Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mr. S. H. Swinny
This article was published in The Freethinker on 25 may 1913.
Article
Sir A. Conan Doyle has made a very feeble reply to Mr. S. H. Swinny with respect to the treatment of the "politicals," that is "royalists," in the Portuguese prisons. Sir Conan actually urged the withdrawal of the British Minister from Lisbon by way of protest. Mr. Swinny has been to Lisbon, and seen the prisons and prisoners for himself, and he reports that there is nothing special to complain about. One prison, which was said to be infested with vermin, he found "appallingly clean." Prisons, of course, are prisons; and it is idle to expect that the Portuguese Republic is suddenly going to turn them into Carlton Hotels for the sake of the Duchess of Bedford and her royalist friends, who insist on attempting petty revolutions and wailing over the consequences. Sir Conan Doyle knows nothing personally of the subject he writes so dogmatically upon, Mr. Swinny is a first-hand witness, and his competence is beyond challenge. On the whole, it seems that the noise made over the Portuguese prisons is due to two causes; first, because the country is small and can therefore be bullied with impunity, — second, because the upper-class people are the principal sufferers.
