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Spain is the most faithful son of the Church and France the most reprobate. France, like the prodigal, may nevertheless be nearer to salvation. France is germinative, and, if cynical, yet eternally curious, whereas Spain is incurious. Spain does not want to know. She is the last of the democracies of Europe to rebel. Probably the state of society in Spain could not be defined as a democracy.

The great ports of Spain are, however, different in temperament from the cities of the interior. Boisterous Bilbao in the north and Barcelona in the south are insurgently democratic. In these is a revolutionary movement pointing against Church and Monarchy. In these there is an energy, a commercial hustle, a will to power, which reminds one of the cities of Northern Italy.

Geographers, map-makers of Europe, seem very much at fault in the way they print the names of Spanish towns. The faint print usually reserved for villages is used for Santander and Bilbao. But these are great and stirring cities with modern buildings which for beauty and strength of design can be compared only with the architecture of the greater cities of the United States. Again, how absurd it is to print Bayonne and Biarritz in large type and indicate San Sebastian, their neighbor across the Spanish frontier, in faint italics. San Sebastian is a magnificent city and a most beautiful resort. You can see Spain there, in the season, at its grandest.