SPAIN: Blast from the Ruins

U. S. citizens well know the jealous scorn of official Germany—the blasts against New York City, that tomb of bloated moneybags, against Franklin D. Rosenfeld, against the Jewish, plutocratic press. The country has recently become acquainted too with the distorted echoes these cries make when they bounce off Rome’s walls. Last week a strangely related fury came up from the ruins of Spain.

All week long newspapers attacked the U. S. This week the campaign reached a climax. On Madrid walls there appeared a grisly cartoon showing a cart being drawn over Belgian, Dutch and French skulls by Messrs. Churchill, Halifax, Chamberlain. On the driver’s box sat the President of the U. S. Below was a map showing territories Spain thinks she ought to have: Gibraltar and northwest Africa all the way to the Gold Coast; the Philippines, which belonged to Spain until the Spanish-American War and which were named for that suspicious, hardworking, self-righteous Spanish monarch, Philip II; and even a vague area in Mexico and the southwest U. S., which, Spaniards were quick to point out, was originally explored, owned, Catholicized by Spaniards. Reasons for the blast: Latin pique over the Havana Conference, Axis pique over the embargo of U. S. oil and scrap iron which had been delivered via Spain.