In the teeth of Government opposition, an assembly of sena tors and deputies met, voted resolutions asking for a reform of the constitution, and set up three commissions to prepare reports on reforms to be submitted to a second meeting to take place later. These men might have taken the lead of the revolutionary spirit stirred by the army. But the mass of the assembly was too dull, and no real leader manifested himself. Thus two attempts, one military, one middle-class, both directed against the evils of the old regime, failed through lack of co-ordination and mutual understanding. A third failure was still to come. On Aug. 10 the railwaymen of the Northern railway went on strike. On the 13th, a general strike, clearly revolutionary, was suddenly launched in the whole country.
A state of war was declared, and the military crushed the re bellion with a ruthless hand. By Aug. 19 the situation was well in hand. The net result was to prove that the only real force in the country was the army committee system. On Aug. io, the council of ministers passed a special credit for military expenses. The committees attempted to deliver a message into the hands of the king. Dato had to resign on a "perfectly constitutional" hint by the king. In point of fact he was expelled by the army com mittees. The crisis was long and laborious, and in the midst of it, the parliamentary assembly met in Madrid (Oct. 3o) in its sec ond session. The cabinet was at last formed by Garcia Prieto. It was a coalition ministry composed of Maurists, Liberals and Catalanists, in which, in order to give satisfaction to the new demand for an impartial general election, a non-political judge was given the post of home secretary. Senor La Cierva, who took the war office, was the real head of the cabinet. His policy con sisted of ingratiating himself with the committees of defence, so as to become their leader and representative. But soon after the general election (Feb. 24) the Government fell on a grave crisis brought about by a strike of telegraph officials. All possible corn binations were tried and failed, until on March 21 at midnight, at a meeting of ex-prime-ministers called by the king in his study, King Alphonso, after, it is said, having threatened his abdication, succeeded in forming a "ministry of all the talents." It was but short-lived (resigned Nov. 6). The new Government, presided over by Garcia Prieto, was formed amid the sensation caused by the news of the Kaiser's flight. It fell on Dec. 3, 1918, and Count
Romanones formed a stop-gap cabinet. His first important act was his visit to President Wilson, then in Paris.
The successive Governments which ruled Spain during this period had succeeded in steering clear of obstacles, home and for eign, overburdened as they were with home problems and foreign advice not always disinterested. Unwelcome visits of German submarines (1917), and the requirements of trade (Anglo-Spanish agreement Dec. 6) gradually brought Spain to apply to Germany the claim of ton for ton. Germany had agreed to the ton-for-ton indemnity when the end of the war came. The Spanish merchant marine had lost 65 ships representing 140,000 tons. From the material point of view, the neutral attitude adopted by Spain contributed to accelerate the progress which was observable in her economic development in the pre-war years.
Decay of the Party System.—A mixture of two political currents, a democratic, constitutional agitation, born of the Allied victory, and a revolutionary agitation traceable to the effect of the juntas' pronunciamentos, brought about a violent conflict between the military and the civil authorities of Barcelona. The Government resigned, the military having expelled the civil authorities from the town. Maura took office on April 15, asked for a decree dissolving the cortes, and to the consternation of all parties, obtained it. This amounted almost to a coup d'etat on the part of the king.