There are sharp contrasts in physical geography between the indented coast of Galicia, the narrow coastal strip of North Spain, the plateau-basin of the historic Léon and Castile, the lower lying dry eastern basin of Aragon, the Catalonian coastal plain with hills between it and Aragon, the barren plateau of New Castile, the southern trough of Andalusia, the east coastal regions of Murcia and Valencia. These contrasts have hindered the growth of intercommunication and of unity, and it is said that recently there were one thousand villages in Spain still lacking effective connexions with the road system. The distinctness of the people of the different regions is therefore a marked feature so far as custom and social inheritance is concerned, and the commercial Catalans have often thought of separating themselves from the old-fashioned agriculturists of Spain. The long duration of the struggle with Islam kept the Spaniards a people of leaders and common soldiers with, for a time, a Jewish middle class (Sephardim). But religious zeal led to expulsion of the Sephardim, though not a little of their blood remains, and they have taken a good deal of Spanish blood with them to their later homes in Salonika and elsewhere. Spain's development of a middle class thus lagged far behind that development among the other west European peoples in the Middle Ages, and the weakness of that class has been a factor of Spain's difficulties ever since, of her troubles in America, of her political weakness at home, of the subjection of her mining wealth to English exploiters, and of her long-continued financial troubles. The railway has improved matters to some extent by promoting communication, but such {33} was the fear of France that the Spanish gauge is different from that of the rest of western Europe. The stoppage of the blood-drain of soldiers and governors formerly sent to maintain her old empire seems to have helped Spain greatly, and the importance of her products in the recent war made her prosper, and her peseta went up far above its old par value, which was 25-22½ pesetas = £1 expressed in English terms. Since the war, difficulties in Morocco, internal strains, resumption of imports, and payments for transport services have sent the peseta down again. It is now 28.50 = £1, but that is still nearly twice the value of its former French, three and a half times the value of its former Greek, and more than three times the value of its former Italian equivalent. The general spread of irritability and of the war spirit, however, seems to have increased the political difficulties between Spaniards and Catalans, as it has those between English and Irish, in both cases partly because the Continent has, elsewhere, so largely been settled on the principle of nationality based upon language, or tradition, or both.