempt to trace their racial pedigreethat would be impossible . The Portuguese have beenall over the world, and all over the world they have

24

OF SALAZAR

intermarried with their native dependents . The Celt-Iberian stock of Portugal survived the centuries ofMoorish overlords as it had survived the overlordshipof Romans and Visigoths : but into that Celt-Iberianstock has been infused a surprising amount of negroidblood. The Chronicles o f AzuraraI' describe how thesystematic introduction of African negroes into Por-tugal dates from the time of Henry the Navigator .Right up to the end of the eighteenth century all thebig families of Portugal had large numbers of negroservants, and, in the almost complete absence of thatcolour prejudice so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxons, a definite, negroid strain in the Portuguesepeople has resulted . To-day there is in Africa a greatcontrast between the way the Portuguese and Britishregard their black colonials . A result is that thePortuguese for centuries retained their colonialEmpire without the help of any considerable army .It is rare to-day to meet a coloured man in Portugal,or even in Lisbon; but the negroid strain is very oftena parent. It would not be an altogether bad thingit ortuguese nationalism to-day became infectedwith a little of the racial madness that characterisesthe nationalism of Germany, for their extremelymixed blood is an undoubted source of weakness tothe race . However, it accentuates the contrast withthe Spanish .

Spain is a Mediterranean country, but Portugallooks out upon the Atlantic. The Spanish conquista-dores and the English discoverers of the sixteenthcentury followed where the Portuguese led ; it is theAtlantic that has made the greatness of Portugal .To-day, although the Portuguese have yet to produce

25

THE PORTUGAL

great airmen, Lisbon provides the starting place forthe most important north Atlantic crossing by air,and the Portuguese Azores a half-way house .

Spain turns her life towards her great Mediter-ranean coast that runs from Cape Cervera to theStraits of Gibraltar; her Atlantic coastline is no morethan a narrow strip, separated from the interior bythe Cantabrian mountains. She is so big and her lifeis so various that she is almost complete as a continentby herself; and she is isolated from Europe by thePyrenees. Portugal looks out upon the Ocean, andis linked by the Ocean to Europe : she is the littleEurope beyond Spain. . Her culture is Romano-Celticrather than Iberian.

-The reconquest of Portugal from the Moors took

place eight centuries ago : the first King of Portugalwas the half-legendary Affonso Henriquez, who pro-claimed himself after the famous battle of Ouriquein 1139. The nation reached the frontiers which arehers to-day during the rein of Affonso III (1248-1279); and a long period of intermittent warfare withLeon and Castile ended with the battle of Ajubarrota,in 1385, from which dates the complete independenceof Portugal. That battle was won by Joao I, first Kingof the House of Aviz, and father by his English wifeof Prince Henry the Navigator .

During the whole of the fourteenth century a vigor-ous civilisation was developing in Portugal and inparticular that splendid tradition of seamanshipwhich was to be the national glory was being steadilybuilt up. Under Joao I the period of maritime expan-'sion began, with the conquest of Ceuta in 1415 ; butit was under the inspiration of his son, Prince Henry

26

OF SALAZAR .

the Navigator, that Portugal discovered the world forEurope. The story of Bartolomeo Diaz and Vasco deGama, of Affonso Albuquerque and Duarte PachecoPereira, has been told often enough by historians sinceit was sung in epic verse by Camoees, the nationalpoet : it cannot be told again here . The Portuguesewere the first Europeans to round the Cape, the firsttoreach India ; as the colonisers of lrazil, they sharedwith the Spanish the discovery of the new world . ThePortugal of Salazar has the memory of her great agein her colonial Empire .

The Portuguese Empire of to-day represents a totalarea of over 85o,ooo ,square miles, which is abouttwenty-five times the size of Portugal in Europe. Thatis a fact now looked upon by the Germans with ajealous eye; although it must be remembered thatthere are three other European powers whose foreignpossessions are proportionately more extensive .In Europe, Portugal has the archipelagoes of

Madeira and the Azores, which are regarded foradministrative purposes as provinces of the mainland.In Africa she has the extremely valuable territoriesof Angola on the west coast and Mozambique on theeast. She has also Cabinda, asmall piece of the coast-line of the Belgian Congo,, and Guinea ; and off thewest coast she owns a considerable number of islands,of which the most important are the Cape VerdeIslands, the Bissagos Islands, Prince's Island, and St .Thomas. On the west coast of India she still has Goa,to which she proudly refers as " The State of India ",and which is the only part of India not under Britishsovereignty. In the East Indies she shares the islandof Timor with the Dutch, and in China she has

27

THE PORTUGAL

Macao, a trading station opposite Hong-Kong at themouth of the Si-Kiang River.

The problems and affairs of the Portuguese Empireare outside the scope of this book. Its present positionand the principles to be observed in its administra-tion are defined in the Colonial Act of July 8, 1930,which was drawn up by Dr . Salazar, who temporarilyassumed the Ministry of Colonies for that purpose ;and, by Article CXXXIII of the Constitution of 1933," the provisions of the Colonial Act shall be regardedas constitutional matter ". The very pressing colonialproblem was then vigorously tackled by a brilliantColonial Minister, Dr . Armindo Monteiro. Dr. Mon-teiro is now ambassador in London, and when anhonorary degree was recently conferred upon him bythe University of Oxford, the Public Orator describedhim as " a second founder of the Portuguese ColonialEmpire ".

The Colonial Act, with its later complementarylaws, is an application of the corporative theory ofDr. Salazar which it is the chief purpose of this bookto discuss . As the nation is an organic whole, so isthe Empire. The colonies are bound to co-operate,as are the corporative bodies, as members of the samecommonwealth; but the greatest possible measure ofautonomy is to be given to each colonial government,as .to each corporation. The underlying idea is de-centralisation so far as is consonant with a high senseof common destiny and a common responsibility .The corporative organisation of each colony has notyet been carried very far, but its main bases weredefined early in 1937 by Decree-Law No . 27552 .From the preamble to that we may quote a si

cant28

OF SALAZAR

passage, since in the matter of the colonial Empire wehave found a brief preliminary reflection of the cor-poratism of Salazar. " The time has come to laydown the principles of Colonial Corporativism. Theprinciples formulated are purposely broad and gene-ral, so as to be applicable to existing conditions. TheGovernment have no wish to formulate cast-iron regu-lations which subsequently might be found to be im-practicable or prejudicial, and desires principally toco-ordinate the economic activity of the colonies sothat the highest possible results may be secured.There is no claim of infallibility made for schemesoutlined in the present Decree-Law . They may'haveto be altered, . added to, or even replaced by others,as actual practice shall dictate."

p

In that paragraph we see illustrated one of thegreatest strengths of the Estado Novo : that is, itsavoidanceof a " cast-iron " system, and its continualand frank acknowledgment that its present stage isurely experimental. That is one of the chief reasons

why the Estado Novo, the Portugal of Salazar, willlive .

The Portugal of Salazar is a Christian and Cor-porate State. The purpose of this book is to give someindication of what that means, both objectively,` indescribing the principles on which it is built, how theyare Christian and, in the truest sense of that much-abused word, democratic, and how it differs from theexperiments in national reconstruction that are inprocess in Italy and Germany; and subjectively, indescribing how it represents a vindication of the his-toric Portugal, a truly national resurrection after acentury in which an alien and artificial Liberalism

29

THE PORTUGAL OF SALAZAR

reduced the country to chaos . The Estado Novo isessentially Christian : it is also essentially Portu ese .

IThe Englishman who can think of a nationalonly in terms of what is known as " the standard

of living or of trade balance, or of public works, willbe surprised to find little reference to such criteria inthis book. To many, Dr . Salazar is known only asone of the most brilliant Finance Ministers of moderntimes. It was in that capacity that he first enteredpublic life . He found his country mortgaged andbankrupt : he has set her affairs in order for the firsttime for centuries, and has made her " almost inde-pendent of international finance " . 12 In any countryhis financial administration would have been remark-,able ; in Portugal, it is almost miraculous.

, On a basis of sound finance an extensive pro-gramme of public works has been undertaken . Motorroads have been made throughout a country whichpreviously was almost inaccessible except by mule .In telegraphic and telephonic communications, ineducation, in railways, in harbour works, and in hous-ing, has been done. But we shall not assess Por-tugal'ss'debt to Dr. Salazar in terms of reinforcedconcrete .

CHAPTER TWO

C H A P T E R

T W 0

THE RECORD OF THE REPUBLIC

I T is the purpose of this book to describe whatPortugal is like to-day, rather than what she has

been like in the past. But it is not possible to discussSalazar without placing him in his historical context,and particularly in his context in recent Portuguesehistory. The only way to introduce Salazar is to givesome idea of the Portugal into which he was bornand in which he grew up ; we will go back to the lastyears of the Monarchy, when he was a boy beingeducated at aseminary in Upper Beira .

On May i8, 19o6, Carlos I, King of Portugal, didthat which led directly to his murder two years laterhe gave charge of the Portuguese Government to aman who represented neither of the two parties whichhad for long been alternating in power . For yearsthe Regeneradores and the Progressistas, each a poli-tical gang depending on demagogy, corruption, andcaciquismo, or the support of petty tyrants, had playedthe political game unchallenged . The country, saysthe Cambridge Modern History, was "governed bycontending factions of professional politicians, who

33

C

THE PORTUGAL

have no other care than their own immediate personaladvantage". , That is understatement. The politi-cians at San Bento had this care, that their machina-tions should not interfere with the oligarchy thatexploited the nation. The perpetual political puppet-show was no more than a drop-scene, a sordidscramble that concealed the unchallenged sway of therich, while the people starved and the nation driftedmore and more into the control of foreign bond-holders. The system was ostensibly Liberal demo-cracy on the English pattern ; in fact it was the worstkind of government by oligarchy .

This state of affairs was challenged in May, 19o6,by King Carlos, when he called to power a man namedFranco, which word means "Free". He had thetemerity publicly to express the hope that this manmight prove strong enough to administer the nationin the national interest. The immediate result wasa great storm of protest, and the redoubling of effortsto secure the overthrow of the Monarchy . Chiefamong the Republicans were the Freemasons of thePortuguese Grand Orient, who had long sought toinstall a completely Masonic oligarchy, and whoseorganisation was both formidable and extensive . Inthe elections of August, four important Republicandeputies were returned to the Cortes, includingAntonio Jose de Almeida, who had led the Masonicrevolution in Oporto in 189i, and Affonso Costa,leader of the Carbonarios, the terrorist forces ofMasonry, and of the " White Ants ", his own parti-cular organisation, editor of the Republican news-paper 0 Mundo, and probably the most unscrupulousdemagogue that Portugal has ever known. By May

34

OF SALAZAR

1907, there was complete political deadlock, and theKing was faced with the alternatives of dismissingFranco or dissolving the Cortes . On May loth he dis-solved the Cortes, and Joao Franco stood alone, themost hated man in Lisbon .

He at once embarked on a programme of reform .Despite all opposition, something was achieved. Thebudgetary deficit,, which for years had been steadilyincreasing, was diminished, and a relatively honestadministration brought the national finances into amore promising position than they had known foryears. It was a dictatorship, in so far as the profes-sional politicians had for the time being been thrustaside ; but it was only a temporary dictatorship, sinceelections had been promisfor the A pril of the fol-lowing year, 19o8. And "all those whose interestswere menaced by the proposed reforms, all the com-fortable rotativists and political hypocrites, all thosewho wished to gain credit by themselves initiatingthe reforms, and hated them when coming fromanother, were united against Senhor Franco," wrotean English Liberal who was in Lisbon at the time ." Never have party passions so blinded all the poli-ticians of a country to that country's interests as inthe violent and, one may well add, cowardly attackson Senhor Franco-it is scarcely surprising that heshould have been obliged to resort to methods morearbitrary, which of course drew scandalised cries ofrage from those who had made them necessary . . . .He had not begun by employing arbitrary methods .`The Republican party,' wrote a Portuguese journal-ist, `asked above all for liberty, and the first thing the'Government of Joao Franco did was to give it liberty.

35

THE PORTUGALWhat was the result? The Republicans declared inthe newspapers that they did not want the libertygiven them by the Government .' "2

Franco was governing in the name of no party orclique, but in the name of Portugal; and the journalsof Republican and Royalist, of Regenerador and Pro-gressista alike, were united, for once, in opposition tohim. But opposition more formidable than merenewspaper abuse was being marshalled to crush thisnew concept of government as a-public service. TheGrand Master of the Portuguese Grand Orient, Dr .Magalhaes Lima, went abroad to discuss with theheads of international Freemasonry what was to bedone. An address delivered by him at the CosmosLodge in Paris on November iq, 1907, appeared onthe agenda paper in these terms : "Portugal-decayof the Monarchy, necessity of a Republicanism-thefuture of the Republic ." He was engaged in his diplo-matic mission until the end of the year; all in touchwith Masonry knew what was afoot. On Decem-ber 25th there appeared in the Bulletin of the Associa=tion anti-maconnique de France a prediction by theAbbe Tourmentin that the overthrow of King Carloswas imminent. Five weeks later, on February i, 1908,the King, together with his eldest son, Dom Luis, wasshot dead in the streets of Lisbon . Five years laterthe political ang who called themselves the " Demo-crats " erected' a mausoleum in Lisbon in honour ofBuica and Costa, the men of the Carbonarios who didthe deed.

The brief reign of the young King Manoel openedwith the dismissal of Franco by Queen Amelia, whohad seen her husband shot down, and knew to what

36

OFSALAZAR

he owed his death .. " The Constitutional Monarchy,now more constitutional and less of a monarchy thanever, could offer the nation nothing but emptypromises," wrote Sir George Young, Secretary to theBritish Legation at Lisbon . " The Cortes at oncerelapsed into the frenzy of faction that has nullifiedits function ever since the end of the old routine rota-tivism in 19o6. No faction had any public forcebehind it, and no coalition of factions had any con-sistency, so that ministries followed one another atintervals of one or two months, or even weeks ." 3

Plans for the proclamation of the Republic pro-ceeded rapidly, under the inspiration of some few whogenuinely thought that therein lay the solution to thecountry's difficulties, and of Masonry, which wishedthereby to gather control of the country solely to itself .Dr. Magalha&Lima went again on a diplomatic tourin September 1910, conferring with the heads ofMasonry in Brussels, Paris, and Madrid . In the firstdays of October the Revolution took place ; the. Houseof Braganza .went into exile, and Portugal became aRepublic. " It was a thunderbolt for the non-in-structed public,' said M. Furnemont, Grand Oratorof the Belgian Grand Orient . " But we, my brethren,we knew. . . . We had the secret of this gloriousevent." " The work of the Portuguese Revolution isdue exclusively to Masonry," wrote Machado Santos,the young lieutenant who had led it after the unfor-tunate suicide of Admiral Candido dos Reis, on page34 of the Report which he published in 1911 : It wasnot a true boast, but it was very nearly true .

It is not to be denied that the Monarchy was effete ;it is not to be maintained that all Republicans were

37

THE PORTUGAL

f

dishonest men . But it is to be maintained that thatgang of Masonic Republicans that made the Portu-uese Republic in i g i o made it to secure a heemonyor themselves. I am aware that to attribute- all theevils of this time to Freemasonry is as absurd as theattribution by anti-clericals of all evils to the Jesuits .But I am also aware that few English readers have .,any idea of the part that is played and has beenplayed in the past in continental politics by inter-national Freemasonry, which seeks to reserve allpower to itself and to crush the Catholic Church, andwhich in thus seeking to exclude its opponents fromgovernment and to impede the practice of the Faith ofEurope represents the very negation of democracy .Those who wish for a fuller account of Masonic inter-vention will find it, fully documented, in Le PortugalRenait,4 by the Vicomte L6on de Poncins . In parti-cular, they will find in the appendix to that work,supported throughout by quotation from Masonicdocuments, a detailed exposition of the way in whichthe Lusitanian Grand Orient has aspired to thedomination of the Portuguese Republic .

In 191 o, then, that Masonic gang among the Repub-licans 'who chose to call themselves "Democrats"were installed in- power. They called themselvesdemocrats, but they were at once involved in conflictwith organisations of the working classes . "In igi r,the difficult first year of the Republic, Lisbon wasthreatened with a general strike, and local strikes wereepidemic everywhere. In January 19m, a revolution-ary strike in Lisbon was only quelled by the declara-tion of martial law and the arrest of over a thousandsyndicalists."5 And so on : nothing like it had been

38

OF SALAZAR

known before . They called themselves democrats,but they at once began a systematic and rigorous per-secution of the religion of the poor . The first act ofthe Republic, in i g i o, was to expel all the religiousorders and to confiscate their property . In 1911 alengthy decree was promulgated, giving detaileddirections regarding the persecution of the Churchand the penalisation of religion . Church propertywas confiscated, and in 1912 the Archbishops of Por-talegre and Braga were expelled from the country .The family was attacked by the secularisation of mar-riage and the institution of divorce . They calledthemselves democrats, but they maintained them-selves in power by the terror of the Carbonarios andby the cult of the bomb, extolled as the instrument ofliberty.

The record of the Republic between 191 o and 1926may thus be summarised in figures : during those six-teen years there were eight Presidents of the Republic(although by the 1911 Constitution the President wasto be elected for four years) ; and there were forty-threedifferent Ministries (although by the 1911 Constitu-tion elections were to take pace every three years, orfive times during that period, so that these changes ofgovernment were not even in appearance connectedwith the people) . The first Government of the Repub-lic did not last ten weeks ; the longest lasted little overa year. Revolution in Portugal became a by-wordin Europe. The nation's finances passed from a con-dition which, although bad, seemed redeemable, toone which in 1927 was apparently hopeless . Budget-ary deficits reached appalling figures, and periodicalborrowings to cope with them sent the national debt

39

. THE PORTUGAL

to an amount equally appalling. The cost of livingincreased twenty-five fold, and the currency fell toone thirty-third part of its gold value. Before Portugalleft the gold standard, in 1891, the exchange value ofthe Escudo (which is the Portuguese monetary unit)was 4.5 to the pound . In 1913 the rate of exchangewas still 5.25 to the pound . But in 1925 the averagerate was 131 .563 to the pound .

It is true that the Great War had intervened ; butthe Great War might have seen the rehabilitationinstead of the further collapse of the national finances,since it brought to the national credit the financialbacking of the City of London . A vice-governor ofthe Bank of Portugal has emphasised : "Unlike thoseof most other nations, the resources of Portugal werenot unduly taxed by the War-the crisis came fromwhat may be called the spirit of the War-that is tosay, the spirit of makeshift, of laxity, of squander-ing, of disorder ."6 A chief cause of the nationalbankruptcy was an inadequate revenue due tounder-taxation and corrupt exemption under theRepublic.

The financial question will be summarised laterthe only point to be made here is that the nation wasadministered before Salazar in the very short-sightedinterests of an oligarchy. We have noted the episodeof Joao Franco, who challenged the oligarchy. Therewere two further challenges made before it wascrushed by the national rising of 1926 : those ofGeneral Pimenta de Castro and President SidonioPaes .

In January 1915, a military pronunciamiento led tothe overthrow of the seventh Government of the

40

OF SALAZAR

Republic and gave power to General Pimenta deCastro. Lest this brief factual summary be taken formere pamphleteer advocacy of authoritarianism wewill quote again from Mr. A. F. G. Bell, who is aLibrarian of the British Museum, and than whom noliving Englishman has a more intimate knowledgeof Portugal . " There was a general breath of reliefthroughout the country, and by an odd paradox thisnew Government born of a military movement, this`dictatorship', this 'tyranny', proved the most

moderate Government that Portugal had seen sincethe Revolution of 191 o. With equal moderation andfirmness one measure after another was enacted inorder to bring about the long-dreamt reconciliationof all Portuguese. Churches were restored to the useof the faithful, officials arbitrarily dismissed were res-tored to their posts, the `White Ants' were sentabout their business, their so-called 'Committee ofPublic Safety' abolished, and finally in April ageneral amnesty emptied the prisons and allowed theeleven exiles of the 194 4 amnesty to return to Por-tugal. 0 but, say the Democrats, it was all so uncon-stitutional 1 Such a dictatorship 1 . Of course it wasunconstitutional. The Constitution has been soordered (Mr. Bell is writing in June 1915) that theDemocrats having installed themselves in power-and they had been in power in fact if not in namesince the Revolution-could never be dislodged byconstitutional means . Their majority . in

the Cham-

ber of Deputies was secure, their majorities in thetown councils throughout the country, and in theofficials responsible for returning the new deputies,equally secure . It became necessary to dissolve these

4I

THE PORTUGALbodies, by force if they would not go willingly . Butthe country which had suffered from four years ofconstitutional tyranny was delighted to ' have a littleunconstitutional moderation . In vain the Democratscried out that it was a dictatorship worse than thedictatorship of Joao Franco. If, answered common-sense opinion, the Government which empties theprisons, maintains order, and acts in every respect sofairly and moderately, is a dictatorship, then may allsucceeding Governments be tarred with the dicta-torial brush. Only so will the future of the Republicand of Portugal be secure ." 7Mr. Bell is, I repeat, an Englishman and a Liberal ;

he is not a political controversialist, but a distin-guished man of letters who has lived all his life inPortugal. He' wrote this judgment on Pimenta deCastro at Estoril, a few miles outside Lisbon, in June19 1.5, before the words " Fascist " and " Nazi " hadbeen invented . He knew exactly what he was writingabout, and exactly what Liberal Democracy meansand always has meant in the Iberian Peninsula : heknew exactly the value of that Portuguese politicalparty which called itself " Democrat ", which, in May19z5, engineered mutiny in the army and the navy inorder to displace Pimenta de Castro and restore itselfto power. `The Democrat party," he wrote, "willalways be known as the party which, under cover ofthe World War, raised itself to power over the deadbodies of its fellow countrymen ."7Sidonio Paes became President of the Portuguese

Republic on May 9, 1917, a fortnight after AffonsoCosta had become Prime Minister for the third time .Paes (whose name means " the country ") was a man

42

OF SALAZAR

j

with a great popular following and a strong patrioticsense; as Franco and de Castro had done, he chal-lenged that political hegemony which Affonso Costarepresented. That meant that he would be attackedand attacked again. He was also an ex-Mason (hisname in the Lodges had been brother Carlyle) . Thatmeant death. For seven months he tried to workthrough the 19 I I Constitution : it was not possible,least of all with Dr. Affonso Costa at the head of theGovernment. On December 5th he turned out theGovernment and proclaimed a dictatorship . It shouldbe remembered that in these days before Mussoliniand Hitler the word " dictatorship " was still used inthe sense in which the Romans used it : it meant thetemporary concentration of power in one man in timeof national necessity . The dictatorship of SidonioPaes had the support of the people ; it also had thesupport of the army, which, being a cross-section ofthe people and relatively immune from political brow-beating, is nearly always in Spain and Portugal thetruest indication of national opinion . Affonso Costawas imprisoned : if the President had been in dangerof assassination before, he was certain of it now ."Acclaimed by the crowd, he enjoyed a great popu-larity in the eyes of the masses of the country, whichquickly felt the happy results of his good administra-tion."' In a Latin and Catholic country like Portugal,the treatment of religion always provides a sure indi-cation of the extent to which a Government is genu-inely popular, and democratic . Sidonio Paes gaveustice to the Church which had been so relentlesslypersecuted by the anti-clerical Masonry of the Re-public. Diplomatic relations with the Vatican were

43

THE PORTUGAL

restored; the Cardinal Archbishop was allowed toreturn to Lisbon . But the rule of Sidonio Paes lastedonly a year. At midnight on the night of December 14,1918, he was murdered by a hireling of the Free-masons on the platform of the main station atLisbon, 9 and Portugal fell back into confusion foranother eight years .

From i g i g to 1926 the succession of "Govern-ments " became even more rapid and bewildering.Terrorism and political assassination became general .Three hundred and twenty-five bombs burst in thestreets of Lisbon (according to official police figures)between ig2o and 1925 ; the bloodiest night was thatof October 1g, 1921, when the Prime Minister,Antonio Joaquim Granjo, met his death, with manyothers. The affairs of the country were in completedisorder. It became increasingly difficult to borrowto pay interest due on previous debts . And beneaththe surface of chaos in public affairs, the people be-came more and more restless . The rule of theRepublic was anarchy ;;the freedom of the Freemasonswas terror. It was against this that the nation rose inMay 1926.

IITHE MAN FROM NOWHERE

The Nation rose in May 1926 : it was again thearmy that gave, expression to the anger and despairof the people. On May 27th a brief manifesto, signedby the veteran Marshal Gomez da Costa, who hadled the Portuguese Expeditionary Force to Flanders

44

OFSALAZAR

in the Great War, appeared on the walls of the garri-son city of Braga

"For men of dignity and honour the politicalcondition of the country is intolerable .

Portugal : to arms, for the liberty and honour ofthe Nation ! "

On the following day, a day which has becomefamous in the history of Portugal, men of every poli-tical opinion, Republican and Royalist alike, followedthe army in a march on Lisbon : it was a march ofpatriots against the oligarchy. It was a march fromthe north, from the capital of the ancient Kings, fromthe first Kingdom of Portugal from which Lisbonand the south had been wrested eight centuries beforefrom the Moors .

The Government, the sixth of Ant6nio da Silva,resigned on May 3oth; on the 31st the President ofthe Republic, Bernardino Machado, apostle of thebomb, renounced his charge in a letter to CommanderMendez Cabecadas, leader of the revolution inLisbon, who took power into his own hands untilMarshal da Costa formally, entered the city at thehead of the army on June 17th . Shortly afterwards,da Costa, feeling that his work was done, made overthe leadership to General Oscar Carmona : it is tothese three men, da Costa, Carmona, and Cabecadas,that the revolution that was to end revolution is due .Not a shot had been fired. By the middle of June thedrift of a nation to disaster had been arrested .

A brief proclamation, signed by Marshal da Costa,told what was the purpose of the coup d'etat

45

THE PORTUGAL

"The Nation desires a National Government,composed of its most able citizens, to brin g back tothe administration of the State its lost disciplineand honour .

" The Nation has had enough of the tyranny ofirresponsible politicians . It wants a strong Govern-ment, whose object shall be the saving of the coun-try and the institution of a real representation ofthe genuine, living, and permanent interests ofPortugal.

" United with you in the hope of the redemptionof our country, I proclaim the National interestagainst the fatal sway of politicians and parties,and I offer to the tormented country a strongGovernment, capable of presenting a brave face tointernal and external foes ."

The military junta was rapidly able to establishpublic order. But in the matter of constructive poli-tics the, gallant soldiers had no very precise ideas .Da Costa was rather vague in his diagnosis of thesituation : he was a soldier and no politician, but hehad professed Liberalism all his life, and was not ableto understand that Liberalism as known in Portugalwas responsible for the sad situation against which hehad led the army . Carmona was a man of longervision who asked for radical reform, and not only re-form, but re-formation of the political structure of thenation. He knew that if that were not forthcomingthe military coup d'etat of 1926 would be of no moreultimate effect than had been those of 1915 and 1917 .

46

OF SALAZAR

Fortunately for Portugal, his urgency prevailed andMarshal da Costa withdrew in his favour .The most immediate and pressing necessity was to

find .a man capable of taking charge of the nation'sfinances . The soldier who was first given respon-sibility for that department called together the vari-ous officials of his Ministry and (so the story goes)announced to them : I know absolutely nothingabout finances myself, except that my own are incomplete disorder ." So were those of the nation : andthe restoration of some sort of order to them-anapparently hopeless task-was necessarily the firststep to be taken in any work of national reconstruc-tion. It was decided that the best thing to do was toapproach the Professor of Political Economy in theUniversity of Coimbra . The Professor reluctantlyagreed to undertake the work : he arrived at hisMinistry on Friday, June 4, 1926. On the followingThursday, finding that he was required to work cir-cumscribed by restrictions which made work impos-sible, he took the train back to Coimbra. He wouldnot, and could not, assume responsibility unless hewere given absolute discretion. The Ministry wasthen given to General Sinel de Cordes, who was quiteunequal to the situation . In the autumn of 1927 itwas decided that there was no alternative but to applyto the Financial Committee of the League of Nationsfor a loan such as had been granted through it toAustria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and other countrieswhose recovery from the War would otherwise havebeen impossible . The sum of Ci2,ooo,ooo wasrequired as being necessary for financial reconstruc-tion and monetary stabilisation .

47

THE PORTUGAL

A League Commission visited Portugal andreported favourably; the loan should be granted, butits administration should be left in the hands of theLeague of, Nations, which should also conduct anexhaustive preliminary inquiry into the financial con-dition of the nation and of the Bank of Portugal .These conditions were immediately rejected by theGovernment and by popular opinion alike . Nationalsentiment had been roused by the recent revolution,and by the appeal to history of those res ponsible forit; and the humiliating pro posal that the nationaladministration should be subjected to internationalcontrol was not considered for a day . The scorn ofSenhor da Silva, of the Bank of Portugal, was typical :it was at Lisbon, he said, and not on the shores of anAlpine lake, that the crisis would be solved .

Meanwhile the Professor of Political Economy atCoimbra had been attracting some attention with aseries of articles on the financial situation in the Catho-lic newspaper As Novidades . When the Geneva loanhad been rejected, Carmona turned again to this man .His name was Dr. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar . Hehad had some previous experience of politics, and atfirst when approached he refused to take office . Even-tually he yielded, in response to an appeal to his senseof patriotic duty; but he only yielded on conditionof being given absolute discretion, absolute power inhis own sphere. If he was to be Minister of Finance,it was essential that he should be completely inde-pendent of any interested influence .

On April 27, 1928, he entered that Ministry for thesecond time . " I thank you," he said, addressingGeneral Vicente de Freitas, the Premier, at a meeting

48

OF SALAZARof the Cabinet on that date, " for having decided, afterdiscussion with the Cabinet, to entrust to me the port-folio of Finance, and also for the kind words whichyou have addressed to me. You must not thank mefor having accepted this responsibility, for it repre-sents to me a sacrifice so great that I would not makeit for any man merely in friendship. I make it for mycountry, simply as a duty dictated by my conscience ."He then proceeded to enumerate the conditions onwhich alone he undertook the Ministry ; they wereaccepted, and he holds that Ministry to this day,although he since assumed as well other and greaterresponsibilities .

It is apparent, therefore, that Salazar is not a manwho fought his way to power, and that he acceptedoffice as the nominee of no party or faction . He be-came a statesman reluctantly, and on his own terms .Always he longs for the academic quiet of his Univer-sity at Coimbra : by disposition he is a scholar, andeven a recluse. He is the homme d'etat malgre lui .Power is for him a heavy responsibility, an arduouspublic duty which he would greatly prefer to repu-diate; he professes himself willing at all times toreturn to Coimbra should it be wished . But too muchdepends on him. Practically alone he has set Por.tugal on her feet again . He has completely, and incredibly, rehabilitated the national finances . It isalways advisable to quote when making apparentlywild statements, so we will quote The Times" to saythat " it is impossible to deny that the economic im-provement recorded in Portugal since 1928 is not onlywithout parallel anywhere else in the world, but isan achievement for which history can show but few

49

D

THE PORTUGAL

precedents ". Moreover, there has been no repudia-tion of obligations, no artificial devices, no short cuts tosolvency. The Portuguese budget has shown a sub-stantial surplus every year since 1928, althoughordinary expenditure has always been met fromrevenue, without recourse to loans . The nationalcredit stands high in foreign markets ; the externalfloating debt has been completely paid off ; the Escudohas been stabilised ; the internal price-level has longbeen steady; industry prospers, and extensive publicworks have been undertaken . Taxation, althoughmostly indirect, is high, but at least it is equitable,which was not the case before . The underlying prin-ciple in all this has been, and is, the subordinationof all things to the national interest . A multiplicityof superfluous but salaried offices has been swept away .Inaccessible in his room in the Finance Ministry,under obligation to no one and fearing none, Salazarhas been the most relentless of administrators, andthe most just. He is without doubt one of the greatestFinance Ministers of our time, and has been generallyrecognised as such by a world that is less ready toapprove his achievements in other directions .

On July 5, 1932, he succeeded General Domingo deOliveira as President of the Council of Ministers, andin this capacityhe was chiefly responsible for the Con-stitution of 1933, and for the Corporative organisa-tion of the Portuguese Republic that was theninitiated. In the Portugal of Salazar we have some-thing that is unique in Europe . We have a Cor-porative State that is untainted with any form oftotalitarianism . Liberal individualism has beensuperseded, but freedom remains .

50

OF SALAZAR11

And the debt of Portugal to Salazar is the greaterwhen it is remembered that had it not been for himPortugal to-day would almost undoubtedly be a SovietRepublic ; that is, Portugal to-day would be dead . Hadthe military rising of 1926 effected nothing more thana temporary order, had Salazar not come from obscur-ity like Cincinnatus or St . Joan of Arc to save hiscountry, to arrest the, national drift, then the firstSoviet offensive in Western Europe would have comequite certainly from both sides of the Iberian Penin-sula simultaneously ; the subjection of Spain wouldhave been relentless and brief, and Europe mightwell by to-day have been in flames. That is conjec-ture; it may appear to be idle conjecture . But Europe,as well as Portugal, owes a great debt to Marshal daCosta, . the man who in 1926 took the initiative ; toGeneral Carmona, the man who saw a vision ; and toOliveira Salazar, the man who (the phrase is that ofGonzague de Reynold) " carries his power as aChristian carries his Cross " .

In

SALAZAR

Antonio de Oliveira Salazar was born in 1889 atSanta Comba Dao, a village in Upper Beira, betweenCoimbra and Vizeu . His father kept a little inn inthe village; his mother was a peasant woman . Theirson is a Portuguese of the Portuguese, schooled in ahard school, brought up in close contact with therealities of life and death, with daily knowledge ofpoverty and of Faith.

51

THE PORTUGAL

He was educated at the seminary at Vizeu, wherehe later taught; and he received the minor ordersthere before he decided that he was not called to the 'priesthood. At the age of twenty-one he left for theUniversity of Coimbra, where six . years later, after adistinguished academic progress, e was appointed tothe chair of Political Economy . , He held this chairfor twelve years before' he was called to the serviceof the State. " A Professor he was," says Gonzaguede Reynold, " and a Professor he remains . He worksat the affairs of State with the same rigorous methodand the same objectivity that he brought to thepreparation of his lectures, of his books, and of hisstudies. He does nothing without careful considera-tion. He will not be hurried or disturbed ; he shieldshimself from the importunate. Being at heart a shyman, he appears as little as possible in public. Deli-berately he has earned the reputation of being inacces-sible. He does not cultivate popularity ; he mistrustsit. Finally, he is fiercely independent, and withdrawsthe moment he perceives that anyone is seeking tooverride his judgment, to influence him, or to enlisthis support. These are the characteristics of the in-tellectual.""

He has remained always the student, the Professorof Economics; but he has remained also the peasant .To-day, when he guides the destinies of Portugal, hespends his leisure on the holding at Santa Comba Daowhere he was born, travelling between there and thecapital as an ordinary citizen, and hearing unrecog-nised the gossip of himself in the train or street . Heretains the frugality, the simplicity of needs, of, thepeasant. The room at the Ministry of Finance in

52

OF SALAZAR

which he works has thus been described by AntonioFerro : " A nondescript settee bearing a few cushions,a pile of dossiers on a fragile table that seemed to beemulatin the leaning tower of Pisa. Some shelveswith boos, and, if I remember rightly, only threeadornments on the walls : the image of the SacredHeart of Jesus, the famous sonnet of Plantin, ` Lebonheur de ce Monde', and the sympathetic portraitof an aged woman. In the centre of this humble room,Salazar's chair, with its back to the window, and hisdesk, on which are two or three sets of documentswhich have just been examined, the work he has inhand. Salazar, who wears his overcoat while heworks, to keep out the cold, is seated at the desk ."As President of the Council and Minister of

Finance, his salary-decided by himself--is 5,oooEscudos a month, or less than £55o a year; and helives strictly within this figure, regulating his per-sonal affairs as meticulously as he regulates those ofPortugal. The story is told of an occasion on which hebroke a leg in a fall. on the stairs at the Ministry, andthe injury, sustained in the course of his work, tooksome time to heal. It was proposed that the doctors'expenses should be met from public money . Salazarwould not hear of it, and sold a field at Santa CombaDao to meet the charge .

He has remained always a poor man : he has re-mained also the man who had thought to become apriest. He is profoundly Catholic, and comes of aprofoundly Catholic stock . " In some ways," saysGonzague de Reynold, "he reminds me of MgrIgnace Seipel, Chancellor of Austria, and even of Car-dinal Mercier." At the University of Coimbra he

53,

THE PORTUGALwas the leading member of a little group engaged instudying social questions in the light of the encyclicalsof Leo XIII, and of the work of the French Catholicsociologists, Le Play and de Mun and de la Tour duPin. His politics have always been governed byCatholic principles. The great encyclical Quadra-gesimo Anno of Pius XI was published in 1931, and itit easy to trace the influence which it had on the newPortuguese Constitution upon which Salazar was at'that time engaged, and which was promulgated twoyears later .

As a young man at Coimbra, he was attracted by amovement preaching " Integralismo Lusitano ", anationalist movement influenced by and analogous tothe Action Francaise of Charles Maurras. He wasinterested in anything that gave promise of a nationalawakening, of a revival of the historic Latin andChristian Portugal, of a challenge to the existing socialand political order, with its squabbling politicians andits down-trodden people. During the War he wasconcerned in the formation of the Catholic CentreParty, and wrote extensively on the need for reformin its newspaper, As Novidades ; but his particularsubject remained the study of economics and finance .

In 1921 he ventured for the first time into practicalpolitics, and was elected to Congress ; but he sat onlyfor a single day, returning at once to Coimbra in dis-gust, to meditate on the wickedness of party politics .From then until 1926 the support which he gave tothe Centre Party was intellectual alone. The story,ofhis career may be continued in his own words . " Iwas and I am a situle Professor of Finance at theUniversity of Coimbra. When the revolution of

54

OF SALAZAR

May 28th broke out, the military committee at Lisboncame to offer me the portfolio of Finance, having thequite false idea that to Professors such as me all thingsare known. I refused the invitation for that reason,knowing the distance that separates the intellectualfrom the man of action. But they insisted so muchthat in the end I went to Lisbon, and interviewedGeneral Gomez da Costa at Amadora . I excusedmyself on grounds of sickness and left for SantaComba Dao, where, a few days later, they came toseek me; and I then became Minister for five days .At the re-shuffling of the Ministry I returned toCoimbra, together with some friends from the Univer-sity who had also formed part of the Government .After the attempts of Commandant Filomeno daCamara and General Sinel de Cordes, they remem-bered me again, and here I am . It was DuartePacheco, at present Minister of Public Works, whothis time came to Coimbra to fetch me in the nameof the Government. As you see, the Catholics havealways been strangers to M7 political career, to thesesuccessive voyages to and om Lisbon ."13

That final sentence is important . Associated withthe Catholic Centre Party, his accession to power hadnothing to do with that association . When he cameto power he diverted its activities into CatholicAction; he would have no more parties in Portugal.He will tolerate no cliques or factions of any kindwhatsoever. A party in Portugal means not so mucha way of approach to common problems as a gang, acamarilla, pursuing its own ends, and engaged in per-petual struggle witother parties, to the exclusion ofall else. Salazar is influenced by no sub-national

55

THE PORTUGALinterest, but is concerned solely in a work of integra-tion, in a grand synthesis of all that is best in Portugal .into a government that is genuinely Portuguese .

He is profoundly Catholic : so is Portugal. He hasdone all in his power to preserve spiritual valuesagainst the rising tide of materialism . He has builtup a New State, the Estado Novo, on a foundation ofChristian moral principles. The Portuguese Pavilionat the Paris Exhibition must have made this clear tomillions of visitors . A writer in the French Domini-can journal Sejbt' 4 has described a visit to the Pavilion,and how he found . there evidences of " un redresse-ment economique, mais tout imjregne de spiri-tualisme ". " One feels," he continues, " that theProfessor from the University of Coimbra is notmerely `mindful of spiritual values', and that still lessis he influenced by the mths of Race, of State, or ofClass ; one knows that he' is Christian through andthrough, and that he governs a Christian people ."

He is profoundly Catholic . He has ended anti-clerical persecution in Portugal; he has suppressedMasonry, of which possibly the chief characteristicwas hatred of the Church. But he has equally refusedto countenance clericalism . As a youth at Vizeu hehad received the minor orders ; as a young' man atCoimbra he shared a room with a 'young priest,Manuel Cerejeira, who became Cardinal Patriarch ofLisbon about the same time as Salazar entered theservice of the State. It might have been expected thatthe Government of Portugal would soon become (inthe usual but offensive phrase) " priest-ridden " . Butnothing of the kind has happened . Salazar has keptChurch and State quite apart ; in that he has shown

56

OF SALAZAR

himself supremely wise . So will the Church thrivebest. I was astonished," says Gonzague de Reynold," to find that the Estado Novo has so far done rela-tively little for the Church ." Yet should she sufferpersecution in Portugal again, it will be said that shecontrolled the wealth and destinies of the country .Should the Estado Novo be challenged, it will be saidthat it was priest-ridden . It is probable (although Ihave not yet been able to confirm this) that theGovernment of Salazar has already been set down bythe Liberals as a tyranny of the Romish Church .

57

CHAPTER THREE

C H A P T E R T H R E E

PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF THE CORPORATESTATE

I

THE Portuguese State is defined by Article V ofthe Constitution of March 1933, as " a unitary

and corporative Republic, founded on the equality ofits citizens before the law, on the free access of allclasses to the benefits of civilisation, and on the par-ticipation of all the elements that make up the nationin the administrative life and in the enactment of itslaws ". The word " Corporative " means that thenation is regarded as an organic whole, and not asan accidental agglomeration of individuals ; that itis organised by means of " Corporations ", or bodiesrepresenting the different phases of its life ; andthat these Corporations, together with the other asso-ciations that men may have formed for various pur-poses, since man is a social animal, are made the basisof the political and administrative life of the country .By Article XVI,I "It shall be the duty of the Stateto authorise, unless prevented by existing legislation,all corporative organisations, for intellectual, social,and economic purposes, and to encourage and to assistin their formation ."

6 I

THE PORTUGAL

This corporative organisation has two aspects : theeconomic and social, and the political . It disciplinesthe national activity in a common harmony of inter-ests, providing machinery for securing equal Justicefor all concerned therein ; and, considered politically,it provides for the nation a form, of government whichcan best be described as an organic democracy. Underboth these aspects it lays emphasis on the Rights ofMan (although in that matter it has masters otherthan the prophets of the French Revolution) ; but itlays equal emphasis on what are conceived to be theduties of man .

In the present chapter the economic and socialaspects of the Corporate State in Portugal will be dis-cussed. The chief documents that will be considered,as defining principles, are the Constitution of March1933, and a series of Decree-Laws dated September23rd of the same year. Of these latter, the first, knownas the Statute of National Labour, which codifies what -are taken to be the fundamental rights and duties ofproperty, capital, and labour, and which defines thepart to be played by the State in regulating thenational economy, is very much the most important .This document is undoubtedly modelled on theItalian Charter of Labour of 1927 ; and the fact thatthere are many, if superficial, points of similarity be-tween the Italian and Portuguese regimes makes itthe more important that the distinctions should beemphasised. That is done in a later chapter : forthe present, they can be summarised by saying thatFascism is something Italian whereas the EstadoNovo is Portuguese, and that although Italy is aCorporate State, the corporatism of Italian Fascism

62

OF SALAZAR

is (in the French phrase for which there is no adequatetranslation) a corporatisme d'etat, while Dr . Salazarhas rejected etatisme in all its forms .

If it cannot be denied that Salazar owes a certaindebt to Mussolini, it is very apparent that his greatestdebt is to the social teaching of the Catholic Church .In particular the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, pub-lished in May 1931, will be found to have had a pro-found influence on the Constitution which was drawnup by Salazar for his country during the followingeighteen months and approved by a national plebis-cite on March 19, 1933 . This influence is so con-siderable that, purely as a matter of history, parallelphrases will be cited from the two documents . It isnot proposed to make the papal encyclicals the solecriterion of excellence for the work of Salazar ; thepresent brief study is not intended solely or evenprimarily for Catholics. But no account of himwould be accurate that did not recognise the extentto which his ideas are derived from Catholic teach-ing .

After a consideration of the principles and theorythat are embodied in the Portuguese Constitution andsubsequent laws, we will proceed to a summary ofwhat has already been achieved towards their realisa-don .

Article VI of the Constitution runs as follows

" It is the duty of the State(1) To promote the unity of the Nation, and to

establish order according to law, by definingand enforcing the rights and guarantees that

63

THE PORTUGALderive from morals, equity, or law, for the bene-fit of the individual, the family, the local author-ity, and other corporate bodies, both public andprivate .

(2) To co-ordinate, stimulate, and direct all socialactivities so that a just harmony of interests mayprevail, taking account of the legitimate sub-ordination of private interests to the generalwell-being .

(3) To strive for improvement in the condition ofthe least favoured classes of society, and toprevent their standard of life from falling belowthe minimum necessary to human subsistence ."

Here is a citation from the Constitution, with itsprimary reference to the moral law, and its primaryconcern for the poor, that cannot fail to recall theencyclicals . The function of the State is defined as" to co-ordinate, stimulate, and direct " ; whereasQuadragesimo Anno used the words "directing,watching, stimulating, restraining, as circumstancessuggest and necessity demands " ._

The point is expanded in Article VII of the Statuteof National Labour, and in Article XXXI of the Con-stitution, of which the text is as follows

" The State has the right and the obligation to super-vise the co-ordination and control of economic andsocial life with the following objects

(i) To establish a proper balance in the population,the professions, occupations, capital, and labour .

64

OF SALAZAR

(z) To protect the national economy against agricul-tural, industrial, and commercial ventures of aparasitic nature, or of a character incompatiblewith the higher interests of human life .

(3) To ensure the lowest prices and the highestwages that are consistent with the just remuner-ation of the other factors of production, bymeans of the improvement of technique, publicservices, and the national credit .

(i) To develop settlement in the national terri-tories, to protect emigrants, and regulate emigra-tion."

And Article XXXIV" The State shall encourage the formation and the

development of the national corporate economy . Itshall ward carefully lest the elements which com-prise it tend to establish among themselves an un-restricted competition such as is contrary to the justends of society and of themselves, but that they ratherare encouraged to collaborate with, one another asmembers of the same collectivity ."

The function of the State, as here defined corre-sponds exactly to that given to it by the Pope, whoinsists, that " all the occupational groups (which makeup a nation) should be fused into an harmoniousunity, inspired by the principle of the common good .And the genuine and chieff function of public andcivil authority consists precisely in the efficaciousfurthering of this harmony and co-ordination of allsocial forces."3

65 E

THE PORTUGALIt is further laid down by the Statute of National

Labour that " the State should abjure all industrialor commercial exploitation, whether in the form ofcompetition with private enterprises in the economicsphere, or in the form of monopoly, even if the resultof such enterprises is designed, wholly or in part, tobe used

forpublic services . It shall only be able to

establish or carry on exploitations of this kind in ex-ceptional cases, and to obtain social advantages supe-rior to those whicbh would be obtained otherwise .Similarly, the State cannot take a direct part in theadministration of private enterprises unless it is calledupon to finance them in order to obtain such results "(Article VI : cp. also the Constitution, Art. XXXIII) .The State recognises in private initiative the most

fruitful instrument of progress and of nationalleconomy" (Article IV). "The State recognises theright of ownership, and thee powers of using and dis-posing of property that follow therefrom, as a rationalnecessity deuced from the nature of man, as leadingto the greatest individual and collective effort inthe family and in society, and as one of the firstbases of social conservation and progress" (ArticleXII) .

Private ownership is a fundamental fact in the Por-tugal of Salazar. The right to own is one of the chiefof the rights of man as there conceived ; it is definedas fundamental at the beginning of the Constitution,together with freedom of thought and of meeting andassociation, and other rights upon which Liberal con-stitutions lay exclusive emphasis (Article VIII, 15 ; seenote 5, p . 155, below). It is a right that has beerndenied equally by Capitalism and by Socialism,

66

OF SALAZAR

which is the logical conclusion of Capitalism . Capital-ism means the concentration of ownership in thehands of a few, and therefore denies men the naturalright of ownership ; Socialism seeks to remedy thestate of affairs so produced by withdrawing ownershipeven from the few. Salazar would restore ownershipto many.

It is a necessary principle ; and, Salazar has said,If we are obsessed exclusively by the idea of wealth,

of production, we cannot be either for or against thelarge or the small owner : we must favour the onehere and the other there, according to geographical,climatic, and economic conditions. But-and this ismy point-if we do . not reduce the life of society toterms of the production and the utilisation of wealth ;if we find that that aspect of life, however ,necessary,should be tempered, completed or corrected by otherrealities-such as tranquillity, happiness, well-being,and the beauty of family life-then we can laugh atthe cut-and-dried formulas for higher productivity,and decide at once for a policy of breaking up; thegreat rural estates, and of systematically makingsmall-holdings in which peasant families can be estab-lished in their ownership .

" Such a policy is an essential part of my ideas ; butit conflicts, on the other hand, with the principles ofthose who materialise life, and regard man, as do theRussians, as a machine for producing and consumingwealth. So you see that the proper interest of States,and above all of the so-called Capitalist States, is tocreate the largest possible number of small proprie-tors, who, far from assisting communism and social-ism, will become a solid conservative foundation for

67

THE PORTUGAL

the Nation, and will oppose to the last all libertarianideas."4

Salazar goes on to describe what steps have been'taken and are being taken to carry out this policy ofencouraging the small proprietor ; let it be noted thatthey do not include expropriation of the rich . Three-fifths of the Portuguese are engaged in agriculturalwork, and this large-scale policy in favour of smallfarmers at once characterises the new regime . It ispopular . If the English reader finds it difficult tounderstand unless it is assimilated to some -ism thatis known to him, it is much more nearly true to sayof the Portugal of Salazar that it is a DistributistState than to say that it is Fascist. But it is betterto keep -isms out of the matter altogether, moreespecially as so many, just as they associate Fascismvaguely 'with castor-oil and concentration-camps,think only of Distributism-if they think of it at all-in connection with beer and the cult of the homespun .

The work that has been done in Portugal towardsthe creation of an independent and owning peasantrywill be referred to in the fourth section of this chapter .But it is not only in agriculture that the small manis encouraged and protected . In pursuance of its dutyof " co-ordinating, stimulating, and directing ", theState, by Article XXXII of the Constitution, must" encourage those private economic activities whichare most profitable in proportion to their costs, butwithout prejudice to the social benefit conferred bysmall home industries, or to the protection which isdue to them ". It is rarely that "the social benefitconferred by small home industries " has received con-stitutional recognition .

68

OF SALAZAR

g

The whole of Section III of the first part of the Con-stitution concerns the position of the Family in theEstado Novo . Article XII enumerates the claims ofthe family to the protection of the State : " The Stateshall ensure the constitution and protection of thefamily, as the source of preservation and developmentof the race, as the first basis of education and of socialdiscipline and harmony, and as a fundamental ofpolitical and administrative order, by its associationin the parish (freguesia) and in the municipality, aswell as by its representation in the local authoritiesgoverning these . That is, the moral importance ofthe institution of the family is recognised equally asits merely physiological importance as " the sourceof the preservation and development of the race ".It is "the first basis of education and of social disci-line and harmony ". " To our knowledge," saysenhor Pereira dos Santos, in his exhaustive treatise

on the Portuguese Constitution, " there is no otherconstitutional text on the role of the family in theState that is so comprehensive as . this . . . . Gener-ally, it is only its physiological function that is cited as,the sole reason that justifies the protection of thefamily by the public authority ." 5 He refers thosewho doubt to no less than six modern constitu-tions; but he was writing, of course, before thepublication of the remarkable new Constitution oftire .6

Article XIV of the Portuguese Constitution is this :

" With the object of protecting the Family, it apper-tains to the State and to local authorities

69

THE PORTUGAL(i) To encourage the establishment of separate

homes under healthy conditions, and the insti-tution of the family household.

(2) To protect maternity.(3) To establish taxation in accordance with the

legitimate expenses of the family, and to pro-mote the adoption of the family wage .

(4) To assist parents in the discharge of their dutyof instructing and educating their children, andto co-operate with them by means of public in-stitutions for education and correction, or byencouraging private establishments destined forthe same purpose .

(S) To take all effective precautions to guard againstthe corruption of morals."

The third and fourth clauses here seem . of par-ticular significance. The family wage is but anextension of the principle of the living wage . " Re-muneration ought not to be insufficient to support afrugal and well-behaved wage-earner," says RerumNovarum. "There is, by principle, a minimum ofwage or salary which corresponds to the needs of exis-tence," says the Portuguese Statute of NationalLabour. But to define constitutionally that taxationmust consider pre-eminently the necessity of providing the family with adequate means of subsistence isan, excellent application of the principle . that theState exists for society, and not society for theState .

The fourth clause of the above article, however, is70

OF SALAZAR

the most remarkable. The family, and not the State-owned and compulsory school, is the natural milieuof the child. The first right of parents is the right ofcaring for their own children, and it is a right whichin Portugal is recognised. In England it is increas-ingly denied. Elementary and secondary schools, andtechnical colleges, are . maintained in Portugal by theState, and every child is bound to receive at least anelementary education. But every parent is free todecide whether his child shall receive that educationat home, in a private school, or in a State school; andthe home is considered to be the normal place . Free-dom of education is another of those liberties guaran-teed by the Constitution under Article VIII; and it isa liberty which .in England is not enjoyed .

"The State," says Salazar, "is not in Portugal thechief educator; the educative function lies primarilywith the. family, with which the State collaborates,only substituting itself when the family does not exist,or when it is unable to undertake its proper function ."'

The family, then, is the primary social unit ; and,moreover, the independent, owning, family. We willagain sum the-matter up in the words of Salazar."The family which dwells beneath its own roof isnecessarily more thrifty, more stable, better consti-tuted. That is why great blocks of flats, colossalhouses for the workers, with their adjoining restau-rants and their common table, do not interest us . Allthat is all right for the chance encounters of life, forthe already semi-nomadic populations of our greatcontemporary civilisation ; for our independent. natureand simpler tastes, we prefer the small independenthouse, .inhabited by the family which owns it."7

7I

II

Two important points must be seized from the fore-going brief summary of Salazar's conception ofsociety and of the functions and position of the State .The first characterises his work throwghout : it is hisconstant and primary deference to the natural andmoral law, and his basic acceptance of Christian con-cepts of the nature of man and of society . It is madeabundantly clear in his speeches . "Apart altogetherfrom the intrinsic value of religious truth to the indi-vidual and society, we have need of an absolute ; andwe are not going to create that which exists outsideand above us with our own hands . We are not goingto arrogate to the State the function of decreeingbelief, of defining the principles of moral law . Weare led, therefore, to consider Power as morallylimited, and we have sought to avoid the error or thecrime of deifying the State, or Force, or Riches, orBeauty, or Vice-we do not challenge God."'

p

It is the moral law which is first acknowledged bythe Portuguese Constitution . 9 Man's right to ownroperty is " deduced from the nature of man ", as St .homas Aquinas deduced it . It is so throughout the

legal documents which embody the principles . of theEstado Novo . The work of Salazar has been toachieve a Christian and traditionalist re-awakening ." Certes, ity a d'abord un but economique," writesGonzague de Reynold, " puis un .but social, puis unbut national; mass, plus haut, au fond de l'avenue,comme la statue ou aboutissent toutes les lignes de la

72

THE PORTUGAL

OF SALAZAR

perspective, it y a le but moral. Le regime corpora-tiste est nettement spiritualiste ."The second point, which must be emphasised

before we proceed to discuss the practical details ofthe Portuguese Corporate State, is that it is to be sofar as is possible a spontaneous development . Theduty of the State, as has already been said, . is to "en-courage " : to " co-ordinate, stimulate, and direct" thecorporative organisation; it is not the duty of theState itself to create, or to impose from above . Inthe words of Article XVI of the Constitution, whichwe have already quoted (p . 61), the State must"authorise" : that is, it does not ngrmally take thefirst step . Its role consists essentially in making goodthe shortcomings of spontaneous initiative, of comple-menting individual effort . This function has neverbeen exceeded ; if it be thought that at times rathera large degree of State assistance has been requiredto complement individual effort, it should be remem-bered what manner of people are the Portuguese .Theywill never do to-day what can possibly be done

to-morrow : it is manna, manna, as with the Spanish .They are a strange, sad, melancholy people, character-ised by the saudade, the feeling that their days ofgreatness are past, that they have fallen and cannotget up again, that there is nothing for it but to singand to wait for to-morrow, manana, when they willbe great again. But it is always manna.

It is an indolence inherited of centuries againstwhich the Government of Salazar has to work . Never-theless, the State has reduced its own obtrusiveness toa minimum. It has abjured bureaucracy . The fifthclause of Article VII of the Statute of National Labour

73

ir

THE PORTUGAL

says : "The State shall reduce to the indisperasableminimum the sphere of action of its officials in thenational economy." Again, the preamble to theDecree-Law of July 8, 1936, declares that the Cor-porate State can only live if it is administered throughorgans as far as possible removed from the Portugueseequivalent of Whitehall, and as nearly as possible incontact with the different members of the corporatebody; and it goes on to provide for the institution bythe Minister of Commerce and Industry, of bodies" designed to co-ordinate, and, in the last resort, toregulate economic and social life in those professionswhich are directly concerned in export and import"that is, to supervise and ensure that "dust harmony ofinterests" and the "legitimate subordination of pri-vate interest to the general well-being " of which theConstitution speaks. "These bodies," says Fr. Muller,the distinguished Belgian student of corporativetheory, " will serve both as instruments for the exer-cise of State supervision and as a means of giving tothe Corporations a degree of autonomy . Their com-osition is designed to bring the representatives of the

State and of the interests concerned into direct col-laboration. It is a new idea, not to be paralleled in anyother corporative regime, and illustrates the desire ofthe Portuguese `dictatorship' to reduce State inter-vention to a minimum, and, even in the exercise of themost necessary control, to leave as much as is possibletoT

viate initiative .heultimate ideal is that the Corporations repre-

senting the various industrial and commercial activi-ties of the nation shall be entirely autonomous . " TheState," writes Salazar, "refrains from itself directing

74

OF SALAZAR

the Corporation, and only reserves for itself the right-which it regards as a duty-of ensuring that the lawis carried out, and that the interests of the communityare protected . To go further would, in its opinion,not only be to complicate the task of government, butto prejudice social life ."i`

This is a fact of the utmost importance, and is oneof the chief reasons why the corporatism of Portugalis essentially different from Italian Fascism . Pius XI,after briefly recapitulating Fascist theory, writes :" Little reflection is required to perceive the advan-tages of the institution thus summarily described . .but . . . there are some who fear that the State is sub-stituting itself in the place of private initiative, insteadof limiting itself to necessary and sufficient assistance .It is feared that the new syndical and corporativeorganisation tends to have an excessively bureaucraticand political character ." , ' . This is the chief criticismwhich, in 1931, he had to make of the Corporate Stateof Italy. It does not apply to the Corporate State ofPortugal.

The Corporate State is a misleading term ; it wouldbe better to refer to the Corporate Nation . There isno etatisme in Portugal; and Salazar has repeatedlydeclared that there shall not be . "During long con-versations which I had the honour to have withSenhor Teotonio Pereira, then Under-Secretary ofState for the Corporations, and with Salazar himself,again to quote Go nzague de Reynold, "both continu-a emphasised their strong opposition to etatisme.That for which they wish, that for which they areworking, is a corporatisme d'association, and not acor oratisme d'etat."3

75

THE PORTUGAL

The Portuguese Corporate State is growing organic-ally, like a plant; it is being tended from a ove, butthe seed from which it springs is deep in the soil ofPortugal. The historic Guild system survived in Por-tugal in a very real form until the nineteenth century,and was only finally su ppressed, in the name ofLiberalism, by a decree of May 7, 1834 . A politicalinvasion accompanied the Napoleonic invasion ofPortugal : what Salazar has described as the " alienand exotic plant " of Liberalism was obtruded on acountry exhausted by thirty years of invasion andcivil war. During the remainder of the nineteenthcentury Portugal was dominated by alien influences,and exploited to the full by English and Germancapital. But the true and historic Portugal was notdead, even if trampledled underfoot; and as the centurywore on, and confusion became steadily worse con-founded, she began to re-assert herself. The old Cor-porative ideal found more and more adherents as theeffects of political and economicLiberalism madethemselves apparent; and it received great stimulustowards the end of the century from the publicationof the great social encyclical of Leo XIII, RerumNovarum. By the side of this revival of the ancienttheory of economic organisation came a strong move-ment for political nationalism ., We have seen howSalazar as a young man was associated with these'tendencies . His work in restoring the corporativesystem to Portugal, seen in its historical perspective,becomes but a vindication of the historic Portugal .He has ended the long period of alien domination.

It would be absurd to pretend that the ancient Guildsystem had not outlived its usefulness in 1834, just as

76

OF SALAZARit would be absurd to press too far the analogy betweenthe ancient Guild and the modern Corporation.. Butwhat I have written remains true : Salazar has res-tored Portugal to herself. He has realised a spon-taneous and natural movement. That is partly whatis meant by saying that the corporatism of the EstadoNovo is a corj oratisme d'association . What also ismeant is that the corporate organisation is not im-posed from above, but encouraged to develop frombelow, from the people, from the Nation .

It possesses a degree of ada tibility, of suppleness,which will be made clear as this discussion of it pro-ceeds, and which is one of its chief strengths . It is nota system so much as a principle : the organisation ofthe nation is being modified to suit particular circum-stances, shaped to local conditions . It is growingorganically .

" Although we have not yet completely constituteda single Corporation," wrote Salazar in 1936, " thecorporative spirit is beginning to penetrate thenational economy, and that is essential for the successof the regime. Sometimes we have to make experi-ments with pre-corporative bodies before envisagingtypically corporative organisation, to open the way,as it were, rather than run the risk of compromisingan ideal by lack of preparation ."1 4 To M. de Reynoldhe said : It is essential to go slowly in organising} theCorporations, for it is first and foremost necessary todevelop the corporative spirit, without which theCorporations must risk degenerating, either into asystem of trusts, or into one of State bureaucracy. Forthe present, the State is forced into continual inter-vention, because it is coming into continual conflict

77

THE PORTUGALwith individualist opposition and with Portugueseapathy. We do not wish to introduce corporatismeverywhere all at once; we are proceeding as we can,beginning at the beginning, and taking account oflocal circumstances ."IS

" One cannot but be astonished," writes Fr . Muller," in studying the new corporative regime of Portugal,by the remarkable restraint shown inn the legislativedocuments which are . bringing it into being. Thethird section of the Statute of National Labour,devoted to the corporative organisation, is all con-tained in ten articles ; the decree concerning thegremios, or employers' associations, has no more; thedecree concerning the national syndicates is all com-pressed into twenty-five articles . The constitutionand administration of the syndicates have alone beentreated in some detail. We have scarcely any infor-mation about the organisation and internal adminis-tration of the employers' associations, and we knownothing at all about the Federations envisaged asintermediary in the corporative structure . On theCorporations themselves the Statute of NationalLabour provides only some very general prin-ciples.

"A bewildering brevity indeed, and a change fromthe cut-and-dried systems to which certain enthusiastsfor the corporative idea have accustomed us. Suchpeople like to display before our eyes the pieces of aningenious mechanism which they have invented, todescribe the unfailing precision of its various parts,to expatiate on the exact working and the precisebalance of its strictly ordered organisations, appar-ently without being aware that society is organic - that

78

OF SALAZAR

life does not permit of prescribed rules for its develop-ment. Corporative organisation is not assembled likea machine ; it is born, it grows and flourishes from theimeulse of internal and spontaneous forces which thelegislator can certainly `direct, watch, stimulate,, .restrain', but on which it is useless for him to attemptto impose his will ." ,'

Salazar is never afraid or reluctant to admit mis-takes, to modify, to go back, to abandon any schemewhich in practice proves unsatisfactory . But he willnever abandon the fundamental principles to whichin his speeches and writings he constantly returns .Perhaps one of the most important things about thePortuguese Corporate State is that it is still franklyexperimental ; and perhaps one of the most importantthings about Salazar is his dictum that " the Staterepresents a doctrine in action ". When first he tookoffice he said : " I know exactly what I want and whereI am going." He has proved that to be true . Eventhe Constitution of Portugal contains ample provisionfor revision. But in the fundamental principles onwhich the work of national reconstruction is basedthere can be no revision .

First among those principles is that Portugal shallbe Portugal. For a century she has suffered the en-croachments of English and German financial andcommercial interests, and of French political andintellectual influences : the francezismo . We havemade a general comparison between the Portuguesepeople and the Irish ; and both in Portugal and inIreland have the years since the Great War seen arevolt against alien domination, and the acceptancetoy the people' of new Constitutions inspired by

79

THE PORTUGALChristian principles equally as by a spirit of nationalpride.

a

" We have distorted the idea of wealth ; we havedivorced it from its object, which is to serve worthilythe life of man. We have put it into a separatecategory, apart from the interests of the communityand apart from moral concepts ; and we have ima-gined that the destiny of individuals, of States, and ofnations, is to accumulate goods without regard forsocial utility, without regard for justice in theircquisition or their use .` We have distorted the idea of labour, and we have

forgotten the personality of the labourer, his dignityas a human being ; we have thought only of his valueas a producing machine, - we have measured or-weighed his productive power and we have not somuch as remembered that he is a member of a family,that life is not in him alone, but in his wife, his chil-dren, and his home .

" We have gone further : we have dispersed hishome. We have called forth the woman and thechild as factors in production, less efficient but cheaper-as detached units, elements entirely independentof one another, without bonds, without affection, with-out a life in common; in fact,. we have destroyed thefamily. At one stroke, we have broken into thefamily circle ; and, having increased competitionamongst the workers by introducing the labour of

8o

OF SALAZARwomen; we have not accorded to each family insalaries the value of the industry of a good housewife,of the social usefulness of the mother of a family.

" We detached the worker from the natural sur-roundings of his profession : free from the bonds ofassociation, he remained alone ; without the disciplineof the association, he became free, but defenceless .Next we allowed him to ally himself with others andhe did so, by reaction, not in order to achieve unity,not with the aim of helping to co-ordinate all thevarious factors in the work of the production ofwealth, but in opposition to someone or something-in opposition to the State, which is the guardian oforder, in opposition to his employers, whom heregarded as a hostile class, even in opposition to otherworkers . . . . No objects of intellectual or moral ad-vancement, or of the improvement of professionaltechnique, or of insurance or provident work ; no spiritof co-operation-nothing but hate, destructive hate .

" We forced the State, at first, into an absolute pas-sivity, unconcerned, whether willingly or not, in theorganisation of the national economy ; and then intoan all-absorbing intervention, which regulated theproduction, the consumption, and the distribution ofwealth. . . . Those who, blindly driven by the logicof their false principles, have carried this to its con-clusion, have mounted the machine with a great showof system, with the apparent infallibility of scienceand advanced technique ; but the free worker, theMAN, has disappeared, caught up in the colossalmechanism that is without mercy and without mind .We have seen the workers mobilised like machines,shifted like cattle when the pasture fails ."

8 z

F

THE PORTUGAL

That is an indictment by Salazar of the Liberalinheritance. Society was disintegrated by Liberal-ism; Salazar seeks a solution by synthesis, by recon-struction, instead of by regimentation. He seeks torestore to society the groupings which are natural toman. A man lives first in his family, secondly in histrade. The family is to be protected and preserved .And men who work in different ways will form differ-ent professional associations, not so much for defenceof their professional interests as to make possible theircollaboration in the life of the community ; and notmore for that than for such purposes as the develop-ment of professional technique, the pursuance of-com-mon ideals, the protection of their fellows in times ofadversity and misfortune. Employers will have theirassociations, and workers theirs. Wider organisationswill co-ordinate into a Corporation all concerned in agiven branch of activity; and the various Corporationswill be co-ordinated in a Corporative Chamber, inwhich also national problems and public affairs willbe discussed by those with particular knowledge ofthem .

"It is natural that just as those who dwell in closeproximity constitute townships, so those who practisethe same trade or profession, in the economic field orany other, form corporate groups ." "In these corporations the common interests of the whole voca-tional group must predominate ; and among theseinterests the most important is to promote as much aspossible the contribution' of each trade or professionto the common good ." ,' These words might well bethose of Salazar, but they are not .

The Corporations represent no more than the82'

OFSALAZARdifferent occupations in which men are engaged,organised so that they may adequately collaboratewithh the State in promoting the national well-being .For the Corporations are the component parts of thenation, considered functionally ; and, since the nationis an entity, an organic whole, the interests of its com-ponent parts are ultimately identical with the nationalinterest.

Each Corporation, each occupational group, is res-ponsible for its own corporate life, as were the Medie-val Guilds. It must protect all those engaged in thebranch of activity with which it is concerned ; it mustsee that they are adequately rewarded for their work,it must defend their rights, it must provide for themin times of misfortune .

It is, as we have already said, misleading to pressthe analogy with the medieval Guild system too far,but there is this in common : that society is regardedas being divided, as it were, vertically, according totrade or profession or occupation, instead of horizon-tally according to social status or (what is worse)according to income . It is an elementary principlethat all idea of the class-war is to be repudiated ."The hierarchy of functions and . social interests is anessential condition of the national economy,

"'9says

the Statute of National Labour; and it should be seenat once that that is not inconsistent with the verticaldivision of society. So far as the Portuguese State isconcerned, there are not upper, middle, and lowerlasses; but there are men concerned in the cork in-dustry, men concerned in the wine industry, and soon. . In each industry " the hierarchy of functions"must remain; there will be authority and obedience,

83

THE PORTUGALbut not absolute authority and wage-slavery. Strikesand lock-outs and all such methods of class defenceare specifically declared illegal both by the Constitu-tion and by the Statute of National Labour.- Thereare associations alike of employers and employed ; butthe first purpose of these is not to defend the interestsof a class, but to collaborate in the interests of thecommunity. That is why it is misleading to refer tothe workers' associations as" Trade Unions ", with itsimplication of motives of defence ; the word "syndi-cate " is also misleading, as it has different associationsin different places ; but the Portuguese use it, so wemust do the same .

The Portuguese national syndicates, according toArticle IX of the Decree-Law which governs them,should subordinate their own interests to the inter-

ests of the national economy, in collaboration with theState and with the higher organs of production and oflabour ". The key principle in all corporative theoryis the principle of the common good .

The national syndicates group together the em-ployees and wage-earners in a given industry ; andtheir formation has from the start been left freely tothe initiative of those concerned, although they mustsecure Government recognition, and, of course, notmore than one syndicate will be recognised for eachindustry in the same neighbourhood . Their statutes,to receive approval and recognition, must expresslyrepudiate the class struggle, and declare readiness toco-operate with the other factors in the nationaleconomy. They do not vary much : the interests ofthe working-man are very much the same in all places .Whatever his trade and wherever he lives, he requires

84

OF SALAZARreasonable hours, reasonable conditions of work, anadequate wage, good housing, and so on. Conse-quently, the terms of the law governing the syndicatesare much more precise than is possible for those con-cerning the employers' associations, which vary con-siderably.Decree-Law No. 23,050 of September 23, 1933, lays

down that ordinarily no syndicate containing fewerthan a hundred members will be recognised ; that notmore than one syndicate for each trade may be formedin each district ;* that the capital town of the districtwill normally be its headquarters; that membershipwill not be compulsory, but that juridical personalitywill be granted to the syndicates, which will legallyrepresent all workers in its industry and district,whether members or not . Rules governing theirorganisation are also given. Part of the function ofthe syndicates is to negotiate collective labour con-tracts with the employers' associations ; but they arealso essentially concerned with the welfare of theirmembers. Article XII imposes on them the obliga-tion to set up syndical providential societies, to or-Fanise agencies for finding employment for workersin the trade with which tey are concerned, and toestablish and maintain schools for professional andtechnical instruction ; and " some syndicates havebuilt schools for their members' children, sanatoriaand creches, provided medical aid and medicines, andobtained good and cheap houses, out of those built bythe State, for their members. Subsidies in sicknessand unemployment have been provided . Technical

•

The " District "-Distrito-is a Portuguese administrative areacorresponding, roughly, to the English county .

85

THE PORTUGAL

classes, language courses, and general educational lec-tures have been given. . . . many public meetingshave been held, which have enabled employers andworkers to meet in a friendly atmosphere ." :11

The employers' associations are known asDecree-tawand are practically all governed by Decree-Law No .

23,049, also of September 23.1933 . According to thislaw, the gremios are to be created by ministerial ini-tiative and we are confronted with what appears to bea species of corporatisme d'etat. The greatest meritof this law is its elasticity ; no uniform regulations areprovided for the gremios, but each is to be adapted tothe particular conditions of the industry with whichit is concerned . And just as it is essential that parti-cular circumstances should be allowed to modify andto vary the application of an ideal, so it must beremembered that immediate but temporary neces-sities must frequently compel deviation from what isin theory best. The apparent cor oratisme d'etat ofthe first law dealing with the employers' associationswas partly a result of the conditions prevailing in theanarchy of the years before 1926, but, even more, itwas a necessary result of that international disastertechnically known as a " crisis'.', or " slump ", whichhit the world so soon after Salazar began hiswork.

Before the promulgation of the Constitution, somebranches of production had actually appealed to theGovernment for some sort of organisation. In thesardine industry, for instance, which is one of themost important in Portugal, markets were being lostto foreign competition and honest firms were beinghopelessly 'undercut by unscrupulous exporters of

86

OF SALAZAR

tins full of cheap but rancid fish. The victimisedfirms appealed to the Government, and Salazar, thenonly Minister of Finance (1931), carried out a thor-ough study of the industry and its problem, and issueda report. On the recommendation of this, report,, theproduction and export of sardines were strictly regu-lated, and a " Consortium of Sardine Canners " wascreated, of which membership was compulsory.. Thispiece of State interference saved an extremely impor-tant industry from ruin at the hands of foreign andunscrupulous competitors. Similarly, order was intro-duced into the port wine industry by compellingthe co-operation of all producers . The organisa-tions then set up were " pre-corporative " in type,and have since been revised as the Corporate Statedevelops.

When the legislation of 1933 extended order andco-ordination to all forms of national activity, it is not,then, surprising to find that production was at firstorganised by the Government, to which .productionhad itself appealed . But very soon we find a strikingproof of the desire of the Government for a true cor-poratisme d'association, in the preamble to a secondimportant Decree-Law about the gremios, that ofDecember 3, 1934 . This defends the previous law ongrounds of necessity; and continues : `The organisa-tion of employers, while conforming to the objectsprescribed for it and the duties imposed upon it bycorporative law, ought not normally to proceed fromGovernment initiative, nor attempt compulsorily toinclude all enterprises . It will arise from the initiativeof those who are themselves interested, _who willhave to furnish their own effort, assume their own

87

THE PORTUGAL

responsibilities, study the problems which concernthem most nearly, and enter into the role which fallsto them under the corporate organisation."

This is more in keeping with the rest of Salazar'slegislation . Groups that are optional and formed by,instead of compulsory and imposed on, the employersof labour, are now recognised by the Government .The only condition made is the necessary one thatthey shall include at least half of all those engaged inthe industry in question, 'and shall represent at leasthalf of the financial interest involved . Otherwise rivalassociations might spring up in competition, or minor-ities might secure recognition, and there would not beany true participation of that industry in the corpora-tive structure . Such associations will receive fullrecognition; that is, they will be accorded juridicalpersonality, and will legally represent all employersin the industry and district of their competence ; andconditions of labour agreed upon by them in meetingswith representatives of the workers' syndicates willbe similarly binding on all, whether members or no .Steps taken by them for the benefit of the industrywith which they are concerned shall be binding onall when sanctioned by the Government on the recom-mendation of the Corporative Council .

" Par l'orientation nouvelle qu'il vient de donner asa politique corporative, le Gouvernement portugaisadhere a is formule d'auto-discipline, en quoi nousvoyons 1'expression la plus sincere de l'idee corpora-tive," comments Fr . Muller. " De grand cceur nousapplaudissons a cette innovation, dont nous atten-dons, pour le progres de l'organisation professionnelleau Portugal, les plus heureux resultats ."23

88

OF SALAZAR

It is perhaps misleading to refer to the gremios as" employers' associations ", since they are groupingsby function : a man belongs to a gremio as being aproducer, a contributor to the national wealth, ratherthan as being an employer of labour. Nevertheless,an essential purpose of the syndicates and the gremiosis that they should meet together to draw up collectivelabour contracts, and to ensure good relations betweenemployers and employed. Disputes or differencesarising out of such collective bargaining come be-fore independent tribunals, under the administrativeauthority of the National Institute of Labour andSocial Welfare, against the decisions of which appealsmay be made, on points of law, to the Supreme Coun-cil of Public Administration. 24

Both national syndicates and gremios have aconsultative function, and must furnish advice andinformation on matters of their competence whenrequired. They have also a political function, whichwill be referred to in the following chapter .

The syndicates and gremios concerned in differentparts of the country in the same industr? are groupedinto regional or national "Federations' , and Federa-tions concerned with allied industries or pursuits arefurther co-ordinated in " Unions ". And all thesevarious groupings are finally to be integrated into Cor-porations . Being representative of the general inter-ests of production, the Corporations can establishamong themselves general and binding rules dealingwith their internal disci line and the co-ordination ofactivities, always proving that they shall have re-ceived the necessary powers from the syndicates orgremios, Unions or Federations, which comprise

89

THE PORTUGALthem, as well as the authorisation of the State ." (Sta-tute of National Labour : Art. XLIII.) It is importantto remember that the Corporations are to be so far aspossible autonomous, and that authority is to travelupwards, as it were, from the bottom, instead of down-wards from the top . The Corporations came last intobeing : they represent the final work of integration .Let this be remembered by those who attempt toohasty a comparison with Italian Fascism .

The purposes of the Corporation, as of the'syndi-cates and other corporate bodies, are not merelyeconomic; any more than the purpose of the medievalGuild was merely economic. But they go further thandid the Guilds in having a political function. TheCorporative bodies take part in the election of theMunicipal Chambers, the Provincial Councils, andthe Corporative Chamber. The Chamber crowns thecorporative organisation of the nation, bringingtogether representatives of all phases of national acti-vity to discuss and resolve their common problems,and to shape all the nation's work towards nationalwell-being and prosperity. This political aspect ofcorporatism is the matter of the next chapter, in whichthe Corporative Chamber will be discussed in detail .

It remains here to mention two further bodies theNational Institute of Labour and Social Welfare, andthe Corporative Council. The former, which is pre-sided over by the Under-Secretary of State for the Cor-porations, exists in order " to ensure the fulfilment ofthe laws protecting the workers, and of other laws ofsocial character, by integrating the workers, andothers taking part in production, in the co rporativeorganisation, as laid down in the Statute of National

9o

OF SALAZAR

Labour, according to the spirit of political, economic,and social renovation of the Portuguese Nation " .25The Corporative Council is the supreme body

through which is exercised the general supervision ofthe Government over the development of the cor-porate structure . According to the law , establishingit,' 6 " All the decisions of the Council, provided thatthey be not an infringement or an alteration of theexisting laws, are norms to be followed in the corpora-tive organisation, and they,are to be immediately putinto effect by the Ministries and departments con-cerned." Its members are the President of the Coun-cil of Ministers, two University Professors, and anumber of ex-officio representatives of various minis-terial departments. This Council was created a yearlater than the National Institute of Labour and SocialWelfare : and it seems possible that a little wideningof the scope of that Institute might have made it un-necessary, so avoiding the creation of an extra bodythat has no representatives of the Corporations uponit. But no doubt the Portuguese know best .

Having described the Portuguese Corporate State asit exists on paper, some mention must be made of whathas already been done towards translating it intoreality. I say already because the Estado Novo is com-ing into being surely but gradually . Plans for edu-cating illiterate millions overnight, for bringing about

. 9I

THE PORTUGAL

an unheard of prosperity in the course of a few days,have always characterised Liberal and " progressive "regimes in the Peninsula ; we have the example of thevast promises, so soon confounded, made by theSpanish Republicans in 1931 . Or again, there wasvery soon a bitter irony about the rhetorical proclama-tion issued to the Portuguese people by the newRepublican Government on October 5, 191 o. "Nowat last ends the slavery of our country, and, luminousin its virginal essence, rises the beneficent aspirationof a regime of liberty ." And so on. The Republichad to give the people rhetoric, for it had nothing elseto give. But there has never been any rhetoric aboutSalazar : his promises have always been most guarded,and the realisation more than the anticipation . Firstand foremost he is a realist he is one of the very fewpoliticians who have never allowed themselves to bemesmerised by words. " All one hears to-day on thesubject of liberty," he has written, " or of Parliament,or democracy, or about the rights of the people andthe brotherhood of man-all that has been stan-dardised to such an extent that we shall soon be ableto buy speeches ready-made to suit all occasions, aswe can already buy love-letters."

" Wisely inoculated against the disease of extremeideologies," writes M. Maeterlinck of him, " he admitsnothing that will not stand the test of daily experi-ence. His mind is a veritable laboratory, where dis-tilled Utopias are made practical . 1127 To quote his ownwords again, " The Portuguese Republic is a Cor-porate State by definition, but that does not mean tosay that the corporative organisation is already real-ised wherever we have decided that it is possible and

92

OF SALAZAR

desirable. Far from it : we can have no rapid advance,but a slow and sure progress, as we are trying out anew system which has not yet been used sufficientlyto make it possible to proceed without extreme cau-tion."2 Or again, in 1934 : " We are aware that thereare grave errors in our economic and social organisa-tion-unjust inequalities, imperfections, misery, falsi-ties, and contradictions-and we have got to remedythem, or wipe them out. It is for that that we continueour revolution ; but our revolution, if it is to be lasting,cannot destroy that upon which it is based-the fun-damental principles; founded in the labour and thesufferings of past generations, the great realities ofsocial life."'9 And in his famous speech of July 30,1930 : " Because we are embodying our ideas in a Con-stitution, we must not jump to the conclusion that theremedy for all political evils is found . . . It is not aprogramme for angels."

The reconstruction of Portugal has been and isbeing a slow matter of trial and error and patientendeavour, guided throughout by those social prin-ciples which we have tried to set out in the foregoingpages. Nevertheless, very considerable progress hasbeen made, under the guidance of Salazar and hisMinisters, among whom should Dr . Pedro TeotonioPereira be especially mentioned .

The organisation of industry and commerce wasundertaken first, being the most intricate as well as themost urgent necessity. The organisation began at thebottom : national syndicates and gremios came first.We have seen how in the case of the latter the initia-tive came in the first instance from the Government,as it had to; and how the workers' organisation was

93

THE PORTUGAL

the work of the workers themselves. Under the" Liberal " regime, all Trade Unions were regulatedby a restrictive law of May 9, 1891 ; but there werenearly 1,000 of them in 1930, before Salazar began hiswork. There were so many because most of them hadno more than a purely nominal existence . It wasdoubtful whether collective bargaining was permittedby the law of 1891, even in its widest interpretation ;at all events, the general interpretation of it, whichcertainly expressed its spirit, did not allow it . A decreeof December 21, 1924, anticipated the formation offederated unions and the establishment of principlesfor collective bargaining " according to the terms of afurther law " ; but this further law never appeared, andthe decree was no more than a mirage . One thing,at any rate, is evident : collective labour, agreementshad no binding force ; there was no authority to ensuretheir application, and apart from one or two isolatedand irregular examples; Portugal never knew them."3°The Estado Novo has meant Justice for the labouringPortuguese such as he had not known for over acentury.

Salazar has always put the working-man first. Hissyndicates are now fully organised and fully effective,and meet and collaborate with the organisations ofhis employers. The " Unions " and " Federationsdescribed above are also in existence in many cases ;but the complete structure of the Corporations is notyet achieved. Portugal is, however, more than half-way from liberal-capitalist chaos to corporate order. .

All that has been done in the various industries hasbeen described in detail, in English, by M . FreppelCotta, in his book Economic Planning in Corporative

94

OF SALAZAR

Portu~al. But there are two in particular, which con-cern between them a very large proportion of theworking opulation, in which particular progress hasbeen made the industries of fishing and agriculture .These well illustrate the work of the new regime .

For centuries the men of Portugal have been men ofthe sea : navigators and fishermen . The calling of thesea is rooted deeply in all the history and traditions ofthe country ; and the men of the coastal villages whocatch fish are living to-day the lives that their fathersand grandfathers have lived before them through theages. The new Government has not attempted toimpose the full rigour of corporative symmetry uponthis ancient industry : here are well illustrated itstwin virtues of adaptability and the avoidance ofbureaucracy. Particular plans have been made to suitparticular needs . A special law, dated March i i, 1937,concerns the fishermen .

Employers and purchasers, owners of boats andothers upon whom the fishermen depend, are grouped,as normally, into gremios. But for the men them-selves there are not syndicates on the national plan,but special institutions called Casas dos Pescadores,Houses of the Fishermen, to which their employersand the owners of their fleets are also obliged tobelong, and over each of which-there is one at everyfishing port-an official corresponding to the EnglishHarbour Master presides. The Casa dos Pescadores,then, includes both masters and men, and is designedchiefly as an organ of social co-operation. Its func-tions' are classified under three heads : the repre-sentation and defence of professional interests ; theinstruction of the young in the art of fishing ; and care

93

THE PORTUGALfor the sick, assistance for those who have suffered lossin storms, and general welfare work . It is somethingremarkably close to the medieval guild . And it is ofthe first importance to note the following clause in thelaw : "The Casas dos Pescadores have the duty ofguarding jealously all local traditions and customs,particularly those related in spirit specifically to menof the sea." "As far back as the first half of the four-teenth century," writes Freppel Cotta, " the fisherfolkhad formed admirable confraternities in which reli-gious and moral welfare was combined with economicand social relief, and the influence of which was stillvisible in the prevailing rules of fishing, and generallyin the customs of all the fisherfolk. Those confra-ternities were the accredited representatives of all sea-farers, and were designed to help their widows, thesick and the disabled, and even to make good the losscaused by shipwreck or damage . Their revenue wasderived from levies on catches or wages, collected anddistributed as fairly as possible in a true Christianspirit. The Casas dos Pescadores have retained asmuch as possible of those confraternities."3 ' Nothingcould better demonstrate the essential traditionalismof the Estado Novo, which is in reality not a "NewState " at all, but the ancient Portugal of history andthe centuries.

The whole spirit of the new corporatism, indeed,may be found in this particular application of it . Wesee its traditionalism, its sympathetic power of adapta-tion, its avoidance of bureaucracy, and at the sametime the recognition that the incorrigibly illiterateand unpractical nature of the Portuguese people, aswell as the need for co-ordination, makes necessary the

96

OF SALAZAR

creation of a modicum of officials . The various Casasdos Pescadores, scattered round the coast, receive con-trol from a central board, which administers theircommon funds, so that those in the less prosperouslocalities may be adequately equipped .

Fishing and agriculture, the two oldest occupationsof mankind, together provide the livelihood of a sub-stantial majority of the Portuguese . We have seenthat it is the intention of Salazar to give to Portugalan agricultural peasantry of independent small pro-prietors . With this purpose, extensive irrigationschemes have been undertaken in the Alemtejo, inthe basins of the Tagus and Sado rivers, . where therainfall is small and irregular, to make possible small-scale farming where it was not possible before . " Wehave already outlaid a million to initiate this irrigationpolicy," Salazar told Antonio Ferro, " and you will seethat peacefully and quietly, without any kind of vio-lence, we are carrying out a very far-reaching socialwork. What I say has been absolutely proved . Inthe north of Italy, for instance, and in the basin of theEbro and other districts of Spain, the division ofproperty by water has been successfully carried out ;and in the east and south-east of Europe, where, especi-ally since the War, a policy of distribution of the landhas been followed by cutting up large estates as onewould a piece of cloth, without regard for natural con-ditions, it is not difficult to see that that policy hasfailed."32

There is in Portugal, then, a large population ofsmall farmers and agricultural peasants-a popula-tion which is being extensively increased . These men,the great backbone of Portugal and, indeed, of any

97

G

THE PORTUGAL

a

country, are for the most part neither employers noremployed. If they are employers, they are employersonly of one or two labourers ; nor do they specialisebut practise general subsistence farming. It is evidentthat they cannot be fitted into the general corporativescheme of syndicates and gremios ; and this has beenrecognised from the beginning . In the very firstrticle of the Decree-Law of September 23, 1933,which governs them; the Casas do Povo, or Houses ofthe People, are called bodies for social co-operation,and not simply associations for the pursuance of pro-fessional interests, like the syndicates. The syndicatesalso aim at social co-operation, which in their case,owing to their greater compactness and organisation,is more easily, achieved ; but they are primarily pro-fessional associations, vocational groups . The purposeof the Casas do Povo is to provide rural centres forsocial purposes . They are created on the initiative ofthe people themselves, or by the Government whenit is thought necessary. All land-owners are obligedto contribute to their maintenance, and grants are alsomade by the State and by local administrative bodies .Their function is to provide social centres, assist theneedy, educate the ignorant (a colossal task), andgenerally to . raise the standard of rural life . Theywill make loans to peasants for agricultural purposesor for setting up small home industries, and provideunemployment relief, when necessary, in the form ofwork.

Provision has also been made for the creation ofspecial agricultural gremios, to protect the interests ofthose who produce for market, and these can , beorganised into Unions and Federations. - Commercial

98

OF SALAZARagriculture follows the general plan, and corporativeorganisation is well advanced in the production of theimportant products of wheat, wine, fruit, and rice .The same principles are being followed in everycase :order is being brought into the national economy bythat which is inappropriately enough called a " dicta-torship"-it is a dictatorship which has declared fora policy of laisser-faire, but which will laisser-faire notisolated individuals but organised professions, autono-mous corporations .

99

CHAPTER FOUR

C H A P T E R

F O U R

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE

I T is unlikely that those who are acquainted withthe great social encyclicals of Leo XIII and the

present Pope,. and whose knowledge of the PortugueseEstado Novo is no more than they have obtained fromthe previous chapters of this book, will have any seri-ous quarrel with the opinion of the American Jesuitwho recently wrote that " the whole, system is, in effect,an applied resume of, Catholic political philosophyand of the Papal . encyclicals " .~ The influence ofthese upon the mind of Salazar has already beennoted; and Fr. Muller finds a " direct agreement be-tween Quadragesimo Anno and the Statute ofNational Labour.2 The words of Pius XI in DiviniRedem ptoris, that " a sound prosperity is to be res-tored according to the true principles of . a sanecorporative system might well appear to be anendorsement of the work of Salazar, and of his Con-stitution in which the influence of the encyclical of sixyears earlier is so apparent .But there is more to the matter. Manoilesco3

rightly distinguishes three kinds of corporativism103

THE PORTUGAL

(i) Pure ; (2) mixed; (3) subordinate . In the first thecorporations constitute the sole source of the supremeleislative power ; in the second that power is sharedwith other sources, such as ' a parliament based onuniversal suffrage ; and in the third the corporations,with their organ of national integration, have only anadvisory capacity . To him the only true corporatives~' stem is that of the first kind ; and it is not possible toclaim Papal approval for any system of politicalmachinery. The Popes have not been concerned withpolitics, but only with the truths of religion and themoral principles which politics must respect, andwhich it is the business of the Church to maintain .The Church regards indifferently any form of govern-ment, so long as the essential moral rights of manare acknowledged and safe?uarded. According toLeo XIII in Immortale Dei, `Not one of the severalforms of government is in itself condemned, as noneof them contains anything contrary to Catholicdoctrine, and all of them are capable, if wisely andjustly managed, of ensuring the welfare of the State."

Liberalism is a condemned error, because it teachesthat " every man is a law unto himself ", and becauseliberty of thought is in obvious conflict with Revealedreligion. But the usual political concomitants ofLiberalism-the doctrines of Parliamentary democ-racy, of universal franchise, of political toleration-donot stand condemned. And if Salazar has introducedin Portugal a corporativism other than the third ofthe three types distinguished by M . Manoilesco, ifthere is in the corporative system any politicalsignificance, then it is something more than the cor-porative system of which Divini Redemjtoris,speakss

104

OF SALAZAR

And that is, in fact, the case. As has already been

pointed out, the Portuguese corporative system is stillin process of development, and it is not yet possibleto say what form it will finall take . But it is alreadyclear that the Corporative Camber is to have morethan a purely advisory capacity, whether or not it mayultimately be the sole legislative body. Moreover,there is every indication that it is to be the chief legis-lative body, and that the present undeniably authori-tarian Government will give place to a form of organicdemocracy working on a functional basis through theco orations . It is at least certain that Portugalw not revert to Liberal parliamentary democracy onthe English pattern ; and before going on to discuss thepresent system of government and the possibilities ofthe future, we will explain why that is certain, bydevoting a few pages to a brief historical survey of"democracy" in the Peninsula, and, in particular, in

Portug'al'Rather more than a century ago, civil war came to

both Spain and Portugal, where already the Napo-leonic invasions had wasted and destroyed . In eachcase the war was one between rival claimants to thethrone, one representing the traditional Monarchy,and the other (in each case a small girl) representingthe ideas of the French Revolution, and heading what,most historians term the Constitutional party . It wasscarcely a generation since the fall of the Bastille .Particularly in the seaport towns of the Peninsula,those who saw political or financial power within theirgrasp played upon the war-weariness of the people tostimulate revolution. Don Carlos in Spain and DomMiguel in Portugal were both followed by the greater

105

~3~~~~~~~~~~

OFSALAZAR

also sent a British naval force in the cause, underthe command of Captain Napier, R.N., an excellentBritish sailor and hero of the Syrian campaign of 1840,who on this occasion found it more convenient to beknown as El Almiral Carlos Ponza .

Similar steps were taken to preserve Spain from DonCarlos. The British Government lent £540,000 to thechild Isabella for military expenses, and gave permis-sion for the raising of ten thousand men in England.The British Legion, under the command of Sir Georgede Lacy Evans, did not exactly cover itself with glory;but Palmerston's " inter-meddling ", together withassistance from financial and commercial interests,was sufficient to ensure the success of political liberal-ism.- The full iniquity of this work is to-day apparent ;Spain is fighting again the same war, and the sameinternational interests, together with others moredeadly, are pitted against. her. That Portugal' is notalso bathed in blood is due to Antonio de OliveiraSalazar.

The war against Dom Miguel in Portugal, againstwhom, as Palmerston said in the House of Commonsin June 1829, " the civilised world rings with execra-tions ", continued, owing to the strange preferenceof the Portuguese for tyranny, until May 1834,when he abandoned his claims by the Conventionof Evora Monte. The child Maria da Gloria, atthe time at school in Paris, was confirmed on thethrone, and Portugal entered upon' a century of con-fusion. .

These are broad generalisations ; and it is easy forover-simplification to become mere historical distor-tion. It is historical distortion tosay that the Miguelist

107

THE PORTUGALwar was simply a conflict between national sentimentand foreign interests, in which the latter won . Butit is also historical distortion to say that Spain orPortugal in any way desired or were suited to represen-tative government. " One of the greatest mistakes ofthe nineteenth century," writes Salazar, with pro-found truth, " was to suppose that the English parlia-mentary system, English democracy, was a form ofgovernment capable of adaptation to the needs of allEuropean peoples ."5 It is a pity that that historicalfact is not clear to those well-intentioned Englishmenwho so bitterly denounce General Franco as a " Fas-cist " and a destroyer of liberty .

In Portugal, as in Spain, Parliamentary governmenton the English pattern has always meant a chaos ofcamarillas and caciquismo, corruption, rotativism andrevolution ; it has meant the creation_ of a class of pro-fessional politicians preying on the people : a travestyof democracy screening the machinations of pro-fiteers . That will seem like a sentence of excitedexaggeration until the political history of Portugal inthe nineteenth century comes to be written in English. English -electioneering methods of the eigh-teenth do not bear comparison with those of Portugal .The electorate in 1871 was less than seven per cent ofthe population, and was wholly controlled, not bybribes, as in the good old English fashion, but by local" bosses " .

The Portuguese of the years before 1926 cared littleand knew less about what went on at San Bento,, wherethe Cortes sat, and where (as he was always told) hewas the ultimate controlling influence. " As disorderfollowed disorder, he turned himself always more

1o8

OF SALAZAR

deeply towards his wife and his children, his house,his daily work, the field, the garden, the forest . Thesethings had been known to his parents, to his grand-parents, and to his ancestors through the ages, whohad successively dug the soil, cultivated the vine andthe patch of maize, reared children, suffered . . ."6What use was the " vote " to him? He was, and re-mains, an incorrigible illiterate, concerned only withthe realities of life, with hardship and the soil, andwith eternity.

" If Lisbon turns Turk to-morrow, all Portugal willwear the Fez," wrote the novelist Eca de Queiroz ..Too often has the voice of the Lisbon mob been takenfor the voice of Portugal. It was republican Lisbonthat made Portugal a Republic in 1910; and the rea-sons why Lisbon was republican have been told inan earlier chapter . Only a few months previouslyKing Manoel had made a journey through the coun-try districts of Beira " which in some places became atriumphant progress the peasants pressing eagerly towelcome their King .7 But Lisbon turned Turk, andPortugal accepted, unprotesting, unknowing . Forthe last Ministry of the Monarchy, the elections ofAugust 28, 1910, returned 14 Republicans among 1 44deputies. Of these 14, 1 o came from Lisbon. Andwhen the Republic was proclaimed, the millions ofPortuguese knew nothing of the matter, had no morehand in it than they had ever had in the affairs ofPortugal, and were concerned in it only in so far as thefantastic confusion into which Portuguese politicswere immediately plunged had its effect upon theirdaily lives .

The constant succession of revolutions betweenlog

THE PORTUGAL

19 ro and 1926 were exclusively political in character ;and were unnoticed outside Lisbon : the general dis-appearance of-administrative order and tthe generalrise in the cost of living continued steadily and with-out interruption . In r926 the country rose we havetold the story already .

The Government that then, in the name of -thenation, took control of affairs was a dictatorship . Itwas a dictatorship . in the Roman sense of the word :that is, a Government that had seized temporary abso-lutism to meet a national emergency . It was certainlynot a dictatorship in the modern sense of a tyrannyit represented a release from tyranny, from the in-tolerable tyranny of the professional politicians andthe local bosses. At the beginning of 1928, GeneralOscar Carmona.submitted his de facto Presidency tothe country ; on March 25th a popular mandate con-firmed him in his office . Four years later a new Con-stitution which had been drawn up under theguidance of the Minister of Finance, Dr . Salazar, wasalso submitted to the country for approval . Theplebiscite was taken on March r9, 1 933, and resultedas follows

Number of the electorate1,330,268Votes in favour1,292,864Votes opposing6,090Spoilt votes66oAbstentions30,654

The Government then ceased to be a dictatorship,since it became government through a popularlyapproved Constitution. It remained an authoritarian

110

OF SALAZAR

Government, and one that can best be described as aConstitutional Monarchy . ;

f

I say a Monarchy because that word means the ruleof one man. Salazar is a Monarch. In Portugal in1926, as so often in ancient Rome, and as ten yearslater in Spain, it was the army that gave expression tothe voice of ,the people. It was the army which gavepower to Salazar; but Salazar was none the less farfxom being the nominee of - a military Junta. Heaccepted office on his own terms, and since that timehe has proved himself to be in the truest sense theservant of his people. Kings are sometimes the pup-pets of oligarchy, but Monarchs are always the ser-vants of their people, and lose power when they ceaseto be so . A Monarch, by the support of the- massesof his subjects, holds in check all those who in thenature of things hold high office in the State, andcurbs the ambition of those who would turn adminis-trative power to their own . ends. A Monarch is theanswer to the ancient queson of Juvenal Quis custo-diet ipsos custodes? If he ceases to be the championof his peo le, the balance is lost ; authority passesrom his hands, and the country is governed byoligarchy ., ,

Portugal was governed during the nineteenth cen-tury, and during the first quarter of the twentieth, by aLiberal-Masonic oligarchy . But Salazar, who haseradicated both individualist Liberalism and anti-f)popular Freemasonry, is a Monarch : his rule is popu-ar and national, and he would have been houndedfrom Lisbon years ago were it not so, either by thepeople, or by the dispossessed, oligarchy appealing tothe chimera of democracy .

-III

THE PORTUGALTo-day, then, Portugal is governed under a Mon-

archical Constitution. But there is every indicationthat this is only to last until the Corporate organisa-tion of the country is fully developed, when the Cor-porative Chamber will become the chief, if not theonly legislative body, and the form of government willbecome one that can be described as organic democ-racy .'. The very fact that the present Constitutioncontains such ample provision for revision is perhapsan indication that it is not regarded as final .

We will, therefore, consider first the ConstitutionalMonarchy of to-day, and then the possibilities of thefuture. It will be interesting to see whether the RoyalHouse of Bragahza is restored . That may happeneither before or after the present form of governmentis superseded. There is no heir in the direct line ;but Dom Duarte Nuno, heir in the Miguelist line, is ayoung man, at present living in Austria. He is knownto be in sympathy with the work of Salazar . It is notaltogether improbable that in 1942, when the-term ofoffice of President Carmona comes to an end, the Con-stitution will be adapted so that Portugal can receivehim back; then will the historic Portugal be fully vin-dicated. General Carmona is an elderly man, and isin his second term of office, having been re-elected (byan even larger vote than before) in 1935 . It is unlikelythat he will stand again . It is not impossible that infour years from now we shall have the Royal Housesrestored both in Portugal and in Spain .

The restoration of the House of Braganza will nothappen, of course, until all memories of the old partyconflicts have been forgotten . The new Portugal doesnot tolerate political faction of any kind) it does not

112

OF SALAZARtolerate a Royalist faction. That is why, in November1 937, Paiva Couceiro, leader of Royalist disturbancesin 1911, 1912, and 1919, was expelled from the coun=try. But in a speech in 1932,9 Salazar paid a handsometribute to the memory of King Manoel and gave theimpression that, when Portugal is ready, she will callback her Kings .

II

The Constitution of 1933 is divided into two parts .The first concerns " Fundamental Guarantees " : itdefines the functions of the State, the rights of citizens,the importance of the family, the principles govern-ing the administration, and so on . In all that there isnot likely to be significant change. Part II concerns"The Political Organisation of the State " : it is thatwhich we now have to describe, and which, as we sur-mise, may undergo revision in the future .

Article LXXI, which is the first of Part II, declaresthat " Sovereignty shall reside in the Nation . Itsorgans are the Head of the State, the National Assem-bly, the Government, and the Courts of Justice ." Itresides in the Nation, as distinct from being attributedto " the, people " ; that is, the old atomic liberalism hasbeen replaced by a conception of society as an organicwhole. It will be noted that although the Governmentis accounted an organ of sovereignty, the CorporativeChamber is not so at present .

The Head of the State is the President of the113

H

THE PORTUGAL

Republic, who is elected by direct suffrage for a periodof seven years, and is re-eligible, indefinitely : a valu-able means for securing continuity of policy is thusprovided. By Article LXXVIII, " The President ofthe,Republic shall be directly and exclusively respon-sible to the nation for actions performed in the exer-cise of his duties. In that and in his magistracy heshall be entirely independent of any vote of the'National Assembly ." He nominates the PrimeMinister and other Ministers, who hold office subjectto his will, and is empowered arbitrarily to dissolvethe National Assembly " when the supreme interestsof the Nation so require " . He appears to hold veryconsiderable power .When we come to Article LXXXII, however, we

find that " the acts of the President of the Republicmust be counter-signed by the President of the Coun-cil of Ministers, and by any other appropriate Minis-ter or Ministers, failing which they shall ipso factobe null and void " . Three exceptions only are madeto this rule : no countersignature is required for theappointment or dismissal of the President of theCouncil of Ministers, for messages sent to the Na-tional Assembly, or for his own resignation .

Article LXXXIII provides for a Council of State toact in conjunction with the President of the Republicon all important occasions, and to consist of thePresident of the Council of Ministers (to whom it issimpler and less confusing to refer as the PrimeMinister), the Presidents of the, National Assembly,the Corporative Chamber, and the Supreme Courtof justice, and "five public men of outstandingability ".

1 1 4

OF SALAZAR

- But it is not difficult to see that real power in theState lies with the Government, and that real power inthe Government lies with the Prime Minister, despitethe fact that he can be dismissed at will by the Presi-dent. That is, real power in Portugal to-day lies withDr. Salazar.

" The Government," says Article CVII, "shall con-tsist of the Prime Minister, who may conduct theaffairs of one or more Ministries, and the Ministers ."Salazar to-day holds the Ministries of Finance, War,and Foreign Affairs, in addition to the Premier-ship.I°

`- The Prime Minister shall be responsible to thePresident of the Republic for the general policy of theGovernment, and shall co-ordinate and direct the acti-vities of all the Ministers, who shall be responsible tohim for their -political acts" (Article CVIII) . "TheGovernment shall depend exclusively onn the con-fidence of the President of the Republic, and theirretention of power shall not depend on the fatesuffered by their bills, or on any vote of the NationalAssembly "- (Article CXII). Members of the Govern-ment need not be drawn from the National Assembly ;indeed, " Members of the National Assembly or ofthe Corporative Chamber who accept ministerialoffice shall not forfeit their mandates, but may not sitin their respective Chambers" (Article CX) .

The National Assembly is the nominal legislature,but all legislation of importance comes in fact fromthe Government,. and there is every reason to supposethat the National Assembly is really intended if it isto be retained at all-as a check on the executive . Itsits for only three months of the year and any member

ii$

THE PORTUGAL

has the power to initiate any legislation that does notinvolve an increase in national expenditure or adecrease in national revenue ; any legislation approvedby an absolute majority of the Assembly is submittedto the President of the Republic for promulgation,which may be refused . And all legislation of con-sequence comes from the Government during thenine months of the year when the Assembly is notsitting, in the form of Decree-Laws issued underArticle CIX .

But if the National Assembly is not the normallegislative body, it

thesufficient power to act as an

effective check on the Government if necessary . :. Forthat reason it is probable that it will be retained. Inthe first place, if a law that has been refused promulga-tion by the President is brought up again in theNational Assembly, and, being voted on again,receives a two-thirds majority of the votes of allmembers, then the President cannot a second timewithhold his assent. And in the second place, aDecree-Law issued by the Government must comebefore the National Assembly when next that body isin session, and if ratification is refused, then it ceasesfrom that day to be valid .

The National Assembly consists of ninety memberselected by direct suffrage. An elaborate system ofholding the elections has been devised to obviate thepossibility of the formation of any political parties .There are no constituencies . At least thirty daysbefore an election, complete lists of ninety candidates,signed by at least two hundred electors, must be sub-mitted to the Government. The names on all suchlists submitted, if considered eligible, are published

z16

OF SALAZAR

in alphabetical order in the official journal, the Diariodo Governo, and in at least two other national news-papers. On the day of the election, voters cross offfrom these lists such candidates as they may not ap-prove, thereby voting for the rest ; they may not addnames that do not appear . The ninety candidateswhose names are uncrossed-off on the largest numberof lists represent the personnel of the new Assembly .It is never likely to be a very truculent body, since theGovernment can reject any candidate deemed ineli-gible, and among the requirements is a profession offidelity to the regime .

The Corporative Chamber exists, according to theoriginal version of the Constitution, " to report and togive its opinion in writing on all propositions or pro-sects of law which shall be presented to the NationalAssembly, before the opening of discussion there-upon " (Article CIII). By an amendment of March1935, the phrase " in writing " was deleted, and theChamber was required also to report " on all inter-national conventions or treaties " . In doing that it isclearly doing something more than providing tech-nical advice on specialised subjects . Again, the Con-stitution originally laid down that it should sit onlywhile the National Assembly was in session ; but an-other amendmenx of the same date added that " inthe intervals between legislative sessions, the Govern-ment shall be able to consult the specialised depart-ments of the Corporative Chamber on decree-laws itis about to publish, or on laws it proposes to lay beforethe National Assembly ". Both these amplificationsseem to show that Salazar intends that, when the Cor-porations are properly organised, and the Portuguese

I17

i

THE PORTUGAL

Corporate State has got beyond its present transitionalstage, the Corporative Chamber will be given widerscope. M. Freppel Cotta is of the opinion that " theNational Assembly will be dispensed' with, and theChamber will act as the adviser of the Government,which will itself legislate" .-

That is not the opinion of the present writer` : heprefers to think that the National Assembly will beretained, for reasons he has stated, but that the Cor-porative Chamber will become the chief 'legislativebody. It is difficult to say definitely what is theintention of Salazar. In his speech of January 26, 1934,he spoke of the present position of the CorporativeChamber as " transitional " ; and on December 9th ofthat year he delivered an important speech on thesubject, in which he said definitely that he does notpropose to abolish the Assembly without the pre-paration of a long experience " ; on the other hand heventured the opinion that in twenty years' time therewill be no purely political legislative assemblies left inEurope. We can but wait upon events . But -it is atany rate clear that Portuguese corporatism, whichgives the Corporative Chamber avoice in such mattersas the conduct of foreign affairs, does not fall into thethird of the three types distinguished by M . Manoi-lesco, and that it therefore represents something morethan the " sane corporative system recommended bythe present Pope.

"With a lively apprehension of its responsibilitybefore the nation-the embodiment of all the-mate-rial and moral achievements of past generations--theState is profoundly . national, popularwithout beingdemagogic, representative but anti `'democratic ,

ii8

OF,SALAZA-Rstrong but neither tyrannous nor all-absorbin ."12Those words of Salazar describe his intentions . e isagainst "democracy " in the sense in which Portugalhas known it : he has eradicated political liberalismtogether with economic liberalism. But the essenceof his Government is that it is popular, and. it is incon-ceivable that M . Cotta is right in thinking that he pro-poses to give all legislative power to a governmentcontrolled only, and slightly at that, by a Presidentelected every seven years . It is much more likely,whether or not the Assembly is retained, that the Cor-porative Chamber will be given something consider-ably more than a purely advisory capacity, even if itdoes not become the sole legislature, and that a realdemocracy will thereby be attained. The working ofthat democracy will be described in the next sectionof this chapter .

Those who disagree with or do not understandthe idea of functional representation, and prefer alegislative assembly on the lines of the modemEnglish House of Commons, would do well to re-member that in its fourteenth-century origins, theEnglish Parliament was a typically corporative body .That is to say, its members were not elected by a fewthousand miscellaneous citizens whom . fate hadplaced all within the same geographical area, butrepresented the Estates of the Realm, and were calledto advise the King on those matters of which, fromtheir positions in life, they had particular and personalinterest. The idea of corporative democracy is anolder thing, even in England, than the Liberal democ-racy that was for a century so tragically copied inPortugal.

I I9

III

On June 30, 1930, Salazar delivered a speech towhich the phrase " epoch-making " can accurately beapplied, and which is " re&arded as the Charter of theNew State " . 1 3 The occasion was the founding of theUniao National-the National Union-the organisa-tion of those who, renouncing all party politics, havepledged themselves to support Salazar in his work ofnational reconstruction . In this speech Salazar, whohas been Finance Minister for two years, but has notyet become Prime Minister, describes the principleswhich the future of Portugal will follow. It is the firstimportant occasion on which he has publicly asso-ciated himself with wider matters than his immediatework as specialist in economics and finance : it markshis emergence as the national leader .

He is more concerned with the political future thanwith social principles . " We know only too well, hesaid, " that if the dictatorship were to go, and to giveplace to the rule of faction, it would mean the end ofall the work of reconstruction, of all the possibilitiesof the present; the old causes of chaos and ruin wouldreturn, their destructive force accentuated by in-creased indiscipline, by exacerbated passions, by thecollapse of all material and moral defences against dis-order-even to the extent of undermining the condi-tions necessary to the very existence of society ." Itwas true ; a rigorous dictatorship was an absolutenecessity, if life was to be carried on at all, in the Por-

120

THE PORTUGAL

OF SALAZARtugal of those years following 1926. Every kind ofrevolutionary, and subversive activity was being car-ried on against the Government, particularly by Com-munists and exiled politicians of the old regime. Themost formidable attack Game in 1931, when riots anddisturbances in Madeira, Portuguese Guinea, and theAzores involved a good deal of damage and loss of life .The plan was to make trouble in these places and indifferent parts of the country, so occupying theGovernment, compelling it to send troops abroad,diverting other troops to the country districts of Por-tugal, and laying Lisbon open to a coup d'etat .Nothing came of it, owing to the fact that Portugalwas solidly behind Salazar; and The Times was frankenough to say : "It is common knowledge that thistrouble is the work of Portuguese politicians in exilein Paris, and particularly of some of the former headsof the Portuguese Grand Orient ."14

The Dictatorship, then, was an absolute necessity ;nevertheless, it was never regarded by Salazar as morethan a temporary expedient, to g1ve place to constitu-tional government so soon as the new Constitutioncould be drawn up, and so soon as the smoulderinganimosities of the old liberal party system should havesufficiently died down. "- here is no doubt, saidSalazar on the fourth anniversary of the national ris-ing, " that the dictatorship, even considered only as arestriction to the Government of the power to makelaws, is a political formula ; but one cannot say that itrepresents the lasting solution of the political prob-lem; it is essentially a formula of transition .

" Since dictatorships often arise from conflict be-tween authority and the abusers of liberty, and since

I?r 1

THE PORTUGAL

they generally have recourse to measures restrictingfreedom of association and the freedom of the Press,dictatorship is often confused with tyranny. That isnot its essence ; and if liberty is understood as the fullguarantee of the rights of all-to my mind the onlytrue conception, of it-then may dictatorship, withoutsophistry, rival in this respect many regimes which goby the name of liberal . But it is in any case an almostunlimited power, and this fact makes it a very delicateinstrument, which easily outlives its usefulness, andwhich can easily be abused . For this reason, it isimportant that it should not seek permanence."

That was in May 1930 : and in the following monthhe made the celebrated speech to which we must nowreturn, in which he outlined the theory of democracywhich was to supersede the dictatorship when condi-tions should permit of it .

" The political liberalism of the nineteenth cen-tury ," he said, created the 'citizen '-the individualisolated from the family, the class, the profession, thecultural milieu, from the economic whole to whichhe belonged-and gave him the optional right of tak-ing part in the constitution of the Government. Itwas there that the source of national sovereignty wasassumed to be .

" If we regard realities, we find ourselves confrontedhere with an abstraction-an erroneous or inadequateconcept-and it is in turning towards the naturalgroups necessary to individual life, and upon whichpolitical life really depends, that the point of depar-ture which we seek will be more surely found . Thefirst of these is the family, the irreducible social unit,the original .core of the parish, of the township, and

122

OF S.ALAZAR

therefore of the nation . Effectively protected in itsformation, its preservation and development, 'thefamily ought to exercise, through the voice of its head,the right of electing the members of the administra-tive bodies, at least those of the parish, for that rightis no more than the natural expression of the hearthsand homes, with the common interests which aretheirs .

Article XII of the Constitution (quoted on p . 69,above) consequently describes the family as " a funda-mental of political and administrative` order, by itsassociation in the parish and in the municipality,, aswell as by its representation in the local authoritiesgoverning these '. And Article XIX lays down that"the right of electing to the Parish Councils (juntasde freguesia) belongs exclusively to the families " .But by Article XXI, In the political organisationof the State, the parish councils shall take part in t1jgelection of the municipal chambers and provincialcouncils, and in the constitution of . the CorporativeChamber." Local administration is, in fact, the firstinterest of those specified in Article CH for representa-tion in the Corporative Chamber, and at the presentday it has more representatives there than any other .The family will thus be seen to, be fundamentallyrepresented in the Corporative Chamber : it has beencalled " the prototypal corporation " .

Continuing to speak of ` the natural groups neces-s to individual life, and upon which political liferely depends ", Salazar turned to " the moral and .economic corporations, such as the Universities, -thescientific academies, the literary, artistic, and techni-cal groups, the agricultural, industrial, commercial,

123

THE PORTUGAL

colonial, and workers' associations " ; vocationalgroups created, as he said, by the instinct of civilisa-tion, and which, in the words of Quadragesimo Anno," are considered by many to be, if not essential tocivil society, at least natural to it" . These, saidSalazar, " should participate by vote or by representa-tion in the Chambers, which we wish to be trulyre resentative of the Nation . Once more we abandona ction-the Party-to make of a reality-the Asso-ciation." And in Article XX of the Constitution weread : "All the component parts of the Nation shallbe represented in the corporative organisations,through their appropriate organs, and it shall be theirbusiness to participate in the election of the municipalchambers and provincial councils, as well as in the con-stitution of the Corporative Chamber."

" To sum up," said Salazar, " we seek to construct asocial and corporative State corresponding exactlywith the natural structure of society . The families,the parishes, the townships, the corporations, whereall the citizens are to be found with their fundamentaljuridical liberties, are the organisms which make upthe nation, and as such they ought to take a direct partin the constitution of the supreme bodies of the State .Here is an expression of the representative system thatis more faithful than any other." Or, as he wrote onanother occasion, " In the domain of political institu-tions the corporative organisation is fundamental . . .the more this organisation is developed, the more willthe State represent more faithfully than it does todaythe Nation itself, as an organic entity .." i s

So is the Corporative Chamber a body representative of the Nation. It is not merely a body representa-

124

OF SALAZAR

tive of producers' interests : it integrally represents theNation, producers and consumers alike . We havestated why we think that it is likely to become thechief legislative body in Portugal, and we have pro-vided the necessary data . The reader must decide forhimself whether he agrees.

I25

/

CHAPTER FIVE

I

C H A P T E R

F

V E

PORTUGAL IS NOT "FASCIST"

I

"D with

not, I beg of you, compare 'the Italian casewith the Portuguese," said Salazar to Antonio

Ferro .Portugal is not " Fascist " . There is a very great

deal of confusion about the meaning of that word .Owing to intensive and extremely effective propa-ganda from the Left, it has come to be generally andfalsely used to describe any form of nationalism whichwill not tolerate international Communism, in thesame way as it has come to be regarded by millions ofmuddle-headed Britons as vaguely synonymous withWar. But there is only one country in the world to-day that is Fascist, and that is Italy . Germany is notFascist; neither is National Spain. The reason, quitesimply, is that Fascism is something Italian .General Franco, when asked in a recent interview

whether he was committed to the ideal of the Cor-porate State, is reported to have replied : " That is; ageneral term, and may easily be misunderstood . Cor-poratism in Spain will grant to every citizen the righth~tto participate in the social and economic life of the

129

1

THE PORTUGAL

country on the basis of his labours . Our cor-poratism, however, will be indigenous, domestic,Spanish. It will be suited to the individualism of theSpanish personality. It will not be slavishly modelledon foreign patterns . It should be noted, for example,that the system . of corporations set up by Dr. Oliveira,Salazar in Portugal is Iberian, not continental . We inSpain will fashion our own type of corporation ."Earlier in the same interview he had said : " Obvi-ously, the doctrines of the papal encyclicals furnish asound programme of economic and social reconstruc-tion. The application of their principles, however,must be considered in relation to the genius and tradi-tions of the Spanish people ." ,

So with Salazar : the Estado Novo is not Fascistbecause it is Portuguese. But by saying that Portugalis not " Fascist " I mean three things more . I meanthat the Nationalism of Portugal is not totalitarianNationalism, in any meaning of that adjective, andthat the corporative organisation of Portugal is differ-ent fundamentally, as well as in many unimportantways, from that of Italy . I mean also that it is nottrue to regard Portugal in her external policy as anappendage of that artificial central-European blocwhich is known as the Rome-Berlin axis .

The political problem of Dr. Salazar has beengreatly complicated since civil war broke out in Spain.No government has better cause than the Portugueseto fear the danger of war spreading beyond Spain, andno government has more immediate cause to fearCommunism in the Peninsula. This being so, it wasimpossible for Portugal to accept without reservationall the proposals of the International Committee for

130

OF SALAZAR

Non-intervention. Because of this, and since thereare certain obvious but superficial points of similaritybetween the political system of Portugal and that ofItaly, whose interests in Spain are the same, she hasbeen accused of deserting her centuries-old Englishalliance in favour of Rome and Berlin . She has beenclassed as " a Fascist country " .Mr. A. L. Rowse, a distinguished exponent of

Labour's views, put the common but quite unjustjudgment on Portugal into one sentence in a letter toThe Times in August last year (1937). He was main-taining that Europe is divided into two opposing andhostile camps, consisting of the Nations of the Rightand the Nations of the Left . " In Portugal, even," hewrote, "it is a dictatorship of the Right which hasdeserted the old understanding with this country fora new one with Mussolini and Hitler ."

But in point of fact, nothing of the kind has hap-pened. Portugal is intensely jealous of her nationalintegrity, and will repudiate any suggestion of ex-ternal domination, from Italy or elsewhere, with thesame proud scorn with which, in 1928, she refused toaccept the Geneva loan . She is also intensely jealousof her now admirably administered colonial Empire ;and Germany has not troubled to conceal her designson the prosperous West African territory of Angola .If any further proof is needed that the judgment ofMr. Rowse was mistaken, it was provided at the Brus-sels Conference . Portugal has no important interestsin the Far East, and she was able on that occasion tomake clear that she is not subservient to the Rome-Berlin axis . Again, why has she not joined the Anti-Comintern Pact? It is because that Pact is a political

131

THE PORTUGAL

mutual-assistance pact. Portugal is vitally concernedto fight International Communism, but she is not con-cerned in the political machinations of Italy, Ger-rnany, and Japan.On July 4, 1937, a bomb was thrown at Dr. Salazar

as he entered a Church to hear Mass, by men of thekind against which General Franco is fighting inSpain. Two days later he delivered an importantspeech to representatives of the nation's defenceforces, who had assembled to congratulate him on hisescape from death . In this speech he emphasised thatthe British alliance must necessarily always remainthe basis of his country's foreign policy . " The mostvaluable item of our external policy is the age-old alli-ance with Great Britain ; much of what we have doneand intend to do still aims at tightening that bond .From time to time in Great Britain, certain persons,surely with no great sense of responsibility, irritatedby our attitude in other matters (i .e ., in Spanishpolicy), have placed their own passions or resentmentabove national and international interests, and haveinvited the British Government to reconsider thequestion of the alliance with Portugal . . . .

We have special interests of our own in the Penin-sula, and run risks which other countries do not share .We believe that public opinion in certain countries,especially in France and Great Britain, is ill-informedas to the true nature of the Spanish problem, and ofthe events that have taken place in that country. Somepeople do not believe in the Communist peril ; we, onthe other hand, feel it, see it, and fear that Commu-nism, with the connivance of other countries, may takeroot in Spain, and so destroy any chance of the Spanish

132

OF SALAZAR

people working out their own political salvation-forthere could be no national liberty or independentchoice in a State largely controlled by several Inter-nationals. Hence our uncompromising attitude fromthe very start : hence our opposition to any form ofnon-intervention which should prejudice the chancesof Spanish Nationalism, which stands between Por-,tugal and Iberian Communism; hence the odiumwhich we have incurred in certain quarters-we mayadd, quite justifiably ."

Portugal, then, unlike Righteous Russia, has neverattempted to conceal the fact that she is interested inthe Spanish issue. Salazar took the Ministry ofForeign-Affairs temporarily into his own hands onNovember 6, 1936, when it became apparent that thewar in Spain was to be a war of years rather than awar of months . His Government has done all withinits power to collaborate in securing genuine non-inter-vention : it has scrupulously observed all undertak-ings it has made, and the amount of war material thathas crossed the Portuguese frontier into Spain is lessthan negligible compared to the amount that pouredacross the Pyrenees all through 1937, unknown tothose who know Europe only through the BritishPress. In October 1936, repeated accusations made tothe London Non-Intervention Committee by theSoviet representative, M. Maisky, led the BritishGovernment to conduct an investigation of its own,as a result of which it reported to the Committee on .October 24th that it had been quite unable to discoverany evidence that Portugal had been the channel forthe conveyance of any provisions, money, or arms toSpain. From the very beginning, the Soviet has made

133

THE PORTUGALany real plan for non-intervention impossible. ButPortugal, who of all nations can least afford to bindherself to neutrality, has honoured her word through-out .

The Communist Party in Great Britain is at presentnoisy but negligible ; and it is difficult for the English-man to realise the extent of subterranean Communistactivity on the Continent, just as it is difficult for himto conceive that Freemasonry in Spain and Portugalis not the same respectable thing that it is in this coun-try. He is inclined to utter a cynical " Pshaw " whenhe hears mention of the subversive activity of theComintern; although he has by this time been suffi-ciently informed of the magnitude of the Communistcoup in Spain which was forestalled by the Nationalistrising. The plan involved the creation of a Federa-tion of Iberian Soviet Republics, to include not, onlySpain, Catalonia, the Basque Country, and theBalearic Islands, but Portugal as well .* The campaignagainst Portugal was made more urgent when warbroke out ; six million pesetas were paid by an agent ofthe Caballero Government to Portuguese a gents, andthe work of sabotage proceeded without delay . ThePortuguese Legation in Madrid was sacked to facili-tate quiet examination of its archives .' Next, inOctober 1936, revolutionary " cells " were planted ontwo Portuguese cruisers in a Spanish harbour, and amutiny was engineered when they returned to Lisbon .The Portuguese Air Force restored order in half anhour. In January 1937, nine bombs burst simul-taneously in the Ministerial buildings in Lisbon,planted there by six agents of the Okaba-a Balkan

•

See p . 2o, above .

134

OF SALAZAR

branch of the Comintern, which specialises in suchwork. Little damage was done, and the Uni&oNacional redoubled its vigilance. Finally came theattempt on the life of Salazar. It was not an isolatedoutrage, but an incident in a long campaign . Thenational solidarity of the Portuguese is proof againstany serious Communist upheaval, but attacks con-tinue. General Franco has successfully driven a Com-munist Government (in design, if not in name) fromthe . Portuguese frontier. And it would be well forthose in this country who denounce him so bitterly toremember that if he had not risen, and if InternationalCommunism had conquered Spain, it would undoubt-edly have proceeded to the destruction of Portugal ;and that, since Great Britain is bound by treaty to goto the assistance of Portugal should she be attacked,General Franco has probably saved Britain fromarmed intervention .The Anglo-Portuguese alliance, alleged to have

been abandoned, is in fact being at present strength-ened by both parties by all means possible . TheBritish are alarmed by the possibility of undue Italianinfluence in Nationalist S p ain ; if the Italians are tohave the run of Spanish harbours, Great Britain isdetermined that the harbours of Portugal, which com-mand the Atlantic approaches to the Mediterranean,shall continue to be at the disposal of the Royal Navy,as they have been for three centuries. Moreover, the

-alternative route to India and the East, by way of theCape, is well protected by three groups of Portugueseislands : Madeira, the Azores, and the Cape VerdeIsles . It is for these reasons that the Home Fleet ispaying a visit to Lisbon, and that a British naval

135

THE PORTUGALand military mission is visiting Portugal (February,1938) .Dr. Salazar's speech of July 6, 1937, reaffirming that

-the alliance of Portugal with this country is thebasis of her foreign policy, was not reported in theBritish Press. But as Bilbao, Santander, and Gijonsuccessively fell, and the Nationalist mastery in Spainbecame increasingly apparent, the general British atu-tude towards Portugal changed from one of rathersuspicious indifference to one of emphasised friendli-ness, the principal consideration, as have said, beingthe necessity of countering in advance a possibleadvantage to Italy in her bid for naval supremacy inthe Mediterranean . About the middle of September,for instance, The Times, which is supposed to reflectofficial policy, started rinting frequent testimony tothe friendliness of the Portuguese, which, as its Lisboncorrespondent was able to report, " created an excel-lent impression " . Dr. Salazar's-speech was reportedin its pages, more than two monts late, on Septem-ber 14th. It extended the cordial hand in a leadingarticle on the same day, and in another leading articleon December loth . It devoted much space, and halfa page of pictures, to the University of Coimbra, whenthat establishment began the celebrations of its four-hundredth anniversary. The first intimation of themission that is to be sent to Portugal came on Octo-ber 25th, and the official announcement was publishedon November 3oth . On January 24th The Times pro-duced another leading article, and another columnand a half from its Lisbon correspondent. It is to be _hoped that this visit will make it finally clear thatBritain's oldest ally is Britain's ally still.

136

OF SALAZAR

II

Portugal is not Fascist " .Whether that word means the defensive tyranny of

defeated capitalism,, or the particular form of politicaland economic organisation to be found in modernItaly,_ still Portugal is not Fascist . It. should havealready been made amply clear that Portugal is notFascist in the former, Marxist, and general under-standing of that word. We will proceed to show thatPortugal is not Fascist in the second and correct mean-in of the term . Germany is not a Corporate State,still less Japan, although she is denounced as Fascistfrom Labour platforms . Italy alone is Fascist, andwe are here concerned to contrast contemporary Por-tu al with contemporary Italy .

The obvious similarities are three in number . Italyis a Corporate State ; so is Portugal. Italy is inspiredby a strong nationalism ; so is Portugal. And Italyis governed largely by one man, the head of theGovernment, who is known as a Dictator; so is Por-tugal. But each of these similarities is superficial ;each of these matters is very differently considered inPortugal and in Italy .The difference in corporative theory can be ex-

pressed quite simply : the corporatism of Italy is acorporatisme d'etat, while that of Portugal, as we haveexplained, is a cor oratisme d'association . ItalianFascism began with the compulsorydissolution of allexisting forms of Trade Unionism ; in Portugal therewere no effective Trade Unions before the coming ofSalazar, and, as we have described, the Estado Novo

137

THE PORTUGAL

provided the worker for the first time with machineryfor collective bargaining, which was not previouslylegal, and for the protection of his rights . We havenoted the parallel between the Portuguese Statute ofNational Labour and the Italian Charter of Labourof 1927; but there are some very essential differencesbetween the two documents . Article III of the ItalianCharter of Labour runs : " There is complete freedomof professional or syndical organisation . But syndi-cates legally recognised and subject to State controlalone have the right of legal representation of thewhole category of employers and workers for whichthey are constituted." All of this can be found in thePortuguese Statute, except that key-phrase which Ihave italicised . Or again, in The Corporate State, byBenito Mussolini, we find the following : " The firstlegislative indication of the future development ofCorporations may be found in the Act of April 3, 1926(N. 563) . . . . Art. 43 specified the character andnature of the Corporation, which was defined as an` organ of the State' in the following terms : `TheCorporation is not endowed with civil personality, butis an organ of State Administration. The decreewhereby it is constituted shall specify its organisationand re~ulate the duties of its central and localoffices .' '3 We could not better illustrate the preciselyopposite natures of Italian and Portuguese corpora .tism. In Portugal, as we have already made clear, theCorporation is to be an autonomous body : we havequoted Salazar to this effect (p . 74 above) . But inItaly, according to Mussolini, the Corporation is to be" an organ of the State ". So can the matter be putinto two lines .

138

OF SALAZAR

To extend the contrast : Portuguese corporatism isintegral, while Italian corporatism is exclusivelyeconomic. Integral corporatism, according to Manoi-lesco, is that which " considers as corporations en-dowed with an autonomous organisation and theirown rights not only the economic corporations, butalso the social and cultural corporations of the nation,such as the Church, the Army, the Judiciary, the cor-porations of national education, of public health, ofthe sciences and of the arts ".4 The Italian Corpora-tions, to quote the Charter of Labour again, " consti-tute the unitary organisation of all the forces o fproduction, and integrally represent their interests(Art. VI; my italics) . But .the Portuguese Corpora-tive Chamber is representative of the whole of thenational life . It includes eight sections to which thereis nothing in Italy to correspond : there are represen-tatives not only of " the forces of production ", but ofthe Catholic Church and her missions, of the nationaldefence forces, of the judiciary, of public and localAdministration, of the Universities and Academies ofArchitecture, Music, and the Fine Arts, and even ofthe Portuguese Olympic Games Committee.

The contrast between Italian and Portuguese cor-poratism, then, is profound, and the similarities aresuperficial . Both are based on the principle that thecommon good is " more divine ", as Aristotle and St .Thomas say, than the individual good, and is differentin kind from, the mere sum of individual goods ; butin Portugal that principle is complemented by theprinciple that the State is the servant of .society .

That essential second axiom largely explains thedifference between Portuguese and Fascist National-

'39

THE PORTUGALisms. The nationalism of Portugal is a patriotism andpride born of her long centuries- of history ; whereasit is almost true to say that the exaggerated national-isms of Italy and Germany can be explained by their ;lack of history, as nations . As we know them to-day,,they became nations less than one century ago; andthe etatisme of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to-day is largely, though not wholly, due to their anxietythat unity and national pride should appear to the-world as their chief characteristics, since for centuriesthe peoples that comprise them had been so utterlydisunited . But Portugal is a nation as old as Europe,and her present frontiers have been the same througheight centuries. Salazar is inspired with a sense . ofresponsibility to history, to " our Lusitanian, Latin,and. Christian patrimony-"; and the Estado Novo is avindication of the historic Portugal . That must beseized as a cardinal point if the work of Salazar is tobe understood . His appeal is not an appeal to thevanished glories of the fifteenth century ; it is not apolitical exploitation of the saudade. It is an appeal.rather to tradition ; it is a responsibility to the livesand sufferings of the past generations which have pro-duced the present . As he sees it, the history of Por-tugal suffered an interruption during the nineteenthcentury, when the country was dominated by aliennideas and governed through alien institutions . Por-tugal for a period ceased to be truly Portuguese ; but in1926 that period ended, and the Portugal of historycame once more into its own .

But if Salazar looks back across one hundred years,Mussolini looks back across two thousand, to theEmperor Augustus, whose bimillenary has just been

140

OF SALAZAR

celebrated in Rome with such ceremony . Mussolinialso makes the appeal to history ;' but it is an appealto the history of Imperial Rome, not to the history-of the peasants and eo le of Italy ; and it is thepeasants and people ofItaly of whom he is the ruler.

In support, of that appeal, Italy must have also, theimpregnable navy, the vast army, the foreign adven-ture, the colonial empire, and so forth. Thesupremenecessity is that of proving to the world that she is agreat nation . For that must her people be reg~'-mented, must freedom be destroyed, must blood beshed. That is the supreme mission of the State .

In Portugal it is not so. The mission of the Stateis to serve, not to regiment . Liberty is respected,therefore; and the Constitution lists and guaranteesthe rights and liberties of the citizens .s Subversiveactivity is not tolerated, but freedom of opinion is res-pected . " Personally," writes Leon de Poncins, " I wasastonished at the extreme freedom with which oppo-nents of the regime loudly proclaimed their criticismsin the public places. All of those who spoke thus ofthe severity of the dictatorship seemed well aware thatif they said in Russia, in Germany, or in Italy a tenthpart of what they openly expressed in Portugal, thingswould go very hard for them."6 That was before thedays of the Spanish war . "It was symptomatic ofDr. Salazar's r€gime, according to The Times," that, at least until the Spanish civil war, under-graduates might freely criticise the Government inthe Coimbra cafes without fearing the presence of apolice spy at the next table ."

But the Spanish war has necessarily produced astate of semi-emergency in Portugal ; liberties have

141

THE PORTUGALhad to be restricted "for the duration" . We havespoken of the subterranean assaults that Portugal hassuffered at the hands of the Comintern ; and theEstado Novo cannot fairly be judged until the dangerhas passed. Defensive necessity, moreover, has com-pelled various manifestations of Portuguese nationalsolidarity that seem at first sight to confirm the impres-sion that Salazar is playing frog to Mussolini's bun .The eleventh anniversary of the Revolution, for in-stance, was celebrated on May 28, 1937, in a mannerreminiscent of similar occasions in Rome or Berlin.Fifteen thousand men of the Portuguese Legion, fol-lowed by five thousand boys of the Mocidade Portu-guesa-the Portuguese youth organisation, so omin-ously like the Hitler Youth and the Italian Ballilas-marched down Lisbon's Avenida da Liberdade andacross the Terreiro do Paco, the famous Black HorseSquare, while ten three-engined bombers and fifteenother fighting planes flew past overhead. But this sortof thing only began ten years after the launching ofthe new regime, and began, to the regret of Salazar,to meet the first serious challenge the-regime hadreceived-a challenge from without . With hell loosein Spain, and the Comintern active ; with the excitablePortuguese mind restless at the sight of war ; with theSpaniards fighting for Spain and their existence-there was no alternative. War in Spain began in thesummer of 1936. The Mocidade Portuguesa, mem-bership of which is compulsory for all boys betweenseven and fourteen, was founded then . In his inter-views with Antonio Ferro, which provide the classicguide to the mind of Salazar, he had said : " It is clearthat we neither can nor should follow the Italian sys-

142

OF SALAZAR

tern of absorbing the child into the State, or copy theexcessively nationalist and militarist organisation ofthe Ballila."8 Similarly, Salazar had long beenopposed to the foundation of the Portuguese Legion,a voluntary military organisation for the defence ofthe regime, which had lon& been urged by the moreunbalanced among his advisers . He only permittedit when it became essential for the security of theState, and as soon. as it was apparent that the war inSpain was to be a war to the death . Even so, it is byno means true that Portugal .is living in a condition .ofpermanent martial law, as Italy and Germany arepractically doin& .

" You cannot imagine how difficult it is to wake upour sleepy and apathetic race," said Salazar toAntonio Ferro. The function of martial music andmilitary display can vary ; and it is used to awakenthe torpid Portuguese to urgent realities, whereasMussolini uses it to intoxicate the electric Italian . Butthere are no spotlights on Salazar ; Mussolini delightsin the theatrical, but Salazar abhors it. His distastefor publicity is the despair of his officials . He attendstwo official banquets a year ; for the rest, he emergesinto the limelight as little as possible, speaks as seldomas possible, and leaves to President Carmona the busi- .ness of taking salutes, inspecting guards of honour,and so forth. The only uniform he ever wears is adark suit and a bowler hat .

The fact that Portugal during the last ten years hasbeen rearming has again led to the facile comparisonof Salazar with Aesop's frog. Of course Portugal is re-arming. Even countries so pacific as Sweden and Swit-zerland are being compelled to strengthen their

1 43

THE PORTUGALdefence forces, with all Europe, apparently treadingthe primrose path to the everlasting bonfire . AndPortugal, apart from the menace from Red Spain, hasgreat colonial possessions to defend, and listens withapprehension to the continual demands for Empirewhich come from Italy and Germany, those countrieswith whom her intimate co-operation is none the lessalleged .

For three years past, Portugal has been drawingupon her fortunately stable finances for rearmament,purchasing aircraft and modem naval units in England, and other equipment elsewhere . Here, as in allelse, she has to contend with pressure from Interna-tional Communism, which caused the failure of aCzecho-Slovak firm to adhere to its contract, and thesubsequent rupture of diplomatic relations, in August1937 .

In 1935 alone, £1,040,000 was spent by Portugal inBritish naval shipyards. Modernisation was clearlylong overdue : until 1936, for instance, the flagship ofthe Portuguese Navy was the ancient cruiser Vascoda Gama, which had been afloat for well over half acentury. When Portugal entered the Great War, theGerman paper Sim plicissimus published a brilliantdrawing with the title " The Portuguese Navy puts toSea ". That drawing well summarised the care shownfor national prestige by the Liberal-Masonic hege-mony that ended in 1926.

The Portuguese army, also, has been greatly im-proved by Salazar in his capacity as Prime Ministersince, in his capacity as Minister of Finance, he madesuch improvement financially possible . It is now avery different force to that recently described by the

144

OF SALAZARlate Brigadier-General Crozier in his book The MenI Shot . Its peace strength at home is Z6,o7o, and inthe colonies io,ooo : small enough figures, in all con-science, but at least efficient . On January 4, 1938, animportant series of decrees was promulgated, for thereform and reorganisation of the army. They testify,comments The Times, "to a courageous attitude bythe Government in the face of Service conservatism " .They also demonstrate that the Government is notkept in power by the army, as its enemies allege .

m

p

Perhaps really the most important reason why Por-tu is not Fascist is this : that Salazar is not a partypo tician. He is not, and never has been, concernedwith political manoeuvres . In Russia there is the Com-munist PARTY . In Germany there is the Nazi PARTY .And in Italy there is the Fascist PARTY. But in Por-tugal there is no party. Salazar is not the leader of aarty : he is leader of Portugal. The Uniao Nacional

is not a party. It is not concerned' with politics ; poli-tics have been banished from Portugal . It is the ex-pression of national support for the work of Salazar ;and the work of Salazar is to realise the nationalgood.

" I laugh hugely," he once said to an interviewer,"w$en I hear talk of the `Right' and the `Left' . Infact, I think that those words mean nothing at all .For my part, if you tell me that the Right stands forsocial discipline, for authority, for unity of direction-then I am of the Right. But if you tell me that theLeft means an attempt to improve the conditions of

145

x

I

THE PORTUGALthe lives of the people, to admit them to the cares ofgovernment, to raise their standard of comfort andeducation-then gladly am I of the Left. But thetruth is, in my opinion at least, that there are no rightsand lefts to-day; there are only plans of government,more or less practicable, that are either tried out ornot. If they are carried out for the reatest good ofthe country, then a national work is done, and all therights and lefts that there may be are therefore putaside."9"When I speak of a •`National Polity'," he told

Antonio Ferro, " I understand that the Nation--ourNation-is a living reality that we wish to preserve ;that the Nation is an organic entity, composed of in-dividuals differing in their abilities and in their occu-pations, which, dissimilar in themselves, make up asocial hierarchy ; that there are interests of this entityquite distinct from individual interests, and evensometimes conflicting with the immediate interests ofthe majority and, much more, with those of a groupor class; that, for the good of the national interest,the natural or social groupings of men must be recog-nised-the family, the society, the Trade Union, theassociation for spiritual purposes, the local authority-but that groupings of a political kind, organisedfor the acquisition of power and the domination ofthe State, need not necessarily be recognised . Thesethings are so self-evident that no party dares to pre-tend that it does not propose to bring about such anational polity, and all accept the foregoing principles-except such as concern themselves. Nevertheless,experience shows that they do not succeed in bringingit about, since in all national crises or in times of

146

OF SALAZAR

general fatigue provoked by the party spirit, one hearsthe cry that the party colours should be lowered infavour of a truly national Government .""'

He proceeds to emphasise that no Government cangovern truly in the national interest unless it com-pletely transcends the party spirit, and activelyopposes any tendency of the party spirit to return .

It must always be remembered that he is talkingabout Portugal, and that the Estado Novo is Portu-guese. "I have not a horror of parties in a generalway : I, have a horror of the party spirit in Portugal .England has lived for centuries under a party system,and has managed quite well so far . But in Por-tugal these groups have formed themselves roundindividuals or vested interests or seekers after power,simply in their own . interests . That is the sort ofparty spirit that must be ended if we are to achieveany real work of reconstruction!'"

' The more profound is our feeling of the organicreality of the Nation, the more necessary it becomesto thrust aside all factions, parties, and groups towhich individuals adhere according to chance circum-stances. There will be no more such politics, and twobenefits will result : for the Nation, the fact that theGovernment will work solely for it, and for theGovernment, the splendid liberty of being able toserve only the nation."Contrasting the Portuguese with the Italian and

other revolts against the party system, he writes : " Themilitary origin of the Portuguese dictatorship willalways give a special characteristic to our revolution .With us, it was not a party, a revolutionary force,which seized power ; it was the army, the voice of the

1 47

i

THE PORTUGALnation, which intervened to create the conditionsnecessary to the existence of a Government thatshould be both national and opposed to the parties .The armed forces do not constitute a party, do notrepresent a party, cannot depend on any party ." ' 3

The Portuguese experience has not consisted in theapplication by some triumphant faction of a pro-gramme previously prepared . What has happenedhas been that a completely disinterested Governmenthas been placed in power by the army, and preservedin power by the gratitude of the people . The breakwith nineteenth century liberalism has been com-plete : that which has arisen is called the Estado Novo,the New State ; but it is really very old, as old asChristendom and Kings .

Portugal, then, is not Fascist, for this reason : thatin Italy, which is Fascist, a party with a programmegained power and applied it . In Portugal, a man witha number of fundamental principles, and those' prin-ciples little more than the bases of Christian morals,was placed in control and fostered and developed atruly Portuguese Portugal .

There is no etatisme in Portugal : that is why Por-tugal is not Fascist . In rejecting Liberalism, Salazarhas preserved liberty. He has preserved Portugalfrom any form of totalitarianism. To quote himagain : " The State which would subordinate all with-out exception-its morality, its law, its politics, itseconomy-to the idea of nation or of race as repre-sented by itself would come forward as an omnipotentbeing, a beginning and end in itself, to which allexistences, both individual and collective, must besubjected, and would give rise to a worse form of abso-

r48

OF SALAZAR

lutism- than that to which the Liberal regimes suc-ceeded. Such a State would be essentially pagan, ofits nature incompatible with the spirit of our Christiancivilisation . . . .

" The (Portuguese) Constitution, approved by popu-lar plebiscite, rejects as irreconcilable with its ends allthat proceeds, directly or indirectly, from this totali-tarian conception. It begins by establishing the morallaw and justice as limits to its own sovereignty ; itobliges the State to respect its natural obligations to-wards the individual, the family, the corporation, andlocal government; it assures liberty and inviolabilityof religious beliefs and practices ; it acknowledges theright of parents to educate their own children ; itguarantees the rights of property, capital, and labour,within the social harmony, it recognises the Church,with the organisations which are proper to her, andleaves her free to carry on her spiritual work .

"It will one day be recognised that Portu al isgoverned by a unique system, which accords wit herown historic and geographical situation, quite differ-ent from all others; and we wish it to be clearly under-stood that we have not put aside the errors and wrongsof false Liberalism and false democracy merely inorder to adopt others which may be yet worse ; but, onthe contrary, to reorganise and strengthen the coun-try according to the principles of authority, order, andnational tradition, in harmony with those eternal veri-ties which are happily the heritage of humanity, theappanage of Christian civilisation ."r4

Salazar, then, is fully aware of his Europcan respon-sibility, of Portugal's du of preserving her share ofour common heritage of urope and the Faith . And

149

THE PORTUGAL

just as the corporative ideal synthesises all the variouselements in the State, and disciplines them into onecommon harmony, so does it regard western civilisa-tion as a wider, unity, comprising different peoples,different cultues, and different national traditions .International co-operation, and the subordination ofimmediate national interests to the larger interests ofEurope, are principles implicit in true corporatism.They are accepted by Portugal ; they are not acceptedby Fascist Italy . National self-sufficiency is constantlyemphasised by Mussolini as an essential part of hispolicy. But Salazar has written : " There is not asingle country in the world to-day that can say thatit is open to the free exchange of goods; nevertheless,ours is among those in which the restrictions are least .We regard as a great error that extreme economicnationalism which we see arising everywhere, takingno account of the natural conditions of existence ofthe peoples, and destroying, to the prejudice ofhumanity, the special characters of the variousnational economies. Far from solving the problemsof the day, the creation of, self-sufficient economicunits will serve only to create other problems in thefuture."1 5

The National economy of Portugal, which disci-plines towards the common end all private interests,must not be confused with the economic nationalismof Italy or of Germany . She regards herself and herforeign possessions as forming a single whole ; thecolonies are " provinces d'outremer ", and her first res-ponsibility is to them . But her responsibility toEurope is always acknowledged . It is acknowledgedin Article XXX of the Constitution, which says that

ISO

OF SALAZAR

" the State shall regulate its economic relations withother countries according to the principle of appro-priate co-operation ", equally as by Article IV, accord-mg to which " it is incumbent upon it to co-operatewith other States in the preparation and adoption ofmeasures designed to promote peace among peoplesand the progress of mankind" .

I

NOTES TO THE CHAPTERS

NOTES TO CHAPTER I (PAGES 13 to 30)

I de la Tour du Pin : " Aphorismes de politique sociale." 3rdedition : Paris, i93o, p. t6 .

z Divini Redemptoris, par. 32 .3 J. M. Keynes : The End of Laissez-Faire . London : 1927, p . 4t-4 cf. G. M. Godden : Conflict in Spain. "It cannot be too often

repeated that General Franco is Republican, and that he has neverbeen a Fascist. In the New Spain the state will be corporative, andwill follow on the lines of the Nuova Estado (sic) of Portugal ." (p. loo.)

3 H. A . L . Fisher : A History of Europe (One volume edition), p . 659.6 The Times : March 22, 1 933-7 Mihall Manoilesco : Le Siecle du Corporatisme. (Felix Alcan

Paris, 1936) . Quoted by M. Frep~ el Cotta in Economic Planning inCorporative Portugal : (London : Y. & S. King, 1937), p . 16, note .

s In 1935 there were 292 births and 176 deaths in Portugal for everyten thousand inhabitants . Both these figures are high ; compare themwith England's 147 births and 117 deaths . Between I9I3 and 1935the birth-rate in Portugal declined by twelve per cent ; in Englandduring the same period, however, the decline was thirty-nine percent .

(Figures quoted in The Tablet, October 2, 1937, from the Dossiersde L'Action Populaire.)

9 Douglas Goldring : Portugal. London, 1933,to A. F. G . Bell : Portugal of the Portuguese. London, 1915 .11 These Chronicles have been published in an. excellent English

translation, edited by Senhora de Castro e Almeida. (Allen & Unwin1936.)

12 The phrase is that of Mr. S. George West, lecturer in Portugueseat London University, from his excellent lecture on " The NewCorporative State of Portugal ", delivered at King's College, London,on February i 1937, and since reprinted.

Further details of the financial achievement of Dr . Salazar are givenlater in this book, but those interested are recommended to readProfessor Oliveira Salazar's Record, by Tomaz Wylie Fernandes(Lisbon, 1936 : in En lish), or La Renaissance Financitre et Econo-mi.que du Portugal, y Paul Lavagne, in the Revue des SciencesPolitiques, July-September, 1 935-

153

THE PORTUGAL

NOTES TO CHAPTER II (PAGES 33 to 67)

1 Mr. David Hannay in the Cambridge Modern History : Vol. XII,Chapter X.

2 A. F. G . Bell : op . cit ., pp . 185 -7-3 Sir George Young : Portugal : An Historical Study. (Oxford,

1917), p. 2 74-4 Paris : Gabriel Beauchesne et Fils : 1936. This book goes into an

immense amount of circumstantial detail, and among other thingsprints the text of Law No . 1,g1o of May 21, 1935, by which all secretsocieties were made illegal in Portugal, and gives details of the eventsleading up to that law .

5 Young : op. Cit ., p. 286.6 Senhor F . E. da Silva, in an address to the Soci6t6 d'Economie

Politique de Belgique : Brussels, December 1934. cf. also PaulLavagne in La Revue des Sciences Politiques, July-September, 1935, on" La Renaissance Financi6re et Economique du Portugal ". " Laguerre, qui imposa 1'entretien de corps exp6ditionnaires, is la fois enFrance et en Afrique, n'aurait meme pas, A elle seule, compromisdangereusement les ressources du pays, si l'ordre y avait 6t6 mis .La participation portugaise avait t6 financ6e par i'Atl$leterre etcette dette, port&e dans les comptes ,pour une annuit6 r6guh8re, auraitu eventuellement faire l'objet d arran&ements plus supportables .

Ees bons du Tr6sor (87 millions au 30 juln 1g1g, au lieu de 1,250 en1928) pouvaient encore titre consilid6s ."Mats les extravagances financi6res, inh6rentes a ha p6riode d'hosti-

lit6s, laisserent dans tous les pays une funeste semence d'impr6-voyance et de d6sordre qui trouva un terrain d'6lection au Portugal .Ce furent alors 1'abandon de tout contrble, l'accroissement du gaspil-lage, la predilection pour les solutions paresseuses, le fonctionnarismehypertrophi6, l'incoordination g6neralisee, la disparition des respon-sab1l1t6s ; tout cela, favoris6 par l'agitation incessante des partis .'

7 Bell : op. cit., pp. 21 3 -1 5-8 Leon de Poncins : Le Portugal Renait, p . 47-9 Ibid, pp . 47-9; Webster : Secret Societies and Subversive Move-

ments, p. 283.1o The Times : March 13. ;935-11 Gonzague de Reynold : Portugal (Paris, Spes, 1936), p . 270 .12 Antonio Ferro : Le Portugal et son Chef (Paris, Bernard Grasset,

1 934), p . 178 .This book, a French translation of a series of interviews given by

Salazar which was published in the Portuguese newspaper ,Diario deNoticias in December 1932, gives an admirable picture of Salazar andhis ideas . Antonio Ferro is now head of the Secretariado da Propa-ganda Nacional at Lisbon .

154

OF SALAZAR13Ibid, p. 104.

14 H: Ch . Chdry in Sept; July '937 .

NOTES TO CHAPTER III (PAGES 61 to 99)

1 This originally appeared in the Constitution as Article XIV . TheConstitution has been amended in its details on several occasionsreferences throughout this book are to it as it was after December 21,1936. It should be noted that the translation is the author's own, andnot official ; nevertheless he thinks and hopes that it may be regardedas accurate .

2 Quadragesimo Anno : par. 8o .3 Divini Redemptoris : par. 32 -4 Ferro : op . cit ., pp . 133- 4.3 Pereira dos Santos : Un Etat Corporatif : La Constitution Sociale

et Politique Portugaise. Paris : REcueil Sirey, 1935, p. 56 . This isa long and documented study of the Portu guese Constitution, writtenas a thesis for a Doctorate at Louvain, and must be valuable to anywho would study the Estado Novo in detail . It is, however, rathertoo minute and exacting in examination, since the Portuguese EstadoNovo is admittedly only in an experimental stage at present ; such awork will be of greater value when some sort of finality has beenachieved.

6 Article 41 of the Irish Constitution (197) begins thus : " TheState recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamentalunit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessin g inalien-able and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positivelaw."And Art. 42 : " The State acknowledges that the primary and

natural educator of the child is the Family ."7 Salazar : Speech on March 13, 1 933-8 Salazar : Speech at Braga : May 1936.9 Art. VI, x, quoted above ; also Art . IV.1o Fr. Albert Muller, S .J ., paper read at the International Union of

Social Studies : Malines, September 1 937 .11 Salazar : Introduction to the French edition of his collected

speeches : Une Revolution dans la Paix. Paris : Flammarion, 1936,p. xxv.

12 Quadragesimo Anno : par . 95 . See the encyclical " Non abbiamobisogno " of the following month-June 1931-for a further discus-sion of Fascist Italy.

13 Gonzague de Reynold : op . cit., p . 310.

155

I

THE PORTUGAL

04 Salazar : Introduction as cited : pp. xxiii: iv.15 Gonzague de Reynold : op . cit., p. 311 .16 Fr . Muller : La Politique Corporative : Brussels, 1935, pp. 8o-0 .17 Speech of Salazar : March 16, x933-18 Quadragesimo Anno : pars. 83 and 85 .19 Statute of National Labour : Art. VIII.2o Ibid : Art. IX . Constitution : Art. XXXIX .21 Freppel Cotta : op . cit., p . 1 53-22 cf. Joao Lumbrales in Politique : Paris, May 1 934-23 La Politique Corporative, p . 88 .24 Statute of National Labour : Arts. L, LI, LII .25 Art. II of Decree-Law No . 23,053 : September 23, 1 933-26 Decree-Law No . 24,362 : August 15, 1934 .27 In a foreword to Une Revolution dans la Paix.28 Salazar : Introduction to the same, p. xxiii.29 Speech on January 28, 1 934-30 JoAo Lumbrales : op . cit .31 Freppel Cotta : op. cit ., p . 16o.32 Ferro : op . cit., P. 136 .

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV (PAGES 103 to 125)

1 Michael Kenny, S.J ., in The Sign (U.S .A .). May 1937-2 op. cit ., p . 65 .3 Mihail Manoilesco : Le Siacle du Corporatisme . Quoted by

M. Freppel Cotta in Economic Planning in Corporative Portugal .4 Article by G . W . P. McLachlan in a special supplement published

byThe Times on the occasion of the centenary ofpthe P . & O. Steam-ship Co. September 7, 1937 .

5Introduction as cited, p . xxxi . The following quotation from aspeech of General Franco also has interesting bearing on the presentchapter : " We do not believe in suffrage . The Spanish national willwas never freely expressed through the ballot box. Before, first thepolitical bosses and afterwards the tyrannical syndicates forced theSpanish people to vote according to their whim, giving them orders .The popular will in the new State will express itself through tech-nical organisations and corporations, which, having deep roots inthe country, will represent the genuine desires and ideals of thepeople . . . . Our Government will be strong-a Government for thepeople. Those who think we are going to support the privileges ofcapitalism are entirely wrong . We shall support the middle andhumble classes." (Reported in the Observer : October 4, 1936 .)

I$6

OF SALAZAR6 Salazar : Speech at Braga, May 1936 .7 A. F. G . Bell, op . cit ., p . 194 .8 The present writer expressed this opinion in an article in the

Dublin Review, for October 1937, which he sent, inviting criticism,to Senhor J. L. da Silva Dias, of the Secretariado da PropagandaNational at Lisbon. Senhor Silva Dias replied at length, disagree-ing with several things, but without commenting on this particularopinion .

9 Salazar : Speech on November 23, 1932 .lo He assumed the Ministry of War on May i z, 1936, and the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs on November 6 of the same year, bothpar interim-that is, to meet the emergency occasioned by theSpanish War.

11 op . cit ., p . 25 .12 Salazar : in a broadcast : December 9, 1 934-1 3 Ferro : op. cit ., ~1i . 317. He prints the speech in full, but erro-

neously dates it 1928 . The mistake has been copied by Gonzaguede Reynold.

14 The Times : August 28, 1931 . Quoted by Ikon de Poncins, and.translated back from his French by me . I have not had the oppor-tunity to look up the original : de Poncins quotes a long cutting,be inning "Ii est de notori6t6 courante que cette agitation aet foment6e par les politiciens portugais exiles a Paris, et particu-li8rement par quelques precedents chefs du Grand Orient duPortugal." op. cit., p. 75 .

75 Salazar : Introduction as cited, p . xli .

NOTES TO CHAPTER V (PACES 129 to 151)

, Interview reported in The Catholic Herald : Dec . 3 , 1937 .2 The details of these events I have only on the authority of

Je Suis Partout and Le jour ; but the general facts are commonknowledge .

3 The Corporate State, by Benito Mussolini : Florence, VallecchiEditore. 1936. pp. 9 6- 7 .

4 Quoted by Freppel Cotta, p . 2 3-5 Constitution : Article VIII. We will list its more important

provisionsThe following constitute the rights and individual guarantees

of Portuguese citizensi . The right to life and personal inviolability.

157

I

THE PORTUGAL

2. The right to good name and reputation .3. Liberty and inviolability of religious beliefs and practice.4. The free expression of thought in any form .5. Freedom of education .6 . Inviolability of domicile and secrecy of correspondence, sub-

ject to the terms of the law. ,8. No one shall be deprived of personal liberty or arrested

without a charge being brought .i i . No one shall suffer punishment by perpetual imprisonment,

or the penalty of death, except, as regards the latter,during a state of belligerency with a foreign power, inwhich case the sentence must be carried out on the sceneof the war.

id . There shall be no confiscation of goods . . . from a delin-quent.

14. Freedom of meeting and association.15. The right of property. . . .r6. There shall be no payment of taxes which have not been

decreed in accordance with the Constitution .18. The right of making representations or petition, claim or

complaint, to Government departments or to any authori-ties, in defence of personal rights or general interests .

19. The right of resistance to any order which may infringeindividual guarantees, unless they have been legallysuspended, and of re elling by force private aigressionwhen recourse to pubic authority is impossible .'

6 Leon de Poncins : op. cit., p. 183-7 The Times : December 10, 1937. In the matter of freedom to

criticise the regime, it is interesting to note the methods adoptedby Salazar, through the Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional, toinculcate his ideas into the nation . " The Secretariado classifies allperiodicals according to their attitude towards the regime . Thereare those which are favourable, those which are sympathetic,those which are neutral, and those which are hostile . The Secre-tariado sends articles to the editors of them all . They have noobligation to accept them ; if they refuse them, no steps of any kindwill be taken against them . And here are some statistics : TheSecretariado began its work in December . 1933 . Up to December1934, it had sent 1,31o articles to 67 periodicals; from December 1934 ,to December 1935 2,027 articles to 75 periodicals. The number ofneutral, and even of opposition journals which inserted articles sup-plied by the Secretariado increased considerably, and from the timethat this work was begun the whole tone of the Press began to bemore moderate. In December 1933, out of 251 political periodicals,40 were for the Government, 61 sympathetic, 69 neutral, and 81 in

position. By December 1934, out of 247 periodicals, 62 were fore Government, 86 were sympathetic, 43 were neutral, and only

158

OF SALAZAR56 in opposition. So do methods of persuasion generally succeedbetter than methods of constraint ." (Gonzague de Reynold : op .cit ., p . 307 .) The only fact that dismays one is that there should bez5i political periodicals in a country of only seven million inhabi-tants 1

8 Ferro, op . cit., p . 22i .9 Salazar, in an interview given to L'Ami du Peuple, Paris,

March 26, 1936.1o Ferro, op. cit., pp. 39 -4111 Ibid, p . 231-12 Salazar : Speech of October 2i, 1929 .13 Ferro, op. cit ., pp . 44-5 .14 Salazar : Speech of May 26, 1934-15 Salazar : Introduction as cited : p. xxii .