SPAIN: Unfortunate Manure

Twenty-one years ago a boatload of bewildered Italian immigrants sifted through the mill of Ellis Island. One of the number was swarthy, stocky Fortunate Manure, a Sicilian. In the United States Fortunato Manure did not do so badly. He raised a family of seven children, worked as a laborer at various jobs, was able to act enough like a U. S. citizen to get himself a U. S. passport, but the Depression of 1929 left him without a job. One son found work in Philadelphia, the rest of the Manure family in 1931 joined thousands of other disillusioned immigrants and trekked back to Italy. In 1935 Fortunato Manure was called up by the Fascist Government, popped into a uniform and set to digging roads in Ethiopia. Last week unfortunate Fortunato Manure, bearded, bedraggled, found himself in the spotlight of world news, blinking at a row of Red Militiamen in the cellar of

Madrid’s War Ministry, answering questions fired at him by rows of foreign correspondents.

“What are you doing in Spain?” barked one.

“Working for Mussolini,” said Fortunato Manure in English.

Beyond that all he knew was that one morning he packed his kit in Ethiopia under the impression that he was to be sent back to Italy, found himself a few weeks later disembarking from an Italian transport at Cadiz, officially a member of Spain’s Foreign Legion. Last week Fortunato Manure was one of some 200 Italians, ranging in rank from privates up to a Lieutenant-Colonel, who were captured by Madrid’s defenders in five days of furious strife which badly broke the point of the so-called “Italian Spearhead” thrusting at Madrid from the northeast on the Guadalajara front.

Even official Berlin broadcasts admitted the Italians had suffered heavy losses, Rome was mum with mortification, and Madrid broadcasters had the Italians fleeing headlong as at Caporetto, in utter rout, abandoning field guns, anti-tank guns, ammunition, food and even that soldiers’ treasure—cigarets—as Soviet bombing and pursuit planes harried them from the skies’ and Red Militiamen charged after them through deep mud and slush.

“It is the fortune of war—one day we are on top, another below,” commented wise, eagle-bald Madrid Defense Junta Commander General Jose Miaja. “We have had a better day than the previous ones, but it is no cause for ringing bells.

A little triumph—if it creates over-optimism—may do harm.” So hard had the Whites been stung northeast of Madrid, though they were getting an offensive under way from the south, that General Miaja doubtless feared the enemy would in exasperation use poison gas for the first time in Spain’s present war. The White’s blatant “Radio General” Queipo de Llano ominously broadcast that White Generalissimo Franco “has enormous supplies of gas, but will not use it, unless Madrid uses it first.” In Moscow jubilant Izvestia cartooned an Italian general squealing from Spain to Mussolini for help. In Spain the Red Militia were coached to greet Italian deserters from the Whites with open arms, cries of “Hurrah for the Italian People!”