And it must be remembered that at the very time that these frightened men and women were travelling the country in disguise, numbers of families were sorrowfully bidding farewell to sons, brothers, and husbands, on their departure to the war which, as the people will always believe, was begun in the interest of Jesuit capitalists, sheltering their ownership of the Morocco mines and the great steamer companies behind the names of lay millionaires. The popular suspicion of Jesuit interference in these, as in almost all the other big commercial concerns in the Peninsula, may or may not be justified, but its effect on the attitude of the people towards the Religious Orders cannot be over-rated. Not the least extraordinary feature in the situation is that the Religious Orders profess to disregard the feeling that exists against them, although it is apparent on every hand to any one who goes about with eyes and ears open. For years past I have noticed that no member of the working classes salutes a priest or friar in the streets. Day after day one summer I saw the same priests taking their afternoon walk along the same by-way, where the same artisans, to the number of twenty or thirty, watched the “long skirts” from the doors of their workshops. I never saw an artisan greet a priest or friar, or vice versa. The flowing robes of the ecclesiastics swept against the patched garments of the workmen, but no glance was exchanged. The priests kept their eyes bent on the ground, one hand grasping the skirts and the other pressed on the breast, a typical attitude, which is jeered at by the poor as “canting.” The workmen kept their eyes fixed on the work on which they were engaged. It is impossible to imagine anything more hostile than the silent defiance of the men, as they turned to watch the “long skirts” out of sight. I have seen single instances of the same thing elsewhere in many places, but here I had special facilities for observing the daily exhibition of armed neutrality, owing to the accident of my room at the back of the little country hotel looking out on the by-path. “I hate to see them,” one of the men said to me; “they are the ruin of us and our country.” What made it the more significant was that these same workmen had a pleasant word of greeting for every lay person, man or woman, acquaintance or stranger, who passed by them. The economic question bulks largely among the causes of the popular hostility to the Religious Orders, and if only half the complaints generally made are based on fact, the people have reason on their side.