GULLIVER IN MADRID

Satire thrives on censorship. The Spanish Directorate, whose malefactions unleased the thunder of Blasco lbanex, has now awakened the more subtle spirit of Dean Swift. Gulliver in this case is Bagaria, the famous cartoon'st of El So, a Madrid daily, and the scene of his remarkable travels is neither Brobdingnag nor the Houyhnhnms--but the more pertinent Mars. Daily letters describing in detail the condition of Martian life and Martian morals have been published in El Sol. Baraglas inferences of Mars correspond suspiciously with the present state of Spanish affairs. "Ninety percent of the Martians are soldiers and the rest are compelled to work."

General Primo de Rivera, like all military geniuses, may be too opaque to see the joke, but if he does, Bagaria were better in Mars than in Spain. It is scarcely good policy to pull the lion's tail when one is locked alone with him in the cage.

It is rather extreme to expect that these satires will rouse the Spanish in defense of their liberties. For, after all, satire implies a considerable degree of intellect on the part of the reader, and can never be as successful with the masses as downright and obvious abuse. Nevertheless the world outside of Spain finds in the affair a hint of the days when literature had a dash of spiteful fire, and principles had not yet succeeded to the commercial urge. Bagaria will, perhaps, never attain to the immortality of Swift, but his is the honor of adding at least a bit of personal invective to an otherwise tame and occasionally unconvincing national literature.