WAR IN SPAIN: Symbolic Recall

About half way between Madrid and Barcelona lies the city of Saragossa, held by Rightists since the beginning of the war and heavily fortified. Blazing into sudden action last week went armies estimated at 200,000 on a side, to start the greatest battle of the Spanish war to date, a battle which correspondents of neither side were allowed to attend.

For starting his Saragossa offensive now, Leftist General Sebastian Pozas had good reason last week. But six weeks of decent fighting weather remain before the bitter Spanish winter closes down. Gijon, last Leftist stronghold on the Bay of Biscay, was so close to capture that most of its officials had already fled to sanctuary in France, and in the field of foreign diplomacy, where so much of Spain’s war has been fought, Generalissimo Franco’s chief supporter, Italy, was finishing a most successful week.

Following their successful Nyon piracy conference of seven weeks ago (TIME, Sept. 20 et seq.), France and Britain moved last week to do something serious about the more important question of Italian volunteers in Spain. These, estimated by French military observers to number between 65.000 and 80,000 men, were last week admitted for the first time in the Italian press to number 40,000. Pouted the Italian Foreign Office’s news agency, the Informazione Diplomatica: “Absolutely fantastic figures have been given and continue to be given with the evident purpose of creating a war psychosis. It is scandalous that a former head of the British Government like Lloyd George, who in view of his age should advise seriousness and prudence, in a recent speech tossed to his audience hare-brained figures. . . .” Urgent notes went to Rome inviting the Fascist Government to discuss “immediate” withdrawal of foreign volunteers at a three-power conference. Behind this were veiled Franco-British threats of force, varying from opening the Catalan frontier for munitions and volunteers from France, to matching Italian volunteers with similar detachments of the French regular army.

These threats had little effect last week in Rome, where it is well known that the Cerbère-Portbou frontier was already open to everything that Leftists could pay cash for. Italy also feels that French and British public opinion -will not yet stand for open intervention. Instead Italy insisted on discussing recall of volunteers not at a three-power conference but before all 27 nations of the impotent Nonintervention Committee, including Italy’s ally Germany. Britain and France were forced to agree. Lest this sound like too much of a blow to British prestige Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden addressed a Government rally at Llandudno, Wales:

“This [placing the matter before the Non-intervention Committee] does not mean that we are prepared to acquiesce in dilatory tactics. The next few days will show whether or not the nations are prepared to make a sincere effort to deal with the Spanish problem in a spirit of real .international cooperation. … In such conditions no one can complain if the patience of those who have striven to keep their responsibilities toward Europe constantly before them is well nigh exhausted. I for one, should certainly not be prepared to utter a criticism of any nation which . . . felt compelled to resume its freedom of action.”

Not to press II Duce’s advantage too hard, Italy’s Ambassador in London, chin-tufted Dino Grandi announced last week that Italy was not “unalterably” opposed to withdrawing her “volunteers.” Italy was willing, said he, to make a “symbolic recall” of approximately 5,000 men—IF belligerent rights were awarded General Franco at once, and IF an equivalent number of foreign volunteers were withdrawn from the Leftist armdes at the same time.

By last week’s best count, 5,000 Leftists would be more than a quarter of all foreigners in the International Brigade. The symbolic recall of 5,000 Italians would leave from 60,000 to 85,000 of them still in Spain. Therefore André Charles Corbin, French delegate at the Non-intervention Committee, tried to insist that all “symbolic recalls” should be “proportional,” in the proportion of four Rightists to one Leftist volunteer.

Wise heads both in London and Paris know that many Italian officers and upper-class soldiers can be and have been withdrawn from Spain. Most of them are replaced after three or four months’ service, but the dumb thousands lurching in motor trucks and tramping muddy roads in Spain last week “know too much,” are too discontented and are political dynamite too explosive to be brought back to Italy at this time.

If they could be transported to Ethiopia, where most of them thought they were going to begin with, II Duce might consent to their withdrawal from Spain but Ethiopia cannot yet support them.