SPAIN: Franco Talks Tough

In Berlin last week arrived tough-faced young General Agustin Muñoz Grande, a few days ahead of his rag-tag-&-bobtail Spanish volunteers who will help Germany fight Russia. This Spanish response to Adolf Hitler’s call for a crusade against Communism was not important as a gift of men (the Germans will have to equip the Spanish volunteers). Far more important was Hitler’s success in turning Spain from a sullen suppliant to an open opponent of the U.S.

On the fifth anniversary of the beginning of Spain’s Civil War, Generalissimo Francisco Franco went to Villaverde, near Madrid, and made a tough, bitter speech to the National Council of Spain’s one big Party, the Falange. Object of his bitterness was the U.S., because, said he, the U.S. had put “such obstacles” in Spain’s way that thousands of tons of wheat consigned to Spain lay in U.S. ports. Behind U.S. offers of economic aid “always appeared the attempt at political mediation . . . incompatible with our sovereignty and our dignity as a free people.”*

The little Generalissimo then pitched a Hitlerian invitation at Latin America. “The countries of America, called by the Reds the semicolonial peoples, cannot be separated from this crusade against Communism. Stalin is already allied to the democracies. . . .

“Nobody is more authorized than we to tell Americans that Europe has no ambitions over America. [Three days after these words the Nazis were caught trying to pull off a Putsch in Bolivia (see p. 27).] A struggle between the two continents is impossible. . . . To say that the outcome of the war can be changed by the entrance of a third country is criminal madness. It is to start a universal war without limits, a war which may last for years and which would definitely ruin nations that have based their economic life on their legitimate trade with the nations of Europe.”

The Generalissimo’s philosophical peroration to his half-starved nation: “Gold corrupts nations like individuals. Our poverty is our pedigree.”

* Entirely untrue, said U.S. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles. Shipment of supplies was contingent only on Spain’s keeping the peace.