WAR IN SPAIN: Important Decision

Francisco Franco, again busy over staff maps with his big soft pencil, directed last week the Rightist recapture of Teruel, bloody “Spanish Verdun.” Inside this little city, Valentin Gonsalez, a picturesque Leftist Army leader known as El Campesino (“The Peasant”), was busy dynamiting such civic buildings as were not already in ruins, while the 20,000 Leftists holding Teruel clung grimly to their posts.

“House-to-house fighting is the enemy’s style, not ours,” General Franco told correspondents. “That is just what they want, but we are not going to oblige them because we can always prove our superiority in the open battlefield, and we do not have to take Teruel their way.”

Rightist columns by this time had completely surrounded Teruel. Rightists poured in explosives, made things hotter in the town than any place has been in Spain since the Siege of the Alcazar. The Peasant, leading Leftists in a furious effort to fight their way out, was reported killed in an armored truck. It was then bayonet against bayonet in what experts rated the most savage, large-scale battle of Spain’s present civil war.

Two days later the official results were announced. According to the Leftist Government: their forces had withdrawn from Teruel in perfect order and taken up strong positions nine miles back. According to General Franco: 16,000 Leftists had been taken prisoner, 9,000 buried. Striking an average, neutrals guessed that the Leftists had given a good account of themselves, had succeeded in fighting their way out with heavy losses.

The Leftist Government immediately ordered two more classes to the colors. Each man drafted was ordered to “bring to the People’s Army a pair of shoes, blanket, plate, knife, fork and spoon.” The Leftist surprise offensive on Dec. 19, which captured Teruel, was the first major victory of the new People’s Army. In canceling that victory last week General Franco did not himself win a major victory. For the expenditure of two months’ time many lives and much materiel— none of which he could well spare—all he had to show was a wider Teruel salient (now containing 2,500 square miles against 2,125 square miles three months ago).

It has been clear almost from the start that forces outside Spain would decide this civil war. Last week the fall of Teruel happened to coincide with a general realization among Spaniards that Chamberlain, Hitler, Chautemps and Mussolini are now dickering toward a four-power agreement (see col. 2). Its effect would be to rule out any victory in Spain for the extreme Left—Communists, Anarchists and the more radical Socialists. General Franco’s friends in Britain have always maintained he was ready for a “reasonable Spanish compromise,” and with Hitler and Mussolini now telling Chamberlain they want not a square inch of Spanish soil, this week, for the first time in 19 months, peace in Spain became possible.

In Barcelona a Cabinet spokesman said portentously: “We have no fear of our ability to defend ourselves militarily pending the clearing up of international problems.” Presided over by President Azana, the Cabinet had meanwhile taken in the greatest secrecy what was openly called “a most important decision, which may affect world history.”