Page:The Martyrdom of Ferrer.djvu/99

 men and women marched through the town. Fifty towns of France have decided to give the name of Ferrer to one of their streets. At Brussels an imposing list of lawyers signed the indictment of the Spanish Government, and a monument is to be raised to Ferrer. In England Conservative journals like the Times and Spectator protested against the way in which the execution was secured. In Germany a number of the leaders of culture headed the protest. Even in Spain a politician with such authority as Count Romanones declared that "the Government committed a grave blunder in acting as it did with Ferrer."

But Ferrer is dead. Some weeks ago I sat in a London café with a small group of men who knew Ferrer and knew Spain. Someone entered with the news of Ferrer's arrest. Then, said my friend, he is doomed. He pleaded that I knew Spain well enough to understand that. I did not think they would dare to perpetrate so palpable a murder, and I worked hard in the education of English people as to his danger. The corrupt servants of Spain moved too quickly for us. Ferrer is dead. A man of fine character, high ability, and intense devotion to his ideals; a man who loved the sunlight, but was not happy save in the consciousness that he was bringing the sunlight into the darkened homes of the poorer Spaniards; a man whose work has stood the fiercest searching that his embittered enemies could devise, yet has proved to be one of peaceful devotion to a noble ambition—this man has sunk under a burden of calumny and hatred, and lies in the grave of a criminal. I trust I have vindicated his memory.

But I have a further trust, and a further purpose. Many besides Ferrer have been shot, without trial. We have no idea whether they were innocent or guilty. About three thousand men and women are suffocating in the jails of Catalonia, without trial. Soledad Villafranca, against whom it would be stupid even to manufacture evidence, is "detained," broken-hearted and seriously ill, her heritage confiscated. Hundreds upon hundreds of men and women have been torn from their homes, and condemned to long imprisonment, solely because they were known, in one way or other, to oppose the corrupt political system and the