A Basque friend of mine, a highly educated man, whose position as a large employer of labour enables him to judge fairly of the political leanings of the people, made the following remark to me one day: “The Carlists,” he said, “may think they have the Basque Provinces with them, but they are completely mistaken. The working classes of my country have no more desire for civil war than those of any other part of Spain.” This gentleman is not a man who would use illicit means to influence the votes of his dependants, and his opinion may be taken as representing the true state of public opinion in his district. On the other hand, he said that among his wealthy clients there was no attempt to disguise the desire for a dynastic change: the portrait of Don Jaime hangs in a place of honour in many of the great houses which he visits in the course of his business, and the general devotion of this class to Carlism is open and avowed. “But,” he said, “what can be done by a party which is all head and no body? The army of Don Jaime may be well supplied with would-be officers and with all the munitions of war, but they have no troops behind them, in the Basque Provinces or anywhere else.” His description of the Carlist “army” reminded me of the famous raid of the Fhairshon: “For he did resolve to extirpate the vipers With four and twenty men and five and thirty pipers.” THE CHURCH MILITANT CHAPTER VIII THE CHURCH MILITANT The Church of Spain asserts that its mission is peace, and as has been said, supported the assertion, when Queen Victoria initiated the patriotic fund for the sick and wounded at Melilla, by declining as a body to contribute, on the ground that men of peace would be stultifying their office if they supported a war fund. When it was pointed out that the healing of the sick and the binding up of wounds, however incurred, was as much the Church’s mission as the preaching of peace, the reply was given that the priests as a class were poor men who could not afford to give away money. It may be remarked that what they call their poverty is so well recognised by the working classes that they never dream of applying to their parish priests when they are in distress; they say it would be useless to do so, because “the priests do nothing without securing their fee in advance.” But for a body whose first duty, on their own showing, is the preaching of peace, it cannot be denied that the Religious Orders, if not the secular clergy, are distinctly militant.