A cistern, in the old Almarian houses of the sierra, was not opened at the first hot afternoon. The householder who broached his cistern in May found himself, in August, drawing a bucket of dust; and his neighbours, who had husbanded theirs, drew water, and did not lend.

We are told by voices raised in the rival sheets that the Fuel Stabilisation Reserve must be opened at once, that the pumps climb, that the fishing fleets suffer, that the ferrymen of the outer islands will tie up their boats. Every one of these propositions is true; not one of them is an argument for emptying the cistern in May. The Chamber knows it. The Treasury knows it. The Prime Minister, we are confident, knows it. And Don Cordoba — who has read more ledgers than most men have read novels — has said it, in that patient voice which the impatient mistake for indifference.

A targeted subsidy to the cooperatives of Cordoba harbour and the licensed ferrymen of the Bloc del Puerto, funded from the contingency line, is the proper instrument of this hour. It is not the spectacular instrument. It will not fill a square with applause. It will, however, leave the reserve intact against a winter whose severity no honest forecaster yet dares to name.

There is, besides the cistern, a candle. It burns on this editor's desk, and on the desks of our colleagues across the commonwealth, for three correspondents — two of this paper, one a friend — who went out in the service of the reader and have not come back. The Crown is pressing for their return. The Church, yesterday, asked for our prayers. We add the candle.

Stability is not a slogan borrowed from the counting-house to shame the suffering. It is the discipline by which a small nation, placed upon a hard sea, keeps water in its cistern and a light in its window through the months when neither can be taken for granted. We shall keep ours burning.