Routine Revolution

Dictator-General Gomez da Costa dismissed last week somewhat curtly his Minister of Foreign Affairs, General Carmona.

Within six hours General Carmona had rallied a regiment to his support, marched through the streets of Lisbon to the Dictator's residence, arrested him, locked him up in the suburban Belem Palace.

With General da Costa under lock and key, General Carmona declared himself Dictator, Premier, and Minister of War. "I deposed General da Costa," he explained to pressmen, "because he conducted himself in a manner not only arbitrary but impolite."

Straightway a new Cabinet was announced. Wagers were many that it would last a day, a week, a month. . . .

As everyone knows, a succession of revolts has rent and impoverished Portugal since the "original revolution" of October 5, 1910, resulted in the overthrow of King Manuel II and the setting up of a Republic. General da Costa seized the Government from Dictator-Commander Cabecadas who had overthrown President Machada (TIME, June 7).

Revolutionaries Cabecadas, da Costa and Carmona represent merely themselves and such officers and armed forces as they are able to muster in their personal defense. They were associated while launching the coup which ousted President Machada. Since then they and many another of their peers or henchmen have fallen a-quarreling over the spoils. So little interest is taken by the populace and even the army in their doings that the last three routine revolutions have been run off without the firing of a single shot.