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Pushed into history's backwaters, the Portuguese have quietly tenanted one of the loveliest of lands, the long Atlantic coast, the purple-brown hills, the tall pines and the gardens of roses, carnations and bougainvillea which they tend with rare skill.
But they have never been masters of this land, and Salazar seems to think they never will be. He has said they were "excessively sentimental . . . have a horror of all discipline . . . lack continuity of effort and tenacity [but with] proper discipline and control, there is nothing they cannot be taught."
Teacher Salazar is aware that there are other teachers with other ideas of discipline and control. He has recently said: "The world, weary and disillusioned, is sweeping half-measures from the political field . . . forming up clearly on the Right or on the Left." Salazar's own policies have encouraged both the disillusionment and the drift to the Right and Left extremes. Last month in Lisbon an old streetcar motorman, who earns $30 a month after 25 years' service, summed it up: "I ask only for the minimum to enable me and my family to live. Salazar gives us only the right to die. . . . Yes, I belong to the Anti-Fascist Unity Council ... I can't tell you how. The M.U.D.? Too much lawyers, too many words, too afraid of the law.
"We are working with the Army. It is composed of workers, too—and our day will come. Are we Communists? I do not know ... we are for liberty and decent human life."
It looked as if the good dictator, like the bad ones, only created what he wanted most to destroy.