SPAIN: ‘Doing Wonders

Spain’s civil war was nearly two months old but Madrid had only just been able last week to get the Government’s armed proletariat organized with enthusiasm around 66-year-old Premier Francisco Largo Caballero (“The Spanish Lenin”) and in a very real sense the Government had “just begun to fight.”

Angry because Russia has sent not a single Red Army bomber to aid them, 17 newly organized Socialist and Communist battalions about to leave for the front last week paused in Madrid to adopt this startling resolution: “Stalin has deserted to the Fascist camp! He is trying to sabotage the Spanish workers as in the past he wrecked the chances of Chinese, Austrian and German proletarians. Down with Stalin!”

In the once aristocratic Madrid Fine Arts Club mobster judges in blue overalls continued to deal out what they called “Class Justice” last week. With no war or battle in Madrid, the capital’s gravediggers by official count were nevertheless burying some 250 corpses per week. In jail sat the once debonair Duke of Zaragoza, the playboy engineer who sometimes took the throttle of King Alfonso’s private train, with the Madrid proletariat clamoring outside last week for a chance to throttle him. After a White air raid on the capital Premier Largo Caballero had to use all force at his disposal to keep his enthusiastic friends from massacring all Whites held in Madrid jails. Announced by the Government without further explanation were the ”sudden deaths” of General Enrique Marzo of the Spanish infantry, millionaire Count de los Moriles and onetime Spanish Premier Damaso Berenguer.

“Victory is ours!” Adopting the tactic of Lenin and Trotsky who made a point of telling their followers the worst during the Russian Revolution, Premier Largo Caballero and his Cabinet’s strong man Air and Marine Minister Indalecio Prieto splashed out in Madrid papers the grim fact that in Madrid there were no more potatoes, fresh eggs or butter, scant meat or sugar and hardly any milk or olive oil. To these challenges the proletariat rose as 20,000 enlisted to fight as Red Militiamen-in a day and crowds kept milling around the Spanish Lenin’s office, causing Largo Caballero to emerge from time to time on a balcony with clenched fist upraised and shout, “La victoria es nuestra! Victory is ours!”

Dashing in his blue overalls to the southern front of Madrid’s defenders near Talavera de la Reina, the new Premier conferred with the Red officer to whom for the first time had been entrusted supreme command of the capital’s forces, cigar-chewing General Juan Asensio. The Premier told him that the Red expeditionary force which fortnight ago failed to take the Island of Mallorca from the Whites was returning to Madrid last week via Barcelona, strengthened by 5,000 of that independent city’s Red Militia who had been hired to fight for the Government by sending to Barcelona a quantity of gold bars from the vaults of the Bank of Spain. With the Premier watching, Red artillery opened up a terrific fire on the Whites, young Red militiamen flung themselves recklessly to death in a mad assault on strong White positions, and the Spanish Lenin went back to Madrid crying: “I am most optimistic! . . . We are doing wonders and we will do greater things yet!”

Terror over Barcelona. If Madrid was enthusiastic last week Barcelona was delirious with popular excesses as its Anarchists, Syndicalists and Communists drove President Luis Companys of their autonomous Catalonia nearly frantic.

Risking his life. President Companys finally appealed to decent citizens of every class to master the popular ruffians. “Against their acts,” cried the President, “our citizens ought to react violently by whatever means they have at their disposal!” This amounted to saying that the majority of the rabble might be wrong, and Luis Companys nervously concluded, “Perhaps I ought not to say what I have said, but I believe that I may be excused.”

All Barcelona taxicabs were confiscated by a Peoples’ Committee last week to be run for the benefit of the people. So was the city’s chief department store, El Siglo (The Century).

“600 Priests Hanged.” When nine priests disguised as fishermen slipped from Spain over the Bay of Biscay to France last week and talked to correspondents, out went such headlines as SIX HUNDRED PRIESTS AND NUNS SLAIN BY ANARCHISTS. There was also the one about the 82-year-old Archbishop of Valladolid killed by a firing squad with his arms tied around the neck of a statue of the Virgin Mary fortnight ago. Last week the Archbishop arrived safely at Bordeaux. In Irun, which the White forces took after its Anarchist defenders burned it (TIME, Sept. 14), no confirmation could be got last week for the story that the populace had crucified five monks and burned nuns alive. In fact last week largely was devoted to debunking Irun’s more fantastic Red & White atrocity yarns. Meanwhile in nearby San Sebastian, next objective of a White Army under direct command of General Emilio Mola, there actually appeared a number of Spaniards who had not gone hog wild—Basques.

San Sebastian was being defended by its Anarchists, who kept vowing that they would set it afire as they did Irun rather than let it fall to the Whites. The Governor of San Sebastian, frantic Antonio Ortega, begged the Anarchists not to ignite it and mothers with children in their arms ran to Anarchist leaders clamoring, “Please don’t burn down our homes!” Adamant were the Anarchists when into San Sebastian rolled 500 jaunty Basques.

They were hailed as brothers by Anarchist leaders, told that they could have the honor of immediately marching on to fight against the Whites while untenable San Sebastian went up in glorious flames. Snarled the Basque column commander: “We have not come to take orders but to give them!”

The 500 Basques assumed police duties, as 300 Anarchists released from this chore dashed to face the Whites in battle. Meanwhile Governor Ortega sent his son Jose snaking out with a flag of truce. General Mola ceased fire for 48 hours, then sent an ultimatum that citizens had 48 hours to clear out of San Sebastian before the Whites advanced. Up to the very last hour it was touch & gowhether the Basques and Ortega could keep the Anarchist pyromaniacs from “Direct Action.” Finally, in a moderately humane battle, the Whites under General Mola went crashing victoriously along with their trucks and coughing machine guns, entered San Sebastian virtually unresisted. The Anarchists fled back up the coast to Bilbao, announced: “Rather than surrender Bilbao we shall burn it to the last empty box, to the last wisp of straw!”

Neutral military authorities, viewing the capture of Irun and San Sebastian, considered that Generalissimo Franco and General Mola were now in North Spain strategically just about where they had expected to be seven weeks ago. They had counted on commanding the Bay of Biscay from the first. When this region failed to join the Whites, the entire Mola-Franco plan for a quick southward thrust over the mountains to take Madrid was held up, since to attempt it would have been to risk attack from the rear. Thus this week there was a sense in which not only Premier Largo Caballero but also Generalissimo Francisco Franco had “just begun to fight”‘ —with approximately 100,000 Spaniards already killed.

Pope to Pilgrims— Into the Swiss hall of Castel Gandolfo moved aging Pope Pius XI last week to address 500 Spanish refugees, priests and laymen. In a 40-minute speech he flayed Communism without once mentioning it by name. With trembling hands, but in a voice surprising-ly strong, he read:

“Beloved sons and exiles of a Spain so dear to us and now so desolate that it fills our hearts with an utterly inexpressible tumult of afflicting and conflicting feelings and emotions. . . . You have been robbed and despoiled of all things. You have been hunted and set upon to death in cities and villages, in dwellings of men and on mountain tops. . . . These tragic happenings in Spain speak to Europe and the whole world and proclaim once more to what extent the very foundations of all order, of all culture, of all civilization, are being menaced. This menace, it must be added, is all the more serious, more persistent, more active, by reason of a profound ignorance and a disclaiming of the truth by reason of the truly satanic hatred against God and against humanity. . . . Such trials have been . . . unfailingly accompanied by universal propaganda intent on subjecting the whole world to those absurd and disastrous ideologies with which they have seduced . . . the masses, aiming at nothing less than . . . throwing them madly against every form of constitution, human and divine.”