Introduction: The Lusophone World at War, 1914-1918 and Beyond

Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses¹

¹ Maynooth University, Ireland. E-mail: Filipe.deMeneses@nuim.ie

On March 9, 1916, Germany declared war in Portugal. In response, Lisbon sent a fighting force, the Corpo Expedicionário Português [CEP], to France, where it held a portion of the Western Front until April 9, 1918. In addition, a number of smaller expeditions were dispatched to secure Mozambique and, if possible, participate in the conquest of German East Africa. Both theatres of war were a source of frustration for the Portuguese, and participation in the conflict fell far short of the hopes deposited in it by its defenders. As interventionist politicians slowly lost control over the country’s destiny after the war’s end, the conflict faded from the public’s awareness, its memory kept alive essentially among those who had direct experience with combat. For decades, Portugal’s participation in World War I was generally ignored, or reduced to a historical cul-de-sac, a pointless, if expensive, military episode. However, our understanding of the conflict’s impact on Portugal and its importance in the subsequent course of the country’s history has increased immeasurably over the past twenty years. The centenary commemorations for both the Republic, in 2010, and the Great War itself, starting in 2014, have naturally contributed to this process.

In March of 2016, on the hundredth anniversary of Portugal’s intervention in the conflict, a colloquium was held at Brown University as an attempt to insert Portugal’s war experience into a wider, but intimately related, context: that of the Lusophone world. The intention of the colloquium’s organizers was twofold. They set out, on the one hand, to acknowledge and showcase the rich diversity inherent in the Portuguese war experience (both in the European metropolis and in the African and Asian colonies) and in its Brazilian counterpart. On the other, the organizers intended to challenge participants to think of the First World War in a new way: not only as the preserve of governments, generals and statesmen, or even of strictly defined nation-states, but rather of linguistic communities and cultures that crossed oceans and were, in some cases, present on all continents. This aspect of the workshop’s rationale rested on the possibility that there might well have existed affinities beyond loyalty to country, class, or even to empire (multi-national or colonial) that determined how people around the globe experienced the First World War. In other words, it was the organizers’ intention to establish whether global linguistic communities, tied together by a multitude of bonds ²  of varying strengths, developed a common response to the experience of a world at war in the age of total conflict.

The Lusophone World, 1914-1918

There were, during World War I, only two such communities, whose membership spanned an incredible diversity of race, class, and creed: the English and the Portuguese-speaking worlds. This is because there were, in 1914, no French, Italian, or German equivalents of Brazil, a fully independent country speaking the same language as the former motherland. Significantly, the Spanish-speaking world, which contained many such entities, remained neutral in the conflict. By 1914, the Lusophone world could be divided into three parts, which to a certain extent overlapped. The first consisted of Portugal, its adjacent islands (Madeira and Azores), and its colonial possessions, be they the distant remnants of the expansion of the 15th and 16th (Goa, Macau, Timor), be they Angola and Mozambique, greatly expanded in response to the ‘Scramble for Africa’. The second part was Brazil, independent since the 1820s. The third and final part consisted of the Portuguese diaspora, the greater part of which lived in Brazil, most of the rest living in the United States. It was thus a combination of European metropolis, far-flung colonial empire, New World Republic, and substantial immigrant communities, at different levels of integration in their host countries. It was the intention of the workshop organizers that all these components should be covered in the event’s proceedings.

World War I, it seemed to the organizers of the workshop, provided a moment of rare unity of outlook and purpose within this Lusophone world. All of its constituent parts were eventually at war with the Central Powers. Portuguese communities all over Brazil, and, in the United States, from Hawaii to Massachusetts, self-mobilized to support their embattled homeland any way they could. In Honolulu, a Portuguese School, created in July 1917, headed by a Lisbon-appointed teacher, served as a focal point. ³  The Portuguese in Brazil responded to the German declaration of war against Portugal by – their press proclaimed – burying commercial rivalries and the more recent political enmities engendered by the overthrown of the monarchy in 1910. A Grande Comissão Pró-Pátria was organized, taking it upon itself to gather the funds necessary to look after and educate Portuguese children orphaned by the war. It later raised funds to look after Portuguese POWs in Germany. Portuguese-owned publications were enthusiastically pro-war and disseminated highly patriotic accounts of Portugal’s ongoing participation in the fighting; the extent to which the Portuguese Embassy in Rio de Janeiro and the dense consular network around the country contributed to or shaped this mobilization remains to be seen. Brazilian national and local newspapers dedicated many columns to events in Portugal, especially at the time of the German declaration of war, and then celebrated when the two countries were finally united in the common purpose of waging war. This is not to say that Brazil entered the war because Portugal was already involved in it. Nevertheless, a greater concern for Portugal’s fate was noticeable in Brazilian discourses regarding the conflict, be it at the level of intellectual elites or at the level of popular politics, than in any other country.

The importance of this transatlantic link was proclaimed in the pages of Atlântida, a Luso-Brazilian journal created in late 1915, which ran until 1920 and which originally had two directors, both journalists with artistic pretensions: Portugal-based João de Barros and Brazil-based João do Rio, or, to give him his real name, Paulo Barreto. Atlântida was the cornerstone of a considerable Portuguese propaganda offensive mounted with the wider Brazilian public as its target – one that has gone unnoticed in the general historiography of the conflict⁴  Atlântida may have been aimed at a narrow elite,⁵  but many of those who contributed to the review on the Brazilian side were also involved in the Liga Brasileira pelos Aliados, a mass organization designed to spread pro-Allied propaganda in Brazil. Livia Claro Pires writes, of the links between Atlântida and the League,

Both defended the opposition between the Germanic and Latin civilizations, the predatory character of the first in relation to the second, and the demonization of Germany. They were against German immigration to Brazil, seeing it as a threat to its nationality […] Afrânio Peixoto and Carlos Coelho regularly published their poems and writings; Vitor Vianna wrote an article about the importance of the preservation of Portuguese language and culture in Brazil for the preservation of the nationality, mentioning the resistance of German, Italian and Polish immigrants to the assimilation process; when Olavo Bilac visited Lisbon, he was the subject of a banquet offered by Atlântida because he was an important partner in the cause defended by the review (Pires, 2011: 13-14).

And what was this cause? It was made clear in its very first number:

It seems as if we have reached a unique moment in world history, when there will take place the definitive union, for common action, of the human groups which are bound by affinities and relations, which only when united and joined can produce their maximum strength and splendor! The small efforts, the small desires, the small ambitions of each nationality that might one day compose a great ethnic or social collectivity will be fused in a great desire, a great ambition, a formidable effort – for the greater merit and usefulness of global civilization.

The time has thus come for the people who together possess strong communities of sentiment, racial affinities, similarities of temperament and mental structures to understand each other, to study each other, to move closer together. Within the vast Latin family, Brazil and Portugal are, more than any other countries, fraternal and similar. ⁶ 

Over the following years, Atlântida disseminated literature produced on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as a number of political and economic texts. One regular feature was the insistence – common in the Portuguese press at this time – on the creation of a regular shipping line between Portugal and Brazil, possible now that German competition had disappeared from the oceans and that a not inconsiderable part of Germany’s merchant navy was in Portuguese (and later also in Brazilian) hands. João do Rio, one of a handful of journalists picked out for his influence by Olivier Compagnon in his innovative (but incomplete) study of South America and the war (Compagnon, 2013, 74), also wrote regularly for the Rio newspaperO País,one of the main Rio de Janeiro newspapers. O País mixed Brazilian reports about Portugal with Portuguese-written accounts of combat (and its personnel overlapped, to an extent, with that of Atlântida). For a time, as 1917 came to a close, its Portuguese page, established in 1916, was transformed into a full-blown ‘Suplemento Português’, readers being informed that they were purchasing two newspapers for the price of one. There was here an unequivocal desire to interest Rio de Janeiro’s population in the Portuguese war effort, the course of which naturally dominated the supplement’s pages. After all, in November the CEP had finally received its own sector of the Western Front, its two divisions fighting side-by-side and its command publishing a regular communiqué. O País’s reaction to the April 1917 diplomatic crisis between Brazil and Germany shows it to be an interventionist newspaper, eager to see the Brazilian government take a much firmer stance against Germany than just breaking off diplomatic relations.⁷  However, other routes were explored to bring the two countries closer together. A Chair of Brazilian Studies was created at the University of Lisbon (Miguel Calmon being appointed by the Brazilian Academy of Letters to fill it) and the new relationship between Portugal and Brazil was to have been sealed by the Special Embassy sent to Brazil to salute its entry into the conflict. Led by Justice Minister Alexandre Braga, it was set to arrive in December and included a number of writers as well as an army and a navy officer (although it was not as high-powered as it might have been – more sonorous names such as Guerra Junqueiro appear to have bowed out.)⁸  Its impact was much diminished by the fact that, while crossing the Atlantic, the government of which Braga was a member was overthrown by Sidónio Pais. Still, the party was greeted by the highest figures in Brazilian official life, starting with the President of the Republic. Its members spoke at a number of engagements and, largely thanks to Braga, the Embassy became involved in a political spat with members of the Portuguese community in Brazil after denouncing Sidónio Pais’s actions.

The workshop organizers wanted therefore not only to reflect on the impact that World War I had on the various constituent parts of the Lusophone world – in the Americas, in Europe, in Africa and in Asia – but also to explore the possibility that the conflict made possible a moment of reflection within that same Lusophone world, on the basis of ideas common to all within it, about the ties that bound it together. Was there any expression of a desire that, in a future generally understood to be radically different, but whose terms were not yet discernible, those ties might be strengthened, and even substantially transformed? At one extreme were the writers who, in the pages of Atlântida, argued for the creation of a Lusitanian Confederation, bringing together Portugal, its colonies, and Brazil (an idea that would remain alive in Portugal, under various guises, until well into the 1960s) (Gonçalves, 2003); but everywhere there were signs of delight when each element of the Lusophone world displayed vitality in defense of its rights, and challenged those who showed contempt for the whole, be they German settlers in Brazil or American lawmakers and journalists. There was, of course, much confusion, empty posturing, and completely unrealistic dreaming influenced by past glories; but there was also something more than this – a sense of optimism now that history had once again handed the Portuguese and their descendants a chance to demonstrate their worth.

There are, of course, obstacles in the way of carrying out this investigation, even as a collective enterprise. At a historiographical level there is relatively little literature on which to build. Published research on Portugal’s participation in the war dwarves its Brazilian counterpart,⁹  and even the links between these two states, as well as comparative examinations of their respective leaderships’ political and cultural influences, have generally been neglected. One important exception is Isabel Corrêa da Silva’s excellent Espelho Fraterno, a very thorough account of the different nature and outlook of the Portuguese and Brazilian republican currents, whose coverage unfortunately ends in 1914, just as this workshop’s theme begins (Silva, 2013). Research into the experience of Portuguese colonies during the war is also still in its early stages, notably once Angola and Mozambique is set aside; and the same holds true for Portuguese emigrant communities outside Brazil. ¹⁰ 

A more significant obstacle is the fact that the two sovereign states of the Lusophone world, Portugal and Brazil, adopted very different postures in relation to World War I and arrived at their common belligerence via very different paths. Sentiment and even enthusiasm for the war as a transformative moment for all ran headlong into the understanding of Brazil’s national interest held by its political leadership; a balancing act built out of a number of domestic considerations, starting with the uneasy equilibrium among the country’s leading states and their respective elites. Moreover, as Lucia Lippi Oliveira makes clear in her contribution to this volume, not only did the war tarnish Europe’s overall reputation, it also reawakened a profound debate on Brazilian identity which was frequently critical of all things Portuguese. Pro-Portugal propagandists did not have an unimpeded field of action before them, far from it, and there was no guarantee that Brazilian nationalism would perforce result in a desire for closer collaboration with the old colonial power. We must also keep in mind the very different nature and scale of the Portuguese and Brazilian war efforts.

Portugal, a country of six million people, sent some 100,000 men to the battlefields of Europe and Africa. Many of these soldiers and officers were well known in the fields of politics, art, journalism, and academia, but the force itself remained a small sample of the nation as a whole. Even counting the war workers provided to the French armaments industry, Portugal’s was by no means a society fully mobilized for war. Fewer than 8,000 men died at the front, the majority in Mozambique, where conditions were hard and disease was rife. As Ana Paula Pires suggests at the close of her contribution, consensus about the need to defend the colonies existed only among the political elites. Among those called on to fight in Africa, there were very grave doubts about the need for their presence in the colonies, doubts that grew as the chaos that would engulf them made itself clear. Mortal casualties were much lower on the Western Front (where they were overwhelmingly suffered during the battle of La Lys, on 9 April 1918). The number of wounded was greater on the Western Front – some 5,000 – while the number of those invalided there was also considerable: 7,000. The number of prisoners – again, taken mostly on 9 April – was remarkably high: 6,678. In Mozambique, some 4,800 men died and 1,593 were wounded or incapacitated by illness; in Angola, the number was 810 and 583 respectively. Sílvia Correia, in her article, calls our attention to the plight of disabled veterans in Portugal, noting how even achieving the title of ‘disabled’ and its corresponding supports could involve a frustrating bureaucratic battle.

Rather than mobilizing the colonial empire to help in the European struggle against Germany, the European metropolis was mobilized to fight Germans – and rebellious African populations – in the colonial empire (Meneses, 2014). This was a sure sign that Portugal was, alone among colonizers, a poor nation, with only the most limited of abilities to determine the course of events throughout the enormous tracts of African land for which it was responsible. This limited ability to exercise its will over the colonies through anything other than violence (and this only in rather inefficiently and at great cost) naturally constitutes a difficulty which a study of the Lusophone world in wartime must address; it should not be confused with the boundaries of the Portuguese colonial empire. Ironically, those areas with the greatest number of non-metropolitan-born Portuguese speakers – Cape Verde and Goa – were by no means the most important in economic terms. Cape Verde was also highly unusual in that, while an African colonial territory, it was also a source of emigrants to the United States. Nevertheless, as the articles in this volume by Pedro Aires Oliveira and Luís Cunha make clear, there was no such thing as a blanket rejection of Portuguese colonialism, be it by Chinese nationalists (beginning with Sun Yat-Sen himself, who had close contacts with Macau) or by an educated African elite who, in the colonies or in Lisbon, chose to work with the Republican authorities, attempting to make them live up to the regime’s rhetoric and principles when it came to racial issues. This African elite should be considered as part of the Lusophone world for the purposes of this study, and its members were clearly enthused by the possibilities opened up by the conflict.

The Brazilian government’s approach to the war was very different, even if there were, on the surface, a number of similarities. Like Portugal, Brazil was a relatively recent republic facing internal difficulties, was led by a Francophile political elite whose members instinctively favored the Allies, and was a latecomer to the war. However, Brazil’s intervention, largely devoid of the ideological drive which characterized Portugal’s participation in the conflict (despite the best efforts of the aforementioned intellectuals), was closer, in its timing and rationale, to that of the United States of America. This was the case for four reasons. Firstly, participation in the European conflict represented a major break with Brazil’s diplomatic tradition. Secondly, it was a step made highly problematic by the presence in the country of numerous and sizable European immigrant communities. Italians and Portuguese on the one hand, and Germans on the other, formed well organized and influential ‘colonies’.¹¹  These immigrants naturally pulled Brazil in different directions during a war fought between their homelands, threatening the internal unity of their adopted country. Thirdly, while the cultural elites were dominated by francophile sentiment, the military and many involved in economic life were seduced by Germany. The Brazilian armed forces were pushing for an overhaul based on the German model. Lastly, the Brazilian government was greatly concerned with restoring the level of foreign exports, notably coffee, the basis of the São Paulo economy. As Oliver Compagnon makes clear, Brazil’s economy, dominated by the production and export of coffee, was very vulnerable to the war’s effects, especially since much of that export trade was in German hands (Hamburg was second only to New York as an importer of Brazilian coffee) and therefore subject to a British blockade (Compagnon, 2013, 131). Becoming an ally was one way of overcoming this situation.

Recently elected President Venceslau Brás (1914-1918) attempted to use the war as a way of rallying the population of this disparate and multi-ethnic state around the idea of a common national interest in a dangerous world, but Brazil’s multi-ethnic dimension was a problem that could not be easily overcome. The German community, comparatively well-off and certainly well organized, had its own institutions and was characterized by a desire to preserve its distinctive culture. Its refusal to integrate had already raised apprehension about its ultimate intentions among other Brazilians, leading to some talk of a ‘German Threat’ in the years before the war. Now this matter rose to the fore again, as Brazilian-Germans mobilized to send aid to their beleaguered home country. The Brazilian intervention debate was not nearly as intense or as consequential, as Portugal’s,¹²  but still, as young men from the various immigrant communities were called up for military service in their European home countries, tempers flared. Suspicion grew that this German community and its supporters in high places (the Foreign Minister was, after all, Lauro Müller, son of German immigrants who had settled in the state of Santa Catarina) might use the war as an excuse for a political adventure.

This declaration of war brought with it a number of challenges. What was to be done? Should Brazil participate in the fighting? How would communal relations improve? A Lei de Guerra was published in November and imposed restrictions on banks and other businesses with German connections. German-language newspapers were closed down, as were German-language schools and speaking societies. As for the war, a number of military missions were sent to the United States and France to investigate possibilities for military participation – but the state of the army was very poor indeed. The Navy was another matter. The Divisão Naval em Operações de Guerra was made up of two cruisers and four destroyers which were refitted and assigned mine-clearing duties off West Africa in May 1918. They were then ordered to the Mediterranean, but arrived in Gibraltar just in time to hear the news of the war’s end. Preparations were also under way to send a number of volunteers to serve as pilots in a number of Entente countries. More importantly, a large medical mission – 100 doctors accompanied by nurses – established a 300-bed hospital in Paris.¹³ 

Compared to Portugal, then, Brazil moved very slowly in the face of the First World War. It was more cautious even than the United States of America, holding out for six months longer than Washington before it finally declared war on Germany. When it finally did so, its government resisted local calls for a more active contribution to the fighting. Participation in the ground war in France was not seen as essential in order to project a new and more progressive image of the country, as had been the case in Portugal, where the leadership proclaimed that belligerence without a commitment to the Western Front was demeaning. There is much to explore in this regard, including the official diplomatic contacts between the two countries – was Lisbon twisting Rio’s arm in any way?¹⁴  What must also be explored is the impact of Portugal’s military failures and the Sidónio Pais coup, in December 1917, on both the official and semi-official propaganda networks run from Lisbon, and on local self-mobilization efforts. Pais’s attempt to refocus attention on domestic issues through his ‘New Republic’, which Francisco Martinho examines in this volume, confused Lusophone opinion outside Portugal, which expected a total dedication to the war effort matching their own commitment now that the whole was finally united in a common effort. Four months later the Battle of La Lys took place. The resulting destruction of the CEP as a fighting force and the silence that subsequently engulfed Portugal’s war effort had a confusing and disheartening effect as it became clear that just as the Allies finally achieved the longed-for ascendancy over German forces, Portuguese troops were nowhere near the battlefield.

Ultimately, then, the Brazilian and Portuguese governments approached the First World War in very different ways. Nevertheless, it seems at the very least possible to study Brazil – beyond just the Portuguese immigrant community – alongside the rest of the Lusophone world when it comes to the experience of the First World War. In no other country on earth was there as much interest – as measured in newspaper column inches – in the Portuguese experience of the war. Brazilian intellectual interventionists not only used the Portuguese case to argue for their country’s involvement in the conflict, they even called for a new understanding between the two countries, united by history and a common language. Moreover, no other country was as immediately targeted, in propaganda terms, by Portuguese intellectuals and governments, as Brazil. The key is to establish precisely the means through and the extent to which events in Portugal and the Portuguese rhetoric regarding the conflict affected Brazilian public opinion – and the actual influence which propagandists of both nationalities, as well as Portuguese politicians and diplomats, had on Brazilian decision-makers.

João de Barros, in the very first issue of Atlântida, wrote, “[…] Not even in literary terms do Portuguese intellectuals know Brazil well! But in reality, the fervent love which Brazilian writers feel for our literature does not imply merely a literary preference, nor could it mean just that: it is a higher manifestation of a general trend of affection, no doubt badly requited.” ¹⁵  This was, no doubt, an exaggeration, and it applies only to one, albeit important, aspect of the interchange of ideas within the Portuguese world. Even so, there is still much for historians to discover about World War I and the Lusophone world, thereby enriching our understanding of the global dimensions of the conflict. The Brown workshop was intended as a first step in this direction; others will hopefully follow.

REFERENCES

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A Águia (Oporto) 1914-1916

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NOTES

²  See Gerwarth, Robert and Manela, Erez (2014), Introduction.

³  ‘Solene Inauguração da Escola Portuguesa’, in O Luso, 14 July 1917.

⁴  See, for example, Rinke (2016).

⁵  This review carried – until the Sidónio Pais coup, which seems to have upset its publication schedule – the inscription ‘Sob o alto patrocínio de S.Exas os Ministros das Relações Exteriores do Brasil e dos Estrangeiros e Fomento de Portugal’. What this translated into in practice is not immediately clear.

⁶  ‘Parece que chegámos a um instante único na história da Terra, em que se vão unir definitivamente, para uma ação de conjunto, os grupos humanos que têm entre si afinidades e relações, que só unidas e amalgamadas poderão produzir o máximo da sua força e do seu esplendor! Os pequenos esforços, os pequenos desejos, as pequenas ambições de cada uma das nacionalidades que talvez venha a compor uma futura e maior coletividade étnica ou social, fundir-se-ão num grande desejo, numa grande ambição, num esforço formidável – para maior brilho e utilidade da civilização do globo. É, pois, esta a ocasião de se compreenderem mutuamente, de se estudarem, de se aproximarem uns dos outros, os povos que entre si possuem fortes comunidades de sentimento, afinidades de raça, semelhança de temperamento e de estrutura psíquica. Dentro da vasta família latina – o Brasil e Portugal são, mais do que nenhuns outros países, fraternais e semelhantes.’ Atlântida, Year 1 n.1, November 1915.

⁷  See, for example, O Paiz (Rio de Janeiro), 10-11 April 1917.

⁹  An initial exploration of Portuguese-Brazilian wartime relations was attempted in Carvalho and Martins (2011). Brief summaries of Brazil’s experience of the war can be found in Streeter (2010) and Schulze (2015), as well as in Pires, Pinto, Duarte, Reis, and Rollo (2015). Leal (ND) explores aspects of the wartime attempts to reformulate the relationship between Portugal and Brazil.

¹⁰  In respect to this matter, see Gomes (1994-1995), 44-59, in which the press of the California Portuguese community’s wartime stance is examined.

¹¹  Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a considerable body literature dealing with the German community in Brazil at this time both as a stand-alone subject and as part of a comparison with Germans in the United States. A useful guide can be found in Schulze, Frederik: German Immigrants (Brazil), in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2014-10-08.

¹²  A sketch is provided in Pires, 2011: 2-6.

¹³  At the Paris Peace Conference, Brazil was initially represented by former minister Epitácio Pessoa, an international lawyer with knowledge of European affairs and a senator from the state of Paraíba. In Paris the main concerns of the Brazilians were practical – payment for coffee stocked in the ports of the Central Powers in 1914 confiscated after the Brazilian declaration of war – and the fate of the German merchant ships. Pessoa cultivated? Wilson, and his efforts were rewarded with the awarding of a non-permanent seat in the League of Nation’s first Executive Council. Surprisingly, Pessoa’s role in the Conference was cut short when he was elected President of Brazil, following the death of the incumbent. Remaining in Europe, he undertook a series of visits to European heads of State. See Streeter, 2010.

¹⁴  Existing studies seem to privilege Brazil’s relations with the ‘Great Powers’. See, for example, Francisco Luiz Teixeira Vinhosa, O Brasil e a Primeira Guerra Mundial: A Diplomacia Brasileira e as Grandes Potências (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, 1990), and Clodoaldo Bueno, Política Externa da Primeira República: Os Anos de Apogeu (de 1902 a 1918) (Rio de Janeiro: Mauad, 2003).

¹⁵  ‘[…] nem literariamente os intelectuais portugueses conhecem bem o Brasil! E no entanto, o amor fervoroso que os escritores brasileiros têm pela nossa literatura, não significa somente uma preferência literária, e nem podia significá-lo: é uma manifestação superior duma tendência geral de afetividade, sem dúvida mal reconhecida’.João de Barros, “Atlântida”, in Atlântida: Mensário Artístico, Literário e Social para Portugal e Brasil , n. 1, Novembro de 1915. Atlântida can be used as gateway into Brazilian culture and politics, noting public figures and artists who viewed improved relations with Portugal as desirable. Among these one can cite are Coelho Netto, Senator Antônio Francisco Azeredo (politically close to Ruy Barbosa), Victor Viana (with links to O Paiz); and former President Rodrigues Alves (who would be re-elected to the position at the close of 1918).

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