Portugal Gateway To Greatness Paperback - 2006

From the publisher

Portugal is a land of legend and song, of flowers, sunshine and extremes of climate, of palaces, churches, castles and of crumbling ruins. She is of the West, yet as eastern as many countries of the East paradox seems rooted in the soil. Her people have descended from many races, yet they have remained racially in allegiance to the first inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula. They are hard working folk who in past years have been exposed to nearly every form of political instability, but they never completely lost their hope in the tomorrow on which they base their traditional optimism. They do not enjoy a high standard of living, but there is enough food to go round, there is a will to work, pride in work, and dignity in manual labour. They may not as yet enjoy the full fruits of complete democracy as we do in England, but that, surely, is a matter for the Portuguese themselves internal administration, and the relationship between the individual and the State, need be none of our business. The sunshine of Portugal, her sunsets, her chatter, her laughter and sense of fun, are some of the superficial memoriesa more abiding impression of the visitor who stays and works among the Portuguese is of a kindly, hospitable and welldisciplined and intensely patriotic people who are proud of their past, and, in these days, quietly confident of their future. Gateway to Greatness is an attempt to sketch their origins, their history and their achievements. They were among the first to take the banner of Christ overseas and many were martyred. There could be discussed at leisure and at great length the contributions they have made in, the directions of literature and art. One could also dwell upon the intense love which all Portuguese have always had for their Lusitanian home, and little settlements all over the world bear testimony to the manner in which pioneers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and onwards, established little Portugals overseas. Portugal did not take part in the Second World War as a belligerent, but her people did come under the influence of the German propaganda machine. Some of them, in the days when London was darkened, would speak hopefully of British prospects, and would point out with a smile and a sknig of the shoulder that it was inevitably the British way to begin.