March to Glory

The beaded curtain which hides Portugal from the world momentarily parted last week. It revealed trouble for Dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar's regime.

According to Salazar's official communique, which represented the incident as a mere teapot tempest, a young Portuguese officer broke into the cavalry barracks at Monte Pedral, in northern Portugal, and exhorted the men to follow him on a "march to glory to conquer freedom." About 70, the communique declared, set out with him, but later peacefully surrendered to National Guardists near Coimbra, on the way to Lisbon. "Complete calm" once more reigned throughout Portugal.

However, Lisbon had been cut off from all communication with the outside world for 24 hours; the army, police and Salazar's "Portuguese Legion" had been alerted. Obviously, there was more to the story than Salazar's tight censorship would allow to be told.

A TIME correspondent recently expelled from Portugal cabled from Paris last week that the young officer (one Querogo Chaves) had been detailed to capture Salazar at his private residence near Coimbra, as part of a large, well-planned military coup. Shortly before zero hour, however, Portugal's President General Antonio Oscar de Fragoso Carmona had called the rebel leaders to his residence and persuaded them, after long negotiations, to postpone the revolution. Chaves failed to receive the counter-order in time.

This slip-up may well have spoiled the rebels' future chances. But TIME'S correspondent reported that the anti-Salazar opposition included M.U.D. (Movimento L'nidade Democratica), monarchists, almost the entire navy and large sections of the underpaid army. An aged officer whose personal prestige is exceptionally high became opposition leader and drew the support of many high-ranking army and navy officers. The story goes that when Salazar was recently shown a list of some of the opposition leaders, he declared: "If these men are really against me, there is little use in attempting to resist."

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