UC-NRIJF $B 25b 712 GIFT OF -, 1919 Importance of Spanish to the American Citizen "It will not be possible for the people of the United States to enter into close relationship with the peoples of the other American re- publics until the Spanish language is more generally spoken and written by educated persons here." Nicholas Murray Butler. By JOHN D. FITZ-GERALD, Ph.D. University of Illinois SECOND EDITION REVISED AND EN Price, BENJ. H. SANBORN & CO. CHICAGO NEW YORK BOSTON Copyright, 1918, by Benj. H. Sanborn & Co. ' ct * ' < V c c c < , IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN American Interest in Things Spanish The United States has always been able to boast that some of its prominent men were actively interested in Spain. This has effectively prevented the public in general from losing entirely its interest in the Iberian Peninsula. We can point in our early days to Washington Irving, who, while United States Minister at Mad- rid, took occasion to steep himself in the romantic legends of early Spain and gave us not only his Conquest of Granada, but some- thing artistically much more important, his beautiful Tales of the Alhambra. These legends, curiously enough, had never before gotten into print in any language. The Spaniards themselves appreciate Irving's interest in these legends and were the first to recognize the service he had done them in thus calling attention jhereto. Later William Hickling Prescott, with his Life of Philip II, History of Ferdinand and Isabella, Conquest of Mexico, and Conquest of Peru, George Ticknor, with his History of Spanish Literature, Longfellow, with his Spanish Student, Outre Mer, and translations of exquisite Early Spanish lyrics, Lowell, with THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH his Impressions of Spain, Henry Charles Lea, with his History of the Inquisition in Spain and The Moriscos of Spain; Their Conversion and Expulsion, Hubert Howe Bancroft, with his thirty-nine volumes of historical works dealing with our West, Northwest, and Southwest, and with Mexico and Central America, and John Hay, with his Castilian Days, have constantly fanned the flame of our affection. Still more recently historians have been giving us new cause for interest in, and gratitude toward, the Land of the Dons. We have long known what we owed to France for aid during our Revolution. We have not known much about our debt to Spain at that time, and yet that debt was considerable. Among other things Spain lent us over a million dollars; she granted our privateersmen refuge in all her harbors ; she permitted the purchase of supplies by the exchange of commodities; and at New Orleans, Pensacola, and Havana she showed us unusual privileges, permitting us to maintain at New Orleans a Special Commissioner, Mr. Pollock, who pur- chased ammunition and provisions, which were sent up the Mississippi and the Ohio, and so eastward to our troops. During the whole of the war Spain maintained an agent at Philadelphia for the purpose of watching events. Last, but not least, the Count of Aranda, Spanish Ambassador at Paris, as early as March, 1775, suggested to the French government joint interven- tion by France and Spain in the approaching trouble between Eng- land and the Colonies. In spite of all this, when mention is made of Spain, it has been the habit for many years past, both in this country and in Europe, to shrug the shoulders and, with Nicholas Masson de Morvilliers, to ask : "But, what do we owe to Spain ? And during the last two centuries, the last four, the last six, what has she done for Eu- rope?" The implication is only too plain. It is, however, entirely 4 TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN erroneous. It has been the custom to consider Spain as a country of barbarians, and this has led to the statement, often heard, that "Africa really begins at the Pyrenees". In this statement there is just enough truth to make the half lie more dangerous than an out-and-out misstatement would have been. Persons with that idea in mind show their own ignorance of the history of Spain from its earliest times to the present day, or else they forget some very obvious facts. Silver Latin in Spain Consider what Silver Latin would amount to without the rhetorician Seneca the Elder (born at Cordoba, 60 B.C.), with- out his son, the philosopher and dramaturge Seneca the Younger (born at Cordoba, 3 B.C.), without the poet Lucan, grandson and nephew, respectively, of the two Senecas (born at Cordoba, A.D. 39), and without the Epigrams of Martial (born near Calatayud, A.D. 43), and the Institutes of Oratory and the Maxims of Quintilian (born at Calahorra, A.D. 35). There were also Pom- ponius Mela (who was born at Tingentera, Spain, and flourished under Caligula and Claudius) and Columella (a contemporary of the Elder Seneca, and born at Cadiz). And still later we find Prudentius, the earliest of the Christian poets (said to have been born at Tarragona, A. D. 348) ; Isidor of Seville (died 636), who, next to Boethius and Cassiodorus, exercised the most important influence upon the general culture and literature of the Middle Ages, and whose greatest work was his Etymologiae or Origines; and Teodolfo, Spanish Bishop of Orleans, famous in the Court of Charlemagne as a poet and litterateur, and whose name will be held in remembrance until his triumphant hymn Gloria, laus et honor ceases to be sung throughout the whole world on Palm Sunday. After the dominion of Rome had disappeared Spain still kept 5 THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH alive the operation of the Roman system of jurisprudence, and thus passed on for the benefit of other nations in later ages the legal principles upon which the civilized codes of today are based. The Jews and the Moors in Spain The debt of the world to Spain under Jewish and Moslem influence does not belong to the field of Belles Lettres. It be- longs rather to the field of the exact sciences, the study and inter- pretation of letters and the production of the comforts and luxuries of life. It was under their domination that the learning of the Greeks and the science of the Eastern peoples were kept alive when they had been lost sight of everywhere else in Europe, and this was done especially at the great centers of Zaragoza and Cordoba. It was from the Moors, too, that the Spaniards learned how to irrigate their land and develop their agriculture. So thor- oughly was that work done, especially in the neighborhood of Valencia, that the irrigating canals built by the Moors are in operation today. The circumstances of the Reconquest gave Spain an ideal which for centuries served as her inspiration. Little by little the Moors were driven back and various Christian kingdoms emerg- ed and were gradually absorbed by their neighbors until, with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella and the consequent union of the kingdoms of Leon, Old Castile, New Castile, and Aragon, the conquest of the kingdom of Granada, and the final expulsion of the Moors, the history of Modern Spain may be said to have begun. At this same time the discovery of the New World gave Spain an undreamed-of source of wealth .for pushing her ambi- tious schemes, 6 TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN Lexicography and Grammar We have spoken of Spanish literature, so far as it concernec^* / Silver Latin, but that was not its only period of importance. As early as 1427 Spain possessed complete translations of Virgil and Dante, both due to the pen of Don Enrique de Villena. Alonso de Palencia produced in 1490 the earliest Latin dictionary with definitions in Spanish. It was driven from the field in 1492 by another dictionary due to Don Antonio de Nebrija. In 1610 Co- varrubias wrote the first dictionary in any modern language. In 1739 the Spanish Royal Academy completed in six volumes its Dictionary of the Spanish Language, and there was no dictionary in any other modern language to be compared to it. These matters of translations and lexicography may justly be said not to belong to literature, properly so called; but in creative work also Spain can well hold her own. Early Spanish Literature About 1120 there was written the Auto de los Reyes Magos, the earliest play at present known in any modern literature. De- spite its early date, its construction Shows real action and keen psychology. The Cid Canipeador, national hero of Spain, died in 1099. By 1140 the Poema del Cid or Cantor de Mio Cid was composed. It is one of the few great epic poems of modern times and shows a unity of conception and a sobriety of expression that makes it superior to some of the national epics of other lands. The first Spanish poet whose name we know, is Gonzalo de Berceo, who flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century. His didactic works, written in the form of verse known as the Cuaderna Via, constitute a dignified volume of material. To the same century belong the legal and astronomical works produced 1 THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH by Alfonso the Wise or under his leadership. At about 1300 we find the first real novel, the Libro del Ca/uallero Cifar. Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, flourished in the first half of the fourteenth century and earned the title of "Spanish Chaucer" with his great satirical poem El Libro de Buen Amor. A contemporary of Juan Ruiz was Juan Manuel, who brought into Spanish literature the Oriental Tales and Apologues in his Libro de los Exemplos del Conde Lucanor, written about 1342. The Jewish Rabbi Sem Tob de Carrion was one of the favorites of Peter the Cruel. He left us his important collection of poems, under the caption Proverbios Morales, which gives us our first example in Spanish literature of the versified epigram. The Chancellor Pedro Lopez de Ayala gives us a very keen analysis of court life in his long poem entitled Rimado de Palacio.. To the fifteenth century belongs the Spanish Danza de la Mu- e'rte. In several important respects this is a more interesting ver- sion of the Dance of Death than is to be found in any other literature. The Literary Court of Juan II of Castile The literary court of Juan II of Castile (1419-1454) produced a brilliant galaxy of prose writers and poets. The works of some sixty poets are represented in the celebrated Cancionero de Baena. Among the most important of the writers of this period we must mention the prosodian Enrique de Villena, who made one of the earliest, if not indeed the earliest, complete translation of the Aeneid into any foreign language, and who was the first to make Dante available for his contemporaries. Nor should we forget such writers as Juan de Mena (1411-1456), with his Las Trc- zientas; the great portraitist Fernan Perez de Guzman ( ?1376- ?1458), called the Spanish Plutarch because of his vivid Genera- 8 TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN ciones y Semblanzas; the latter's nephew, the versatile and dis- tingushed Marques de Santillana (1398-1458), with his sonorous Didlogo de Bias contra Fortuna and his mordant attack upon Alvaro de Luna in the Doctrinal de' Privados; Alfonso Martinez de Toledo ( ?1398-?1470), the Archpriest of Talavera, whose great satirical work, called by his own title Arcipreste de Tala- vera, has been rechristened by the public, which calls it El Cor- bacho; Jorge Manrique (1440-1478), with his exquisite Coplas de Jorge Manrique por la muerte de su padre; the first great Romance of Chivalry, Amadis de Gaula, and its incredible progeny, including the Passo honroso de Suero de Quinones, an authentic account of a tourney that shows the ordinary Romance of Chivalry to be only a pale reflex of the real thing, instead of a wild exaggeration; and the various Romanceros that began to be collected at this time, and that show Spain to have been more productive in this field than was either Scotland or England. Toward the end of this century and running into the XVIth we find the works of the musician-playwright Juan del Encina ( 1469- ?1533), the "patriarch of the Spanish stage", of whom there sur- vive many lyrics, an important "theatre", and a good body of musical compositions. Political Extent and Importance of Spain in the Golden Age In the heyday of her Golden Age Spain was foremost in many things. Under the Emperor Charles V and his son Philip II her dominions formed one of the greatest empires the world had ever seen, and the greatest empire then extant. It embraced the King- doms of Naples and Sicily and Sardinia, the Duchy of Milan, all of Navarre, Roussillon, Franche-Comte, Luxemburg, Artois, Flanders, and the Netherlands, all the Kingdoms of Spain, all of 9 THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH Portugal, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, the Azores, the Madeira Islands, the Cape Verde Islands, Portuguese West India, Portuguese and Spanish possessions in Africa, all of South Amer- ica, all of Central America, all of the West Indies, and in North America, Florida and much of our South and Southwest, the Caroline Islands, the Ladrones, and the Philippines, the Spice Islands, and all of those parts of the East Indies, Australia, and New Zealand that belonged to Portugal or Holland. And for a while, too, Philip was even King Consort of England. The Span- ish navy, with its victory over the Turks at the battle of Lepanto, 1571, proved itself to be, as it had long been credited with being, the greatest navy that had ever plowed the main. The Spanish infantry was confessedly the finest in Europe. Spanish industries and products were known the world around. Houder in his Declamatio Panegyrica in laudem Hispaniae (1545) said: "Of all the nations of Europe, Spain furnishes us with most of every kind of commodity. She sends us so much wool that Bruges alone receives every year 36,000 to 40,000 bales." Shortly before this date Spain was one of the leading wheat-producing countries of the world. She was famous for metal-working, cord- age and shipbuilding; while silk weaving, fine fabrics, linens, and gloves were really national industries. And who has not heard of the exquisite silver filigree work of Cordoba, and of Cordoba leather, to say nothing of the famous Toledo swords and daggers ? But this supremacy in territory, political power, commerce, and industry began to diminish as soon as it reached Its maximum. The defeat of the Armada in 1588 wrecked the Spanish naval supremacy. The defeat of the Spanish troops by young Conde at the battle of Rocroi in 1643 was the deathblow to Spain's mili- tary prestige. The expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 and 1610, and a vicious system of embargoes and taxation to support the 10 TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN foreign wars destroyed agriculture, commerce, and industry by the middle of the seventeenth century. This produced its counter effect on military operations. In 1640 Portugal recovered her independence, although Spain refused to recognize the fact until 1668. This deprived Spain of the enormous holdings of Portugal in India, Africa, and South America. The Treaty of Miinster (1648) recognized the independence of Holland, Zealand, etc., under the title of The United Nether- lands. With them went all the vast Dutch possessions overseas. Roussillon and Artois were lost by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 ; and Franche-Comte was ceded to France by the Treaty of Nimeguen in 1678; while Luxemburg went the same way by the terms of the Treaty of Ratisbon in 1684. While the next great loss took place after the period of which we have been speaking, it was so directly a product of conditions that obtained in the Golden Age, that we are going to mention it here. We refer to the Treaty of Rastadt, 1714, by which Spain lost Flanders, Brabant, etc., known as the Spanish Netherlands, the Duchy of Milan, and the Kingdoms of Sardinia and of Naples and Sicily. Spain thus stands stripped of all her European pos- sessions that lay outside the bounderies of what we now call Spain, and with those possessions went all the overseas posses- sions belonging thereto. Spanish Literature of the Golden Age But this is not the whole story, and the part that remains to be told is glorious. Ranking in reputation for scholarship and for numbers with the Universities of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford stand those of Salamanca and Alcala, in the latter of which was prepared the great Gomplutensian "Polyglot Bible, due to the com- 11 THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH mon labors of the leading scholars, both Jews and Christians. Luis Vives, the Valencian humanist, carried Spanish learning to England, where he lived for many years as Fellow at Oxford. Europe had not yet recovered from the wave of translation and imitation caused by that great book, the Comedia or Tragi- comedia de Calixto y Melibea (more often called the Celestina, because of its principal character), when she was set afire anew by an equally anonymous work, the first and greatest of the pica- resque novels, the Vida de' Lazarillo de Tormes, the first known editions of which are of 1554. The great picaresque genre had thus been inaugurated and it had a numerous descent, only a few of which can be mentioned: Aleman's Guzman de Alfarache (1599), Quevedo's Historic, de la Vida del Buscon (1626), and Guevara's Diablo Cojuelo (1641). These works were not with- out influence on other literatures, either through imitation or translation, especially in France and England. Nor should we overlook the pastoral novels, as represented by Cervantes' Galatea, Lope de Vega's Arcadia, Caspar Mercader's Prado de Valencia, and the series of Dianas by various authors. Lyric poetry flourished, and side by side with it went the incredible development of the Spanish theatre, which, because it refused to be bound by the so-called Aristotelian unities, was enabled to make itself really national, and exert a profound in- fluence upon English and French dramatic productivity. It will doubtless be recalled that in France the first great tragedy and the first great comedy are built on Spanish originals : Corneille's Le Cid, adapted from Las Mocedades del Cid of Guillen de Cas- tro; and Corneille's Le Menteur, made on Alarcon's La Verdad Sospechosa. To say nothing of the host of minor writers, we find at our immediate disposal such men as Lppe de Vega (with 1800 plays and more than 400 autos, of which! 470 plays and 50 autos 12 T ^ f & TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN survive), Tirso de Molina (with 400 plays, of which 80 survive, among them the original of the entire Don Juan cycle in all literature, El Burlador de Seville, y Convidado de Piedra) , Moreto, Alarcon (with a literary baggage of somewhat less than thirty plays, but the only author of front rank who took care to polish what he wrote and who, although he never rises quite as high as the others, has left no line that is unworthy of him), and Cal- deron (the most representative, the most philosophical, and the most lyrical of all the great Spanish dramatists, of whose works we possess about 120 pieces, 80 autos, 20 entremeses, jacaras, etc.). And still we have not mentioned a work which is not only the greatest book in Spanish literature, but, after the Bible, the greatest single Jbook in the world : El Ingenioso' Hidalgo Don Quijote de La Mancha. While this book has been one of Spain's greatest glories, its fame abroad has indirectly done its author and Spain serious harm. So much has Don Quijote overshadowed the other works of Cer- vantes that few persons even among the elite realize that if Cer- vantes had never written Don Quijote he would still be Spain's greatest novelist because of his twelve scintillating Novelas Ejem- plares. In similar fashion Don Quijote has so overshadowed all the rest of Spanish literature that many persons, even among those of more than average culture, still speak of Spanish litera- ture as a literature consisting of just one book : Don Quijote, and I have myself heard that argument at least twenty times in the last two weeks in the mouths of educators who are administrators of schools or of school systems and who cannot see anything but a commercial reason for the present vogue of Spanish. Spanish Art in the Golden Age The art of this Golden Age in Spain was equally glorious, as witness the telling studies in emaciation and drab that we owe 13 THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH to the brush of Zurbaran, or the marvelous technique of the por- traits and battle scenes with which Velazquez endowed the world, or the colorful canvasses of Ribera and Carreno, or the lovely Madonnas for whose painting Murillo seems to have stolen Heaven's own hues. But Murillo represented in Spanish art the moment when the rose reaches its full bloom, and as happens with the rose when that moment is reached, so Spanish art began its immediate withering and decay, for Murillo's successors, lacking his inspiration, could produce only insipid imitations, however perfect in mechanical detail. So it happened, also, in the field of letters. With Calderon the zenith of development was reached, and rapid was the descent into the dreary waste of an uncreative period. With the extinc- tion of the House of Hapsburg in 1700 came the Wars of the Spanish Succession and the accession of the first of the Bourbons, Philip V. This inaugurated a period of slavish imitation of for- eign models and for over a hundred years there are no names that need detain us. The Renaissance of the Nineteenth Century Despite her internal troubles during the first half of the nine- teenth century, there were here and there signs of a real renais- sance, and before the end of the century it had made itself felt all along the line. The Spanish drama, the novel, lyric poetry, humanistic studies, and the fine arts had all come into their own once more. Sculpture shows such names as Benlliure (with nearly a dozen statues in Madrid alone), Sunol, Marinas, and Mora (who created one of the best monuments for the tercentenary of Cervantes' death, a monument that stands in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco). Painting conferred upon the world such names as 14 TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN Fortuny, the brilliant Madrazo family of portrait painters (six of them in three generations), and the greatest of living painters today : Zuloaga, the cynic, hard and cold, but exquisite master of technique; and above all Sorolla, the warm-hearted and radiant, whose canvasses fill our souls with sunshine and joy. The greatest humanist in the world in the nineteenth century was Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo, professor at the University of Madrid for twenty years, and thereafter until his death National Librarian. His insatiable appetite for books is well expressed in the phrase that was often used concerning his activity as Na- tional Librarian: "He did not administer the National Library, he read it." In his life there merged two distinct streams of literary investigation: the philosophico-historical and the philo- logico-historical, and of both streams there flows out from him a worthy continuation: for the latter, Ramon Menendez Pidal. the greatest Romance philologian Spain has yet produced ; and for the former Adolfo Bonilla y San Martin, a prolific writer with a mind that may fairly be called encyclopaedic. / Even science shows an awakening and the world recognizes^ its leading histologist in the person of Santiago Ramon y Cajal. That biologists think highly of Angel Cabrera Latorre (youngest son of the late Bishop of the Spanish Reformed Church, Juan B. Cabrera) is evident from the fact that when despite his youth he was sent by his government to a recent international congress of biologists held under the patronage of the Prince of Monaco, the delegates elected him chairman of the section on mammals. Lyric Poetry Lyric poetry flourished. Early in the twentieth century Juan Valera compiled a Florilegio de Poesias Castellanas del Sigh XIX (five volumes, with an historical introduction and biographi- 15 THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH cal and critical notes), in which he gives us poems by one hun- dred and fifty-two poets, with excessive modesty omitting anything of his own. Lyric poetry is the most difficult form of literature to reproduce in translation. Consequently little of this part of nineteenth century Spanish literature is available for those of our compatriots who do not read Spanish, and yet I am sure that the majority of those who read Spanish must enjoy the works of such writers as the Duque de Rivas (one of the founders of Romanticism in Spain), Espronceda, Zorilla (the author of the revised version of the ballads dealing with the Cid Campea- dor), the dainty Cuban poetess Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda (whose sonnet to Washington is one of the finest tributes that has ever been paid to "the father of his country"), the tender, melancholy Becquer, Campoamor (the author of the exquisite Doloras), Nunez de Arce (with his stirring Gritos del Combate and fSursum Corda!), and the sweet singer of nature's beauties (El Huracdn and Niagara), the lonely Cuban exile Jose Maria de Heredia. The Modern Drama The drama has shown an equally vigorous life at home and a more widespread influence abroad. Moratin the younger in 1806 sounded a blast in favor of the feminist movement, with his rol- licking El Si de las Ninas, in which he made, without preachment, a serious attack on the general training given to young girls. To Zorilla we owe the rejuvenation of the Don Juan legend, for at the Hallowe'en season his play Don Juan Tenorio is performed during two weeks to crowded houses in practically every theatre in the country. Tamayo y Baus produced a splendid and not too bulky set of plays, one of which, the Drama Nuevo, is one of the great plays of all literature. As a play within a play it has never 16 TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN been surpassed in its welding together of the two sets of char- acters. Some years ago it was adapted into English for Augustin Daly, under the title Yorick's Love; and recently The Hispanic Society has published an exact translation of the original, accord- ing to the Spanish Academy's official edition. Angel Guimera, the Catalan, is perhaps the most virile dramatist in Spain today. His Terra Baixa has been translated into Serbian, Italian, French, and Spanish, in the latter of which it went through Cuba, Mexico, and South America; and Mrs. Fiske produced it some years ago (1903) in this country under the title Marta of the' Lowlands. Perez Galdos, although primarily a novelist, has frequently been successful with dramas that are keen studies of contemporary conditions in Spain. His The Grandfather, (a dialogued novel) and Electra are both available in English. Echegaray, the mathe- matician, civil engineer, statesman, cabinet minister (a man cast in much the same mold as our own beloved Hopkinson Smith), was also a dramatist and justified that title by producing about seventy plays. In 1904 he was awarded one-half the Nobel Prize for the ideal in literature (the other half going to the poet of Prov- ence, Frederic Mistral). He earned the award by several ideal works. El Gran Galeoto has been translated into several languages, and; is familiar to us in English through several translations and through the adaptation performed by Mr. William Faversham and his wife, Miss Julie Opp, under the title of The World and His Wife. O locura o santidad is available in English under the title Madman or Saint, and of El loco Dios (a keen study of mono- mania) we have the version entitled The Madman Divine. Among the ultra-modern dramatists we have the Alvarez Quintero brothers (with their keen studies of modern life and its foibles) Jacinto Benavente (fondly called by some of his ad- mirers the "Modern Shakespeare") ; Gregorio Martinez Sierra 17 THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH (with his exquisite Teatro de Ensueno) ; Manuel Linares Rivas (with La Rasa) ; Eduardo Marquina (with Las Hijas del Cid) ; and the late Joaquin Dicenta (exponent of socialistic doctrines). For poetry we turn to Juan Ramon Jimenez and Manuel and Antonio Machado; whereas critics and essayists are represented by Enrique Gomez Carrillo (Guatemalan), Miguel de Unamuno, Manuel Bueno, Andres Gonzalez Blanco, and Jose Ortega y Gassett. Many other authors we must omit so that we may pass on to the novel. But please bear in mind that just as the literary and artistic crescendo of the Golden Age was contemporaneous with a political and territorial diminuendo, so this renaissance of which we have been speaking has been progressing while the country has gone on losing colonial territory, and struggling with revolu- tions and counter-revolutions at home. If you stop to think about it, you will realize that this renaissance has been simply marvelous. Spain could not have done it if she had been at heart the decadent nation that some of her critics declare her to be. The Modern Novel Valera has been credited with creating the Modern Spanish novel. You may ask how this can be when his first novel ap- peared in 1874, and at least two other writers had been doing good work before that date, i.e., the gifted Fernan Caballero (1796-1877), half Spanish,' half German (nee Carolina Bohl von Faber), whose first Spanish .work, La Gaviota, appeared in 1848; and Pereda, whose Esce'nas montane 'sas appeared in 1864. Both these writers were realists in the good old Spanish sense, which they were reviving. But they did not found a school. Fernan Caballero was a keen observer of incidents and a skillful limner of pictures, but she was not so strong in character delineation, and 18 TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN was distinctly weak in construction of plots. Pereda, on the con- trary, was a master at character delineation, but his characters are regional and he makes an excessive use of dialect and per- mits a polemical strain to color too much of his work. There- fore, his first great success was Bocetos al temple, which ap- peared in 1876, two years after Valera's Pepita Jimenez. In this same year (1876) Valera published his second great novel, El Comendador Mendoza, which in turn was followed in 1878 by Dona Luz. It was the appearance of Pepita Jimenez in 1874 that awakened Spain, and the world, to a realization of what Spain could again accomplish in prose fiction, if she would return wholeheartedly to her native inspiration of more than regional interest. The author of it had proved himself a thorough-going realist of the good old Spanish type, and at the same time an idealist and a classicist. The literary descent of this awakening shows such names as the following: Perez Galdos, with his incredible gallery of more than five hundred portraits in the nearly fifty volumes of his Episodios Nacionales, giving in novelistic form the history of nineteenth century Spain; with his twenty-three volumes of Novelas Con- temporaneas, seven volumes of Novelas de la primera epoca, and fifteen volumes of dramas ; Clarin, the critic, and author of La Regenta; Palacio Valdes, with his stories of Andalucia and of Galicia (Jose } Maria y Maria, La Hermana San Sulpicio) ; The Countess Emilia Pardo Bazan, with her fascinating Cuentos de Marineda, and her other naturalistic stories ; The brilliant champion of social reform, Blasco Ibafiez, with his keen studies of contemporary life in various parts of Spain 19 THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH (La Barraca, Cuentos valencianos, Arroz y tartana, La Bodega, La Catedral, Sangre y Arena, El Intruso, La Horda, La Maja desnuda) ; And a host of minor writers of one good book each, as well as many even of the newest comers: Pio Baroja (with Los ultimas romdnticos) ; Valle-Incla (with Flor de Santidad) ; Mar- tinez Ruiz (with Las confesione's de un pequeno filosofo) ; and Valera's own son, Luis Valera, Marques de Villasinda (recently Ambassador of Spain in Petrograd), who has already to his credit more than a half dozen novels (El filosofo y la tiple, Visto y sonado, Del antano quimerico, Sombras chinescas, Un alma de 1 Dios, De la muerte al amor) . Nor should we overlook the really distinguished group of modern Spanish women, other than Emilia Pardo Bazan, who was recently appointed to a chair in the Universidad Central at Madrid, thus reviving a tradition belonging to Madrid's pre- decessor, the celebrated Universidad de Alcala de Henares, wherein Francisca de Nebrija for a while replaced her learned father Antonio de Nebrija in his chair in rhetoric. In this modern group will be found the philologian and literary historian, Maria Goyri de Menendez Pidal ; the antiquarian, the late Duchess of Alba; the literary historian and critic, Blanca de los Rios; the educator and lecturer, Maria de Maeztu; writers of such importance as Carolina Coronado, Concha Espina, Sofia de Casa- nova, Carmen de Burgos, Faustina Saez de Melgar, Pilar Sinues, the poetess Rosalia Castro, and especially the incomparable Con- cepcion Arenal, who made her mark as a sociologist. With its long struggle for constitutional reform against the deeply entrenched special interests of the sovereign, the clergy, and the nobles; with its gradual passage from an absolute mon- archy (which was a theocratic tyranny accompanied by the Inqui- 20 TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN sition) to a constitutional monarchy (with freedom of religious worship) led by an enlightened king who wishes to be king of all his people and not merely of a majority of them, the history of Spain in the nineteenth century is one of the most thrilling and romantic stories to be fourfd in modern times. As a knowledge of Spanish is the key that unlocks the door of this vast treasure-house of transcendently important and in- teresting materials, it would seem as though we had at hand a sufficient explanation of the importance of Spanish to the Ameri- can citizen. But there is more to be said. Spanish America From the loins of this glorious Spain there have come eighteen sovereign and independent nations. The story of the discovery and conquest of the territory they occupy is one of the most amaz- ing tales in all history. Their long, uphill struggle for independ- ence has much in common with our own Revolution, and will therefore prove to be of very great interest to us in North Amer- ica. Our affection for Washington and other Revolutionary and pre- Revolutionary heroes should endear to us Bolivar, O'Higgin's, San Martin, Sarmiento, Miranda, Jose Marti el Apostol, Cortes, Pizarro, de So/to, Ponce de Leon, and others. Since attaining their independence from Spain these countries have kept up a cordial relationship with the mother-land that parallels the cordiality that has existed between ourselves and the British Isles. While all of these nations have traits in common, due to their common origin, and common speech, their individ- ualities, are quite clearly delineated. It is of prime importance to us that we attain unto a wide and sympathetic knowledge of their political* social, economic, and spiritual ideals, their History, 21 THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH their art, their several literatures, their institutions, their constitu- tions : in short, their general culture. We are justly proud of the dignity and relative antiquity of our universities, but we should not forget that the University of San Marcos was established in Lima in 1551 and that later in the same year the University of Mexico was founded in Mexico City, each of them thus antedating by eighty-five years our oldest university, Harvard, established in 1636. The Uni- versity of Santo Domingo was founded in 1558, and had a very beneficient effect on all the Antilles and Porto Rico, Cuba, and Venezuela. Furthermore, in 1535 Mexico City became the proud possessor of the first printing press to be set up in the Western Hemisphere. Statesmen and Publicists We should familiarize ourselves with the great Hispano- American statesman and publicists. Argentina presents us Drago, the author of the Drago Doctrine (which is a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine), and Wilmart, who formulated some of the fundamental principles of the American League to Enforce Peace before that League came into existence at Philadelphia, in June, 1915, and published early in 1915 a careful study concerning The American Ideal; Perils: The Kaiser-Germany. ^ The Chilean jurisconsult Alejandro Alvarez is one of the judges of the Permanent Court of the Hague, and holds, con- cerning the future of the Monroe Doctrine, very valuable ideas, with which it behooves us to become well acquainted. His fellow- countryman Carlos Silva Vildosola presented to and for his com- patriots an arraignment of Germany that is quite as strong as any pronouncement of our own. The Ecuadorian Nicolas F. Lopez recently made a presentment of the attitud*e of Ecuador 22 ,TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN in the Great War. It is a bit of keen thinking and clear vision concerning international affairs. And then there is the Urugua- yan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baltasar Brum, who has done so much for the cause of Pan American Solidarity. Among diplomats we shall have space to mention only the spiritually minded Bolivian Minister to Washington and Habana. Ignacio Calderon; the Honduran Alberto Membreno, quondam Minister of Public Instruction and Minister of Honduras to Spain, whose Diccionario de H ondurenismos is a standard work and has gone through three editions ; the Mexican Ambassador to Spain, Francisco A. de Icaza, man of letters and literary histor- ian ; the Venezuelan Minister to Brazil, Emilio Constantino Guer- rero, writer of historical novels ; the Uruguayan diplomat Alberto Nin Frias, who has been called the most spiritual essayist among modern writers of Spanish ; and the three ambassadors at Wash- ington from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile : Romulo Naon, Domi- cio da Gama, and Eduardo Suarez Mujica, who exhibited such consummate tact in the ABC Mediation between our country and Mexico, and who stand so earnestly for Pan Americanism. Leaders in Education, Philosophy, and Spirituality Turning to their leaders in education, philosophy, and spirit- uality, we find men whom it is well worth our while to know and know intimately. In Argentina Ernesto Nelson inaugurated the dormitory sys- tem in the National University of La Plata, represented his country at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, at the San Francisco Exposition in 1915, and at the Second Pan American Scientific Congress 1915-16, and served for years as Inspector General of Secondary and Special Education for his country. Few Amer- icans know any Hispano-American country as well as Dr. Nelson 23 THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH , knows .the United States, His intimate friend and colleague is Jose Ingenieros, the philosopher and psychologist, who is intensely interested in all educational affairs and especially in those that are concerned with the problem of determining how far a state is warranted in spending sums for the extraordinary care of de- fectives when its funds are not sufficient for the proper educa- tional care of all its effectives. Carlos Octavio Bunge, the educator and psychologist, has won considerable attention as a novelist, and also as an essayist who thinks clearly and writes attractively on literature and public affairs, national and international. In Chile Jose Maria Galvez, professor of English at the Uni- versity of Chile ( Santiago) , wields an influence for righteousness in civic and international affairs that it would be difficult to esti- mate at its full value. Any detailed account of his private philanthropies would offend his modesty, and as it would also constitute a breach of confidence it cannot be attempted. Enrique Jose Varona, the Cuban philosopher, statesman, and educator, has thrown his influence into practically every move- ment for the advancement of his country. Louis A. Baralt is another Cuban educator. His paper on What Remains to be Done 1 for Education, read before the Second Pan American Scientific Congress, was the most spiritual study that was pre- sented to the Division of Education. Jose de la Luz.y. Caballero founded in Cuba the Colegio de El Salvador, and was a power in general education and morality for the entire rising generation during the half century that preceded Cuban Independence. Eduardo Monteverde, professor of Mathematics at the Uni- versity of Montevideo, was elected President of the Panama Congress of Religion in 1916. Luis J. Supervielle is a great Uruguayan banker with a vitally spiritual outlook on life. Dr. 24 TO THE AMERICAN CITIZEN Jaun Zorrilla de San Martin is one of Uruguay's literary and spiritual glories. All three of these Uruguayans, together with Emilio Barbaroux, Rector of the University of Montevideo, and Dr. Francisco Ghigliani of the Government Committee on Phys- ical Education, have earnestly supported the work of the Y. M. C. A. because of its ethical and moral values. So has indeed the Uruguayan Government. These same gentlemen and the Urugua- yan Government took unprecedented steps to entertain and safe- guard, physically and morally, the sailors of our fleet when it recently visited Montevideo; and in a reception just before the fleet's departure Dr. Zorrilla de San Martin, Chairman of the Popular Committee for the Reception of the U. S. Pacific Fleet, and a devout Roman Catholic layman, made them a farewell address of such lofty spirituality that our leaders in Montevideo had it printed and distributed to the fleet. It would be well if all our people could read it. Eugenio Maria de Hostos was born in Puerto Rico, and left his mark in educational affairs not only on his native island, but even more widely on Santo Domingo and Chile, his work in Santo Domingo being the epoch-making reorganization of the schools of that land. In this list of intellectual and spiritual leaders we must not fail to give due recognition to the splendid women who have graced the culture of our Hispano-American neighbors. Ernestina Lopez de Nelson is a well-known educator and literary historian, who was sent by Argentina as one of her official delegates to the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. She had previously earned her doctor's degree at the University of Buenos Aires, her thesis being