SPANISH TESTAMENT

by

ARTHUR KOESTLER








With an Introduction by

THE DUCHESS OF ATHOLL

LONDON

VICTOR GOLLANCZ LTD
1937





	

TO

SIR PETER CHALMERS-MITCHELL

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY PURNELL AND SONS, LTD. (T.U.)

PAULTON ( SOMERSET) AND LONDON



INTRODUCTION

THIS IS A BOOK which illustrates better than any that
I know the difficulty of getting at the facts in days of
dictatorships and of war. For propaganda and press censor­
ships are inseparable from both, and the strictness of the
censorship on the insurgent side in Spain was revealed a
year ago when the correspondent of two well-known British
Conservative newspapers telegraphed that he was leaving
the insurgent headquarters on account of the intolerable
limitations that were being imposed on his work. Other
correspondents of the "Right" have since experienced
similar difficulties.

Mr. Koestler in his opening chapter makes clear the
dangers to which French correspondents who had
reported the massacre at Badajoz had been exposed
and the recantations which they had been driven to
make. His own hands happily were more free. As repre­
sentative of a well-known newspaper of the "Left" --
only a fortunate chance had enabled him to enter General
Franco's territory, for journalists of the "Right" alone
were being admitted. An equally unfortunate chance
led to an early encounter with a former German col­
league of the Ullstein Press in which he had held
important posts before the advent of the Nazi régime
in Germany. The encounter could not be agreeable
to the insurgent authorities, and Mr. Koestler was no
doubt well advised to end his visit to Seville.
But though the visit was a brief one the author, on
account of the political orientation of his newspaper,
could write freely without fear of prejudicing its chances
of further permits. This fact explains the frankness
of his opening chapter and his subsequent publication in a
book, "L'Espagne Ensanglantée" (passages from which
are incorporated in the present work) of statements
regarding brutalities committed on the insurgent side.
These will come as a shock to many who, through insistent
propaganda, have been brought to believe that "atro­
cities have been limited to the Republican side and that
the insurrection was due to General Franco's desire to
save Spain from a Communist rising".

Mr. Koestler gives us a much more circumstantial review
of the causes underlying the present troubles. His belief
that agrarian conditions are the root of the evil is confirmed
by Señor Salvador de Madariaga, who, as is well-known, has
taken no side in the civil war. A year before the fall of the
monarchy he wrote that there was little in the general
situation of the Spanish countryside which was not already
known and denounced more than a century ago. "We are
here," he said, touching one of the key facts of Spanish
history.

Need there then be surprise that after the advent of the
Republic had brought a measure of land settlement, limita­
tion of terribly long hours of work and fixing of minimum
wages for men whose earnings were often only a shilling a
day, bitter feelings were aroused when, under a so-called
Radical Government reinforced later by members of
Señor Robles' pro-Fascist party, much of the protective
legislation was repealed and wages sank to an even lower
level than before?

Señor Fernando de los Rios, the well-known writer, and
now Ambassador to the United States, described in a
broadcast on December 30th, 1936, how terrible it had
been when addressing meetings at Granada during the
General Election of the previous February to be confronted
by starving audiences crying out for "bread".

And still, Mr. Koestler tells us, ten thousand Spanish
peasant families continued to live in caves and sandpits.
Still the Statistical Year Book showed that out of every
thousand deaths five hundred were those of children under
the age of five. Still only forty-four out of every hundred
adult Spaniards were able to read or write.

Yet even such conditions did not complete the tale of
misery. The rising in the Asturias in 1934, due to the entry
of the Fascists into the Government, had been suppressed
with terrible cruelty by Moors and Foreign Legionaries.
The testimony of five hundred and sixty-one eye-witnesses
quoted in Chapter II seems conclusive on this point. It
was this which led to the formation of the Popular Front.
Is it surprising that, the victory won, there were pent-up
feelings which outran the measures of a Government
pledged to "moderation"? Starving peasants could not be
restrained from seizing land and many such seizures had
perforce to be legalized.
And as Mr. Koestler shows, much provocation came from
the "Right". Fascist groups openly derided the election;
their numbers increased; and there were powerful influences
at work to encourage them in the violence described in
Chapter III and to help to prepare for an armed rising.
Nothing in connection with the so-called "civil war" seems
to me of greater importance than the activities of the
Nazi organization described in Chapter IV. In the light of
the facts revealed by the documents seized, German
aid to an insurrection of Spanish Fascists was a foregone
conclusion.

Under all these circumstances there may well have been
much unrest and violence between February and July,
1936. Unhappily much of it ftom the "Left" was directed
against a church which had been mainly responsible for
the backward state of education and which was closely
connected with the Robles party. Undoubtedly, moreover,
many terrible things happened on that side after news of
the military rising came. But Englishmen in the best position
to procure reliable information are clear that none were
 due to official orders, but solely to the inability of the Govern­
ment, faced with a revolt not only of the army but also of
most of the police, to restrain men maddened by the
knowledge of past suffering and by the news that Italian
acroplanes were bringing over Moors and Foreign
Legionaries to help to conquer Spain for Fascism. But it is
good to know that there were Republican political organi­
zations in some centres which condemned murder daily on
the wireless and by poster.

On the other hand, mass executions such as are vouched
for in the statement of the governing body of the Madrid
Faculty of Law as taking place on the insurgent side,
portions of which are reproduced in Chapter IV, could
only be the result of official policy. Those at Granada and
Seville have been confirmed to me by an Englishman long
resident in Southern Spain. Even the atrocities on a smaller
scale recorded in this chapter could have been prevented
by authorities who commanded disciplined troops. But
indeed General Queipo de Llano in his daily wireless gave
definite encouragement to brutality, and Mr. Koestler
reproduces orders taken on July 28th, 1936, on a rebel
officer, which definitely enjoin the instilling of a "certain
salutary terror" in the civilian population by means both
"spectacular and impressive", in order to weaken enemy
morale. The orders further require the creation of panic
among civilians behind enemy lines, with the same purpose.
Hints are even given that firing on ambulances or wounded
in transport are useful means to this end.

The machine-gunning of fugitive non-combatants from
Malaga and Guernica which has been described to me by
fugitives from these places and the frequent attacks on their
ambulances experienced both by the Spanish Medical Aid
Committee and the Scottish Ambulance Unit conform so
closely to the second and third injunctions in these orders
as to justify belief in their authenticity. This is confirmed by
the fact, that as they appeared in "L'Espagne Ensanglantée"	
last January, there has been ample time to expose them if
not genuine.

Finally, the brutalities which Mr. Koestler himself both
saw and heard when taken prisoner fully confirm the
terrible statements he prints. His own graphic and moving
account of the midnight hours in the prison of Seville
bring more vividly before us than anything else I have
read the horrors Spain is enduring. His account of the
nightly executions is confirmed by Mr. Rupert Bellville,
who, having joined the Spanish Fascists, has stated publicly
that he was for ten days a member, though an unwilling
one, of a firing squad.

Finally, Mr. Koestler shows how unreliable are the
official insurgent statements in regard to the proposed
Communist rising, which has been generally given as the
justification for General Franco's insurrection. I am equally
unimpressed by the only other pieces of documentary
evidence I know of for the existence of this plot. One
appeared in the "Echo de Paris" of January 14th, 1937. It
purported to be instructions for a rising sent to Spanish
Communists early in 1936 by "technical experts" of the
French Communist Party, collaborating with the Comintern
and its delegates in France. Extracts from it were published
by the "Patriot" in a leaflet in March last. The full text
contains references to "chiefs and officers" of the army
who were to lead the supposed rising. But where, one may
ask, were the Communist chiefs and officers in the Army?

Evidently doubts of their existence have been felt else­
where, for now reliance appears to be placed on another
document, also purporting to come from French Com­
munists, but giving an entirely different set of instructions,
and speaking of the Spanish Communists as possessing a
force of 150,000 front line militia, and 100,000 of a second
line! If this were so, why, after the army had risen, were the
Government obliged to give out rifles to any untrained men
they believed to be loyal and to enrol not only men but	
women to defend the Republic? And the whole strength of
the Communist Party at that time was only 50,000!

Mr. Koestler's account of Malaga before its fall gives an
idea of the terrible handicap under which the Government
suffered, owing to the complete lack of any organized military
second line.
The proposed Communist rising therefore appears to
be as much a myth as that the Republican Government is
exclusively composed of Communists. Mr. Koestler reminds
us that they were not admitted to the Government until
some time after the insurrection broke out and that they
have never had more than two members in a Coalition
Government representing five or six parties.
And as individualism is one of the strongest of Spanish
characteristics, it is hard to believe that Spain could ever
submit to the rigid control which Communism implies.

If this book can be read with the sole desire to get at the
facts it will, I think, help us to a truer understanding of a
struggle that is not only of deep human interest, but I
believe, of vital importance to our country.

KATHARINE ATHOLL.





AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

AWORD OF explanation as to the scheme of this book
may be in place.

In the first chapter I describe how, wishing to see the
war from the rebel side, I went, in the first month of the
outbreak, to Seville by way of Portugal; I tell what I saw­
in Lisbon, giving an account of my interview with Queipo de
Llano, and try to convey the atmosphere at rebel head­
quarters. From the sixth chapter onwards I take up this
personal narrative again, describing successively the siege
of the Alcá4zar, the bombardment of Madrid, the last days.
of Republican Malaga, and my arrest when this town fell
into rebel hands. There the first part ends. The entire second
part is devoted to my experiences in the prisons of Malaga.
and Seville, when, under sentence of death, I witnessed the
executions of my fellow-prisoners and waited for my own.
Some readers may wish that I had left it at that and had
not interposed between chapters one and seven of Part I
the five chapters which deal with the historical roots of the
struggle, its outbreak and background, as well as with the
complicated problem of the Spanish church. Nevertheless,
I believe these chapters to be necessary. Without them the
subjective experiences described in the second part would
lack their background. In that second part I describe what
I felt -- but an essential -- in some ways the essential -- part
of this "Dialogue with Death" was my knowledge of the
objective meaning of this war. That knowledge is the back­
ground of Part II, but I do not speak of it there -- I take it
for granted. And the public, after reading chapters two,
to six, may be able to take it for granted also.

A.K.





CONTENTS
	
PART I 	
	
	
	
1. Journey to Rebel Headquarters 	
	
II. Historic Retrospect 	
	
III. The Outbreak 	
	
IV. The Background 	
	
V. The Church Militant 	
	
VI. Propaganda 	
	
VII. The Heroes of the Alcázar 	
	
VIII. Madrid 	164
	
IX. The Last Days of Malaga 	


	
PART II 	
	
Dialogue with Death 	


	
EPILOGUE 	




	
PART I

CHAPTER I
JOURNEY TO REBEL HEADQUARTERS

ON JULY 18TH, 1936, when the Franco revolt broke out,
I was staying at a little seaside resort on the Belgian coast,
engaged in writing a pacifist novel.
It looked at first as though the revolt had proved abortive
and that the Government was master of the situation through­
out Spain. Then the news grew more and more alarming.
By the end of a week it was clear that there was to be a
civil war of long duration, with possible European com­
plications. We greedily devoured a preposterous number of
newspapers; the pacifist novel came to a standstill and found
its way into a drawer, there to moulder away forgotten.
Requiescat in pace.

The part played by the Press in the Spanish affair was
from the outset a most peculiar one. The rebels refused to
allow a single correspondent of any Left-wing or even
liberal newspaper into their territory, while correspondents
of newspapers with pronouncedly Right-wing views were
equally unwelcome on the Government side. Thus a state
of affairs was rapidly created whereby, roughly speaking,
the Right-wing newspapers had correspondents only on
the Franco side, and the Liberal and Left Press only on the
Government side. The communiqués from the respective
headquarters were grossly contradictory, and almost as
great were the discrepancies between the telegrams sent
by the correspondents on both sides, for whom a drastic
censorship, furthermore, made it impossible to send out
unbiased messages.
The Spanish Civil Wax had, as it were, infected the
Press of Europe.
CHAPTER I
JOURNEY TO REBEL HEADQUARTERS
ON JULY 18TH, 1936, when the Franco revolt broke out,
I was staying at a little seaside resort on the Belgian coast,
engaged in writing a pacifist novel.

It looked at first as though the revolt had proved abortive
and that the Government was master of the situation through­
out Spain. Then the news grew more and more alarming.
By the end of a week it was clear that there was to be a
civil war of long duration, with possible European com­
plications. We greedily devoured a preposterous number of
newspapers; the pacifist novel came to a standstill and found
its way into a drawer, there to moulder away forgotten.
Requiescat in pace.

The part played by the Press in the Spanish affair was
from the outset a most peculiar one. The rebels refused to
allow a single correspondent of any Left-wing or even
liberal newspaper into their territory, while correspondents
of newspapers with pronouncedly Right-wing views were
equally unwelcome on the Government side. Thus a state
of affairs was rapidly created whereby, roughly speaking,
the Right-wing newspapers had correspondents only on
the Franco side, and the Liberal and Left Press only on the
Government side. The communiqués from the respective
headquarters were grossly contradictory, and almost as
great were the discrepancies between the telegrams sent
by the correspondents on both sides, for whom a drastic
censorship, furthermore, made it impossible to send out
unbiased messages.
The Spanish Civil War had, as it were, infected the
Press of Europe.
	

In these circumstances, as a journalist of liberal convic­
tions and author of fragments of pacifist novels -- the first
was brought to an untimely end by the outbreak of the
Abyssinian War, and the third I shall never dare to embark
upon -- I was bound to be tempted by the idea of getting
into rebel territory. I arranged with the "News Chronicle"
to try my luck at getting into Seville. I fancied I stood a
better chance of success than many of my colleagues, since
as occasional theatre and film critic of the official organ
of a Central European Government I was able to exploit
certain connections.

At this time, the first month of the Civil War, Seville
was still the headquarters of the rebels and likewise the
central clearing station for the men and arms despatched
from Germany and Italy. I felt some uneasiness; but I
calculated that the worst that could happen to me was
that I should be expelled. Man proposes. . . .
On August 20th I went to Cook's and bought a ticket
to Lisbon; two days later I embarked at Southampton.
From the moment of leaving Cherbourg an oppressive
atmosphere hung over the ship. The steamer was called
the "Almanzora"; it had left Southampton on August 22nd
and was due to arrive at Lisbon on the 25th. It was full
of Spaniards travelling to rebel territory; that is to say,
they were either adherents of the rebel side or were behaving
as though they were, since they had no desire to be arrested
and denounced immediately on their arrival. Everyone was
mistrustful of everyone else; we all sat in silence reading
the wireless news from the war zone posted up on the
notice board, scrutinised our fellow passengers, and gave
them a wide berth.

The general tension was noticeable even in the first
class saloon, penetrating even that armour plate of icy
boredom in which the Englishman on a sea voyage is so supremely
able to encase himself. The Englishmen in the
first class were almost all in sympathy with the rebels; having
read their "Daily Mail" thoroughly, they were firmly con­
vinced that the rebellion was a crusade to save civilization;
they took Queipo de Llano to be a kind of Richard CŔur
de Lion at the microphone, Azaña an Anarchist. Any attempt
to disabuse their minds of at least this last misconception
only invited mistrust. A knowledge of the facts was in
itself sufficient to bring one under suspicion of being a
"red".
In the third class opinions were divided. There was a
sixteen-year-old Spanish boy who played around with a
little Portuguese girl of about fifteen, sang charmingly to
the guitar and was given to making cheeky remarks. Five
days later I saw him in Seville: being taken out of a van
with a number of other prisoners and escorted through a
line of gaping spectators into the headquarters of the Falange
Española. His face was bruised black and blue, and tears
were running down his grimy cheeks. He did not recognize
me, and I avoided making myself known to him; the next
day he was shot in accordance with the usual custom.
On August 24th we touched at the rebel port of Corunna.
A Portuguese destroyer and a French cruiser, "Le Triom­
phant", lay ill at ease in the utterly silent harbour. A
motor sloop flying the flag of the Spanish Monarchy, a
yellow stripe on a red ground, surmounted by the Bourbon
Crown, brought on board the port officials: a commissioner
of police and a representative of the Phalanx. The Phalan­
gist, who was obviously acting as an auxiliary policeman, a
fat bespectacled youth of the type who has failed in his
University examinations, planted himself down in the
middle of the promenade deck so that he could be admired,
raised his arm frequently in the Fascist salute, announced
that Madrid had fallen the day before, that all Freemasons,
Jews and Communists were going to be exterminated, that
then, and then only, would life in the true sense begin,
and politely accepted the foreign cigarettes that were
offered him.

Vigo, the second rebel port that we touched at, presented
a similar picture. Side by side with an English destroyer
lay two Portuguese torpedo boats, and a little distance
away a German Dornier-Wal flying-boat rocked peacefully
back and forth in the water. Otherwise the harbour was
utterly lifeless and glowed a sullen red under the grilling
rays of the sun, as though under a silent, evil spell. And
in peace-time Vigo is the largest sea-port for transatlantic
shipping in the whole of Spain. To-day the town, situated
as it is only twenty miles from the Portuguese frontier, is
the centre of operations for the smuggling of German and
Italian arms to the rebels. In Vigo itself there was nothing
to betray this fact; the harbour was cordoned off by a
double row of sentries, who looked as though they would
not hesitate to shoot at sight.

Strolling through the town is for the foreigner for all
the world like running the gauntlet. Every hundred paces
or so he is stopped by a patrol and made to hold up his
hands, turn out his pockets, and protest his complete
innocence and his profound sympathy with the rebel
cause, whereupon he is given a friendly pat on the shoulder
and, with an "Arriba España", allowed to go on his way,
only to run into the arms of the next patrol, when the
whole business begins all over again. He notes, during his
hour's walk through the town, that it is chock-full of troops
-- Legionaries, Carlists, Phalangists, but no Moors; that
all taxis and private cars are labelled "Requisitioned";
that all the young people wear a yellow armlet with the
letter "M" -- mobilisado; that the civilians slink timidly
along by the walls, and that scarcely a single woman is
to be seen out in the streets. He sees two suspects, one with
a bleeding nose, being escorted into the Palace of Justice,
and notices that the passers-by anxiously look the other
way, to avoid hearing or seeing anything. He reads the  	

notices posted up in the cafés: "You are requested not to talk politics," and hears people talking in hushed whispers -- for there are spies everywhere; he sees them tremble at the approach of every Phalangist -- for one never knows what is going to happen; he sees them buy newspapers announcing the fall of Madrid, the destruction of Government cruisers and the burning of Barcelona, and throw them aside unread -- for they know that it is all lies. He even sees a funeral procession; the black motor hearse too bears the label "Requisitioned" and, below this, the words "Viva España" -- the labels are stuck on securely and cannot be scratched off; behind the hearse walk dignified gentlemen carrying top-hats and wearing above the black mourning flower in their buttonholes the brightly-coloured Royalist cockade. He sees the gaily beflagged houses, and behind the decorations the windows with closed shutters; and all the time he is unable to shake off a dream-like feeling that he has had this nightmare before, a feeling that the psychologists term déja vu. He knows all this only too well, this picture of a provincial town under a dictatorship: the trembling townsfolk, the military let loose, the fear of spies, the whispered rumours, the constriction in the throat that affects a whole town, a whole population, like an epidemic, and when, an hour later, he is back on board the steamer and is questioned by the Englishmen in the first class, as to his impressions, he replies, in the words used by certain friends of Lord Lothian's to convey their enthusiastic impressions of Berlin:

    "The city is quiet, the trams are running, and there are no corpses lying about on the pavements."

The Englishmen in the first class nod contentedly; they had known it all along, of course: where Franco rules, order and security prevail. 




THE CONSPIRACY IN LISBON

No sixth sense was needed to discover what game was being played in Portugal. It was played with the cards on the table. The facts that the diplomatic chancelleries of Europe obstinately and successfully refused to admit were to be seen in the streets of Lisbon in broad daylight; one's nose was positively rubbed into them.

It all began while we were still on the steamer, during the passport examination before we disembarked. As a journalist I was put through a special cross-examination, during which I noticed that one of the three Portuguese police officials present was not speaking Portuguese, but Spanish. I did not attach much importance to this circumstance at the time, and only discovered its significance the next morning in Lisbon, when I learned that the man in the uniform of the Portuguese political police-the "International Police" it is called -- was in fact a Spaniard, a representative of the Burgos Junta. It was in his power to decide who should land in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, and who should not. A few days before my arrival, Albea, the ex-President of the Argentine Republic and leader of the Argentinian moderate Radical Party, had arrived in Lisbon. "We shall first have to ask the representative of the Burgos Government whether you may land," the police officials on the steamer had said to him. I was later informed that the Burgos Junta's liaison officer in Lisbon, Señor Gil, was one of the heads of the Portuguese "International Police."

I had anticipated having some difficulty in getting into rebel territory, and I therefore applied to a Central European Consul in Lisbon

whom I knew for advice.

"You will, of course, have to get a visa," said the Consul. 
 	

"A visa? From whom?"

"Why," said the Consul. "From Señor Gil Robles, of course."

"Where am I to find Gil Robles?"

"Why, at the Embassy."

It transpired that there were two Spanish Embassies in Lisbon.

In the one was the legal representative of the Madrid Government, Sánchez Alvornoz, a sick man, entirely isolated, deserted by his staff, spied upon by the Civil Police; to all intents and purposes a prisoner of the Portuguese Government.

The other, the Black Embassy, calling itself the "Agency of the Burgos Junta", had its offices at that time in the Hotel Aviz, and was run by two people who detested each other. One was Gil Robles; the other, who went under the alias of Hernández D'Avila, was Nicolás Franco, Generl Franco's youngest brother.

The Central European Consul of whom I have already spoken took me on the evening of my arrival to Esturil, the "Le Touquet" of Portugal, an hour's journey out of Lisbon. The Consul was a very nice fellow, married to a Portuguese aristocrat and therefore on friendly terms with the rebel leaders. At the Estoril Casino we came across a great number of them, some sitting at the bar, some playing bac, others trente-et-quarante. It was altogether a curious company that was gathered here in this Casino behind the front lines of the Little Iberian World War: the Ambassador of a Balkan State (Heaven knows why this state maintains an embassy in Portugal) was reeling about, obviously the worse for drink, among the dancing couples on the terrace; a Japanese and a Hungarian attaché were whispering at the bar, evidently thinking themselves terribly important; while ladies of the Portuguese aristocracy, my friend's wife among them, went to and fro among the company with collecting sheets, "for Franco's hospitals", as they said with a flutter of their eyelids. The atmosphere was just such as one might find in Shanghai or Harbin. Most of the  	

ladies and gentlemen were slightly tipsy and all were filled with a great sense of their own importance. It obviously gave them great satisfaction to be able to point out to a foreign journalist that so-and-so was a spy or an arms smuggler or a foreign agent. If one had taken them seriously, one might have imagined that half Esturil consisted of super-spies, all playing the part of "The Man who was Thursday".

This visit to the Casino as an introduction to the Civil War was to prove useful, after all. For I got to know one or two leading figures of the rebel aristocracy socially, as it were, and I even gained permission to put up at the Hotel Aviz. There I made the acquaintance of some more leading officials at the Lisbon rebel headquarters, amongst them Franco's brother, Gil Robles, the Marqués de Quintanar and the Marqués de la Vega de Anzo, both of the Falange Española, and Señor Mariano de Amadeo y Galarmendi, who posed as "Spanish Ambassador".

The atmosphere at rebel headquarters was completely unlike that at the Casino.

In the Hotel Aviz there prevailed a bizarre mixture of conspiratorial secrecy and court ceremonial: one had a feeling that all these black-coated gentlemen, as they discussed, in hushed whispers and in tones of exquisite courtesy, gun-running, plans for the offensive, exchange transactions, and, last but not least, the commission accruing therefrom, imagined their necks to be still encased in the starched ruffles of the Court of Philip the Second. The only exception was Gil Robles. When the Marqués de la Vega de Anzo presented me to him as an English newspaper correspondent, he flatly and abruptly turned his back on us, to the silent consternation of his assembled staff. This was a piece of luck for me, for the Marqués, his former secretary, proceeded to reproach him at such length for his undiplomatic handling of the Press that he finally gave me, in addition to my rebel passport, a letter of recommendation in his own handwriting to General  Queipo de Llano in Seville (which in its turn produced the unexpected result that the latter, who was on terms of open hostility with Gil Robles, kept me waiting for four hours for an interview).

During my stay in the Hotel Aviz I had ample opportunity of collecting evidence with regard to the activities of the Portuguese rebel headquarters. Later on I had occasion to give evidence in London with regard to these activities before the Committee of Enquiry into breaches of International Law relating to Intervention in Spain.

Since that time the fact that the Portuguese Government is virtually in a state of war with Madrid has gradually become common knowledge in Europe, so that there is no longer any point in recapitulating these things.

I stayed in Lisbon only thirty-six hours; on the night of August 26th, armed with my Salvo Conducto from Gil Robles and Franco's brother, I left for Seville.

Our journey as far as Ayamonte, the Spanish frontier station, was made by the regular train service. The frontier is formed by a river, the Guadiana; we were taken across by ferry, for there is no bridge at this spot. It was here that three days before fugitives from rebel territory had thrown themselves in the river in order to swim to the frontier of a country which they took to be neutral. Phalangists had fired after them with their rifles; and Portuguese on the opposite bank, finding this entertaining sport, had done the same. Not one of the fugitives had reached the bank alive. Even had they done so they would have been sent back again.

From Ayamonte to Seville there is a bus service. The road runs through Huelva and La Palma del Condado, that is to say, through a district that has been more or less from the outset in rebel hands; nevertheless, the villages  	

on the route gave an impression of disorder. At every little stopping-place a group of men who had up till then been sitting chatting outside the Town Hall, threw away their cigarettes and, seizing their rifles, surrounded the bus. Their appearance was hardly such as to arouse confidence; had one not known them to be the guardians of law and order, one would have taken them for bandits.

" Spain, arise -- everybody get out!"

There followed a strict examination of passports and luggage, effectively backed up by the muzzles of the loaded rifles. We were mostly well-dressed people in the bus. The only suspect was a young man in a blue fitter's overall; and he was the only one to be subjected to a personal search. As we were about to leave Huelva, and he had been searched for the sixth or seventh time, he let fall a protest, which was met by a blow in the face; he turned pale and lapsed into silence. The official behaved as though nothing had happened. We drove on.

Round about one o'clock we arrived in Seville

We drew up in a large square where workmen were engaged in changing the street name-plate on a corner house. They took down the old plate on which was written "Square of the Republic", and nailed up a new one which read: "Primo de Rivera I Square." The rusty "Republic" plate they packed away carefully in brown paper. I wonder if they will ever unpack it again. . . .

The first native of Seville that I spoke to after my arrival was the porter of the Hotel Madrid who carried my suitcase from the bus stop to the hotel. He spoke a little French and was pleased at an opportunity of showing off his knowledge. "You'll be all right at our hotel. You needn't be afraid there," he informed me confidentially. "We've only had two arrests in the last few days. One was a French journalist; the Seguridad fetched him from the hotel at three o'clock this morning to examine his passport; probably they'll let him go again quite soon. The other was an  	

Englishman from Gibraltar, who registered at the hotel as 'General Belton'. He came the day before yesterday and was arrested straight away. For two days we sent food in to him in prison, but yesterday it was sent back. Either they shot him or let him go; either he is a spy or it was a mistake. With us, as I said, you'll be all right; if you'd gone to the Hotel Cristina you wouldn't be so well off, for the Cristina is full of German officers, and they take everyone for a spy, especially anyone who speaks French.

All this was hardly calculated to cheer me up.

In the vestibule of the Hotel Madrid I found several French journalists sitting drinking aperitifs. They too did not appear to be exactly cheerful. Grand of the Havas Agency was there, René Brue, the "Pathé Gazette" man and one or two others. Antoine of "l'Intransigeant" was not amongst them. It was he whom the police had fetched out of bed at three o'clock that morning.

I should have liked to join them at the table, but they gave me no invitation to do so. They were a dejected, timid little company, and most of them sat about in the hotel vestibule more or less all day long, without putting their noses outside. On the day of my departure I learned that the Frenchmen were under a sort of collective house arrest, as it were. The rebel Press chief, Captain Bolín -we shall come across his name frequently in the course of this book -- was in a towering rage with them because news had trickled through into the French Press of the horrible massacre at Badajoz. He had declared on the morning of my arrival and after Antoine's arrest that they might not visit the front in future except in organized parties under military supervision. The next expedition was not to take place for some days. Until then he "privately advised them if possible not to leave their hotel".

And so there sat the Frenchmen sipping their aperitifs as though at a funeral feast. They were worried to death about Antoine. 
 He was released that evening, and was in such a hurry to leave that he scuttled off by taxi to Gibraltar at five o'clock in the morning. In his paper, however, he said no word of this. Newspapers do not publish accounts of such adventures; they are afraid that if they do so the rebels will refuse to allow any more of their correspondents into rebel territory.

Three days later Brue was arrested.

He was kept in prison for three weeks; Bolín personally threatened to shoot him, because he had filmed the bloodbath of Badajoz.

Jean d'Esmé too was arrested. I do not know for how long he was kept in prison.

The story appeared in the French Press. Brue and d'Esmé were forced to deny it for the sake of their colleagues, who were still in Bolín's hands -- the delicate hands of a rebel propaganda chief.

There were no other English correspondents in Seville besides myself, and I was lucky; just before I was to be arrested I escaped to Gibraltar and was not arrested until five months later.

I imagine that foreign correspondents in Spain will have a lot of tales to tell when the war is over and there is no more need for caution.

My first step was to go straight to Bolín. He was very pleasant and told me that the rebels hoped soon to win the war. It was impossible to get anything more out of him.

Then I went on foot to Queipo de Llano's headquarters to present my letters of introduction and to secure an interview with the General himself.
AT REBEL HEADQUARTERS

The headquarters of the Second Division of the rebel army, under the command of General Queipo de Llano, is  	

in the Calle de las Palmas in the heart of Seville. It is a typical Spanish building with doors and windows opening on sunny, cloistered courtyards. Day and night these courtyards are filled with a motley and confused throng of men in the most varied uniforms: Foreign Legionaries of the Tercio, adventurous figures straight from the films; elegant Carlists with red Basque berets; young merchants' sons in the uniform of the Falange Española; airmen in white uniforms who, curiously enough, speak broken Spanish and while away the time of waiting in reading the "Völkischer Beobachter". All these people jostle and elbow each other languidly in the courtyards, roll cigarettes, and wait. For what? The sergeant-major next to me has been waiting thirty-six hours to be received by Colonel Questa, Queipo de Llano's chief of staff. He has spent the night in the courtyard, has had his food brought to him from the canteen and takes it all as a matter of course. The airmen are waiting for orders; the non-commissioned officers are waiting for mess vouchers; the quarter-master sergeants are waiting for the pay for their troops. No one is in a hurry, everything proceeds at a leisurely pace. In amongst this crowd come and go priests and chaplains, importantlooking gentlemen in civilian clothes, couriers whom I saw in Lisbon, women in black veils inquiring after the whereabouts of their husbands, newsboys, shoe-blacks, ice-vendors -- all in the courtyard of the General Staff, in the Holy of Holies of the Civil War, only a few steps 'from General Queipo de Llano's sanctum. This room too opens directly on to the court, and the door, hidden only by a screen, is left open because of the heat; if you stand on tip-toe you can see the gaunt figure of the General within, bending over a flag-bedecked map with Colonel Questa and a German airman. It is difficult to believe that in this nonchalant, languid, leisured atmosphere decisions are being taken as to the plan of campaign for the following day, decisions affecting the life and death of people and  	

cities. And yet the whole scene is in perfect keeping with the general picture presented by the first few weeks of the war, about which, for all the ferocity and dogged resolution displayed by both sides, there is a curious note of improvisation, of unorganized hectic activity.

I waited four hours for my promised interview with Queipo de Llano, but when the Council of War was over, the General had to repair to the studio to give his famous daily talk over the wireless. The studio was just across the courtyard, opposite his room. Its furniture, likewise improvised, consisted of a microphone, a desk and a recess, where a radio engineer with earphones clamped over his head was testing the acoustics.

The General's talk lasts an hour, during which time the door of the studio is left open. By evening the crowd in the courtyard has thinned out somewhat; officers and soldiers sit down informally on the paving-stones of the courtyard and listen to the General, cigarettes in their mouths. The General stands at the microphone, his notes in his hand; he gesticulates violently as he talks, but keeps an eye the whole time on the engineer, who, like the conductor of an orchestra, gives him a silent signal whenever his diction is either too loud or too soft. After about an hour he concludes, somewhat abruptly, with his usual "buenas noches"; the whole courtyard grins and applauds, and the General acknowledges their approval with a courteous little bow, just as though he were on the stage. A very odd glimpse, this, of the General Staff of an army; but the observer has long since ceased to be astonished. Did he not know the bestial reality behind all this, he would imagine that he was either dreaming or was present at an opera.
PORTRAIT OF A REBEL GENERAL

At this time General Queipo de Llano was one of the most famous broadcasters in the world; every evening millions of adherents and opponents listened in to his talk  	

from Seville, with mixed feelings, but with rapt attention. Never, probably, in the whole history of wars and civil wars has a general made speeches to the world -- and such picturesque speeches too; and even if his accounts of the strategic situation are frequently contradicted by the facts on the very next day, they have never been lacking in a certain artistic charm. Here are some samples, taken at random:

    July 23rd, 1936. "Our brave Legionaries and Regulares have shown the red cowards what it means to be a man. And incidentally the wives of the reds too. These Communist and Anarchist women, after all, have made themselves fair game by their doctrine of free love. And now they have at least made the acquaintance of real men, and not milksops of militiamen. Kicking their legs about and struggling won't save them."

    August 12th. "The Marxists are ravening beasts, but we are gentlemen. Señor Companys deserves to be stuck like a pig."

    August 18th. "I have to inform you that I have in my power as hostages a large number of the relatives of the Madrid criminals, who are answerable with their lives for our friends in the capital. I likewise repeat what I have already said, namely, that we have a number of the miners from the Rio Tinto mines in our prisons.

    . . . I don't know why we are called rebels; after all, we have nine-tenths of Spain behind us. And since we have nine-tenths of Spain behind us, I fancy that those on the other side are rebels and that we should be treated as the legal government by the rest of the world."

    August 19th. "Eighty per cent of the families of Andalusia are already in mourning. And we shall not hesitate, either, to adopt even more rigorous measures to assure our ultimate victory. We shall go on to the bitter end      and continue our good work until not a single Marxist is left in Spain."

    September 3rd. "If the bombardment of La Linea or one of the other coastal towns is repeated, we shall have three members of the families of each of the red sailors executed. We don't like doing this, but war is war."

    September 8th. "I have given orders for three members of the families of each of the sailors of the loyalist cruiser that bombarded La Linea to be shot. . . . To conclude my talk I should like to tell my daughter in Paris that we are all in excellent health and that we should like to hear from her."

I had heard a few of these gems before my departure from Paris, and had pictured the speaker as a kind of Spanish Falstaff or Gargantua -- coarse, jovial, red-nosed, fat and apoplectic. And now he was actually standing five paces away from me, in front of the microphone; on a lanky, gaunt, almost ascetic frame was poised a head with expressionless, sullen features; a thin-lipped mouth, covered by a short, scanty moustache, and grey cold eyes in which a smile was seldom, a peculiar and disconcerting flicker frequently, visible. The contrast between the extremely grave and restrained, if crabbed personality of the General and his spicy, burlesque way of expressing himself at the microphone was not merely staggering, it was positively uncanny. His talk had now come to an end; while it was being translated into Portuguese, the General led me across the courtyard to his room. His first question was whether reception of Seville was good in Paris and London, and whether his talks came over well.

On my answering in the affirmative he continued ruminatively:

"I am told that I can scarcely be heard anywhere in Central Europe. Atmospherics are supposed to be respons 	

ible. But I am rather inclined to think there is deliberate interference from other stations. . . ."

A somewhat painful pause ensued. Then, before I had time to put my first question, Queipo de Llano asked me rather brusquely:

"How is it that you've come to Seville?"

I reminded the General that I had received a " Salvo Conducto" signed by Gil Robles in Lisbon.

"Don't talk to me about Gil Robles," interrupted His Excellency ill-humouredly. "When we are victorious, Spain will be governed by a military cabinet; we shall sweep away all the parties and their representatives. None of these gentlemen will be members of the Government."

"Not even Señor Gil Robles?"

"I can assure you that Señor Gil Robles will not be a member of the new Government."

I turned the conversation round to foreign affairs. What would happen in the event of a victory of the military party? The answer was short and succinct:

" Spain will maintain the closest friendly relations with Germany, Italy and Portugal, all of which states support us in our struggle and whose corporate constitution we intend to imitate."

To my next question, what would be the relations of the new Spain to those countries which adhered strictly to the Non-Intervention Agreement, His Excellency's answer was no less precise. It consisted of two words:

"Less friendly."

Finally I questioned him as to the origin of the German and Italian 'planes, "the activities of which on the Nationalist side had, aroused such lively comments abroad".

"We bought those machines in. Tetuan," replied Queipo de Llano with a smile. "It's nobody's business."

"Whom did you buy them from in Tetuan?"

"From a private trader, who buys and sells aeroplanes off his own bat.

B T

 I failed to discover from His Excellency the name of this curious private individual in Tetuan who apparently was in a position to deal in dozens of the most up-to-date foreign war-planes. I also failed to get in any further questions, for the General broke off abruptly and proceeded immediately to a description of the atrocities committed by the Government troops.

For some ten minutes he described in a steady flood of words, which now and then became extremely racy, how the Marxists slit open the stomachs of pregnant women and speared the foetuses; how they had tied two eight-yearold girls on to their father's knees, violated them, poured petrol on them and set them on fire. This went on and on, unceasingly, one story following another -- a perfect clinical demonstration in sexual psychopathology.

Spittle oozed from the corners of the General's mouth, and there was the same flickering glow in his eyes which I had remarked in them during some passages of his broadcast. I interrupted again and again to ask him where these things had happened, and was given the names of two places: "Puente Genil" and "Lora del Río". When I asked whether His Excellency had in his possession documentary evidence with regard to these excesses, he replied in the negative; he had special couriers, he said, who brought him verbal information with regard to incidents of this kind from all sectors of the front.

Unexpectedly the flood ceased, and I was given my congé.

Some days later the Spanish Consul in Gibraltar told me that on the occasion of an officers' banquet in Tetuan in the year 1926 he had seen Queipo de Llano in an epileptic fit.

Although Seville swarms with soldiers, it is not the army that chiefly impresses its character on the town. The dominant element is the Phalanx. 
 	

The headquarters of the Phalanx in Seville is in the Calle Trajano; on the afternoon of August 28th I myself saw a lorryload of prisoners from the Rio Tinto mines being taken there. The scene was terrible; about half the prisoners were wearing bandages soaked through with fresh blood; and they were bundled out of the lorry like sacks. The street was cordoned off by a double file of Civil Guards; behind them the crowd stood looking on in silence. Speechless, grim, it lingered outside the building for another half hour, staring at the walls and the pale sentries; then it dispersed. It had been waiting for the sound of shots from within. But it had waited in vain; executions are carried out at night.

In the cafés in Seville two notices hang side by side; the first forbids anyone to talk politics, the other makes an appeal for volunteers for the National Militia, the pay offered being three pesetas a day. (In Portugal volunteers for Spain are promised twelve to fifteen pesetas.) I had an opportunity of watching a recruiting commission at work for about an hour. About thirty candidates had queued up, no more. The first question that was put to each of them was whether he could read and write. The illiterates, of whom there were about ten, were lined up in a special file, and about half of them were accepted. (They were nearly all labourers and agricultural workers.) Of the literates only one, a peasant lad, was accepted, all the rest being rejected. The recruiting commission had orders to turn down any suspicious character; by "suspicious characters" are understood industrial workers, unemployed, anyone wearing spectacles, and agricultural labourers with that indefinable something in their appearance that betrays contact with revolutionary ideas. The recruiting officers, and still more so the sergeant-majors, knew how to detect "this something". I saw how this procedure worked out in practice during the hour I spent there; out of what was in itself, for a whole morning, a ridiculously small number of thirty candidates, only five were accepted. Andalusia  is a poverty-stricken province with social contrasts of medieval intensity, and every second person has that "something" in his gaze. And here we touch upon the chief problem of the rebels: their chronic lack of man power.

Franco and his generals were unable to introduce conscription on any considerable scale. They knew that they had the masses against them; they knew that every bayonet that they forced into the hands of the peasants of Andalusia and Estremadura might be turned against them at a suitable moment. The Spanish Army never has been a people's army; as we shall see in a later chapter there has always been a disproportionately large number of officers in it, a characteristic which has been still further intensified during the course of the Civil War. At the end of a year's fighting the Moors (estimated at about eighty thousand), the Italians (estimated at about a hundred thousand) and the picked troops of the Foreign Legion constitute the backbone of the infantry in Franco's army. Then come, in the order of their numerical strength, the political formations: the Falange Española and the Requetes. The actual Spanish regular infantry counts last in Franco's army.

This chronic lack of man power has been more than compensated for from a strategic point of view by supplies of the most up-to-date war material from abroad. On July 15th, 1937, almost exactly a year after the outbreak of the Civil War, the "Daily Telegraph" wrote:

    "General Franco continues to rely principally on relatively small forces supported by very heavy armaments. In some quarters it has been estimated that there was one machine-gun to every four men. This is probably an exaggeration. Nevertheless, the Insurgents used very large numbers of machine-guns in proportion to their effectives."

The situation on the Government side was exactly the opposite. Madrid had at its command an infinite supply of men and for a time was numerically twice to  three times as strong as the rebels. But these forces were without training, without discipline, without officers and without arms.

On the rebel side there were companies with one machinegun to every four men. On the Republican side there were companies where four men shared a single rifle.

My stay in Seville was very instructive and very brief.

My private hobby was tracking down the German airmen; that is to say, the secret imports of 'planes and pilots, which at that time was in full swing, but was not so generally known as it is to-day. It was the time when European diplomacy was just celebrating its honeymoon with the Non-Intervention Pact. Hitler was denying having despatched aircraft to Spain, and Franco was denying having received them, while there before my very eyes fat, blond German pilots, living proof to the contrary, were consuming vast quantities of Spanish fish, and, monocles clamped into their eyes, reading the "Völkischer Beobachter".

There were four of these gentlemen in the Hotel Cristina in Seville at about lunch time on August 28th, 1936. The Cristina is the hotel of which the porter had told me that it was full of German officers and that it was not advisable to go there, because every foreigner was liable to be taken for a spy.

I went there, nevertheless. It was, as I have said, about two o'clock in the afternoon. As I entered the lounge, the four pilots were sitting at a table, drinking sherry. The fish came later.

Their uniforms consisted of the white overall worn by Spanish airmen; on their breasts were two embroidered wings with a small swastika in a circle (a swastika in a circle with wings is the so-called "Emblem of Distinction" of the German National-Socialist Party).

In addition to the four men in uniform one other  	

gentleman was sitting at the table. He was sitting with his back to me; I could not see his face.

I took my place some tables further on. A new face in the lounge of a hotel occupied by officers always creates a stir in times of civil war. I could tell that the five men were discussing me. After some time the fifth man, the one with his back to me, got up and strolled past my table with an air of affected indifference. He had obviously been sent out to reconnoitre.

As he passed my table, I looked up quickly from my paper and hid my face even more quickly behind it again. But it was of no use; the man had recognized me, just as I had recognized him. It was Herr Strindberg, the undistinguished son of the great August Strindberg; he was a Nazi journalist, and war correspondent in Spain for the Ullstein group.

This was the most disagreeable surprise imaginable. I had known the man years previously in Germany at a time when Hitler had been still knocking at the door, and he himself had been a passionate democrat. At that time I had been on the editorial staff of the Ullstein group, and his room had been only three doors from mine. Then Hitler came to power and Strindberg became a Nazi.

We had no further truck with one another but he was perfectly aware of my views and political convictions. He knew me to be an incorrigible Left-wing liberal, and this was quite enough to incriminate me. My appearance in this haunt of Nazi airmen must have appeared all the more suspect inasmuch as he could not have known that I was in Seville for an English newspaper.

He behaved as though he had not recognized me, and I did the same. He returned to his table.

He began to report to his friends in an excited whisper. The five gentlemen put their heads together.

Then followed a strategic manŔuvre: two of the airmen strolled towards the door -- obviously to cut off my retreat;  	

the third went to the potter's lodge and telephoned-obviously to the police; the fourth pilot and Strindberg paced up and down the room.

I felt more and more uncomfortable and every moment expected the Guardia Civil to turn up and arrest me. I thought the most sensible thing would be to put an innocent face on the whole thing, and getting up, I shouted across the two intervening tables with (badly) simulated astonishment:

"Hallo, aren't you Strindberg?"

He turned pale and became very embarrassed, for he had not expected such a piece of impudence.

"I beg your pardon, I am talking to this gentleman," he said.

Had I still had any doubts, this behaviour on his part would in itself have made it patent to me that the fellow had denounced me. Well, I thought, the only thing that's going to get me out of this is a little more impudence. I asked him in a very loud voice, and as arrogantly as possible, what reason he had for not shaking hands with me.

He was completely bowled over at this, and literally gasped. At this point his friend, airman number four, joined in the fray. With a stiff little bow he told me his name, von Bernhardt, and demanded to see my papers.

The little scene was carried on entirely in German.

I asked by what right Herr von Bernhardt, as a foreigner, demanded to see my papers.

Herr von Bernhardt said that as an officer in the Spanish Army he had a right to ask "every suspicious character" for his papers.

Had I not been so agitated, I should have pounced upon this statement as a toothsome morsel. That a man with a swastika on his breast should acknowledge himself in German to be an officer in Franco's army, would have been a positive tit-bit for the Non-Intervention Committee.

I merely said, however, that I was not a "suspicious character", but an accredited correspondent of the London  	

"Newss Chronicle", that Captain Bolín would confirm this, and that I refused to show my papers.

When Strindberg heard me mention the "News Chronicle" he did something that was quite out of place: he began to scratch his head. Herr von Bernhardt too grew uncomfortable at the turn of events and sounded a retreat. We went on arguing for a while, until Captain Bolín entered the hotel. I hastened up to him and demanded that the others should apologize to me, thinking to myself that attack was the best defence and that I must manage at all costs to prevent Strindberg from having his say. Bolín was astonished at the scene and indignantly declared that he refused to have anything to do with the whole stupid business, and that in time of civil war he didn't give a damn whether two people shook hands or not.

In the meantime the Civil Guards had actually arrived on the scene, with fixed bayonets and pugnacious expressions, to arrest the "suspicious character". Bolín angrily told them to go to the devil. And to the devil they went.

I decamped there and then from the confounded Cristina. Arrived at my hotel, I began hurriedly to pack. I had hardly finished when a French colleague of mine came up to my room and privately advised me to leave for Gibraltar as quickly as possible. He was obviously acting as the mouthpiece of some higher authority; but he refused to say whom. He merely said that he had heard of the shindy and that the whole affair might turn out very seriously for me.

Eight hours later I was in Gibraltar.

Twenty-four hours later I learned from private sources that a warrant for my arrest had been issued in Seville.

So Strindberg junior had had his say after all.

I don't care two hoots, I thought. Seville has seen the last of me.

There I was wrong.



 CHAPTER II
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT

IN HIS RECENTLY published book on Australia Egon Erwin Kisch relates the following amusing anecdote.

Sydney was celebrating Anniversary Day. Kisch took part in the jubilations, the processions and so forth, and thought it all marvellous until suddenly it occurred to him that he did not know in the least what was being celebrated. He looked through the papers, and found pagelong and flowery accounts of the programme of festivities, but not a word as to what it was that was actually being celebrated. He made enquiries of ten of his Australian friends, and received ten different answers. Finally, in desperation, he consulted the "Encyclopæa Britannica", and there at last found the answer to the riddle. The Australians actually commemorate the arrival of the first convict ship, but they have long since forgotten or have tried to forget the historical event to which Anniversary Day owes its existence.

I must leave to my friend Kisch the responsibility for the accuracy of his anecdote. But even if a pure invention it is a good story, and might very aptly be applied to Spain. Ask ten different people what were the origins and causes of the Spanish Civil War -- and you will be given ten different answers.

If you continue to play this little game long enough, you will find that the view on which there is most unanimity is the one that maintains that Spain is the battle-ground of a struggle between "reds and whites ", between Communism and Fascism. This is an entirely erroneous view.

During the twelve months of the Civil War the clamour of demagogues and the mutterings of the ignorant have so  	

obscured and distorted the real facts of the situation that it is now scarcely possible for the onlooker to make head or tail of them. All that he can see are bloody arabesques traced on the façade of an historical process without being able to penetrate to its structural foundations.

The roots of the Spanish question lie in the agrarian problem.

In any discussion of the events now being played out in Spain, it is imperative to bear in mind the fact that it has remained to this day a country with a semi-feudal structure.

The distribution of land in 1933 was as follows: 
===================================================================================
  	  	  	  	               Land owned
Category               No.  
===================================================================================
		                       Percentage in hectares 	percentage of total


Large landowners 	50,000 		1 	23,200,000 	51.5 	

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peasants owning
 large farms 	        700,000 			15,1800,000 	35.2 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		48.5
Peasants owning
 small farms 	        1 000,000 	5,100,000 	11.1

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poor peasants 	        1,250,000 	1,000,000 	2.2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agricultural
 labourers 	2,000,000 		                0
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL: 	5.000,000 		100 	45,000,000 	100 	





 These figures serve as a kind of compass by which to find one's bearings in the Spanish chaos. They show that the landed aristocracy, which constitutes barely one per cent of the total rural population, controls more than half the total area of cultivable land. That is to say, fifty thousand feudal magnates own more land than the remaining ninetynine per cent of the population put together.

The millions of small peasants and agricultural workers live in abject poverty and misery. About three million out  of a total rural population of five million possessed in 1933 so little or such poor land that their standard of life scarcely differed from that of the agricultural labourers owning no land at all.

The houses in the villages in the interior of Spain often consist of a single room. Anyone looking in at the door can see the whole household: an iron bedstead facing the door, two or three chairs and a bench, a few primitive cooking utensils hanging on the walls, and invariably a swarm of children and dogs, to say nothing of flies. The floor is often of dried clay. Many of these houses are completely devoid of the luxury of windows, a round hole in the wall taking their place. The single door serves to light the room, to provide entry and exit for men and beasts, and to carry away the smoke.

In 1932 there were still rural areas in Andalusia, and for that matter at the very gates of Madrid, where large numbers of agricultural labourers and their families lived like troglodytes in caves and pits dug out of the hillside.

In 1929 the average daily wage of an agricultural labourer was three pesetas (worth at that time a shilling); women's wages were half this amount (that is, sixpence); and the working day lasted from sunrise to sunset. Agricultural labourers possessed neither rights nor means of protecting their interests. In the villages the only law, the only authority, was the despotic rule of the cacique, the local boss, backed up by the rifles of the Civil Guard. Moreover, work was available only on a hundred to two hundred days in the year. Spanish agricultural labourers have always lived under the threat of starvation. For centuries their unspeakably wretched condition has been the most urgent social problem of the Iberian Peninsula.

This is the first fundamental fact that must be constantly borne in mind. The second concerns the position of the Church. 
 The Catholic Church is the largest landowner in Spain. This explains why the Spanish peasants' struggle for existence was bound at the same time to be a struggle against the secular power of the Church. The anti-clerical character of all Spanish mass movements since the seventeenth century is a direct and inevitable consequence of the temporal power exercised by the Spanish clergy ever since the expulsion of the Moors.

With the dawn of the industrial era the Spanish Church assumed as dominating a position in the commercial world as it had hitherto done in agriculture. It controlled banks and industrial concerns, owned urban house property, and had adopted the most up-to-date business methods of modern capitalism.

Until 1936 the tramway system in Madrid belonged to the Church. A number of typical Spanish cabarets, with their, to English ideas, very risqué programmes, were controlled by holding companies with clerical capital. Among the "big five" banks of the Iberian Peninsula was the Banco Espíritu Santo, the "Bank of the Holy Ghost", which largely helped to finance Franco's insurrection.

It is essential to appreciate the peculiar position of the Spanish Church in order to realize that the struggle of Spanish democracy against the clergy is not an anti-religious struggle, but a purely secular, political struggle waged against an extremely secular, extremely political opponent -- a struggle which all the Western democracies waged successfully centuries ago when they set to work to lay the foundations of a liberal era. It is the struggle of Henry VIII against Rome, the struggle of France in the eighteenth century for the Rights of Man.

The Spanish clergy, in whose traditions the stake and the torture chamber of the Inquisition live on unforgotten, still possessed to all intents and purposes until February, 1936, that power and that mentality against which Rabelais, Voltaire, the Encyclopædists, Tom Paine and Godwin all inveighed. 
 The anti-clerical demands of the Spanish Popular Front in the year 1936 were not a whit more radical or "red " than those of the writers of the age of enlightenment: separation of Church and State, distribution of Church lands amongst the landless peasants, secular education, freedom of religious worship, freedom of speech and freedom of the pen. If this is anarchism, then John Stuart Mill was an anarchist; if it needed the inspiration of Moscow to raise these demands, then Cromwell was a hireling of Stalin. The truth is that the Spanish Popular Front was not striving towards a Soviet State or a Bakunian Utopia, but towards one goal alone: the raising of the Spanish State, which had never yet succeeded in emerging from the clerical, feudal stage, to the constitutional, material and spiritual level of the great European democracies.

This is, moreover, not the first attempt of the kind to be made in Spain; for two hundred years the ruling caste of Spain, the grandees and the clergy, have successfully resisted all such attempts. No country experienced as many revolts, changes of government and revolutions in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as did Spain.

Again and again the property of the Church was confiscated and the Jesuits were expelled, for example, in the years 1767, 1808, 1838 and 1852. But within a few years the forces of reaction once more gained the upper hand and the status quo was restored. Feudal proprietors of vast latifundia, a tenacious Church, a corrupt Court, and parasitic military cliques once more ruled over the land. Again and again a progressive middle-class allowed its adversaries to wrest from it what it had gained in the course of bitter struggles. It almost looks as though the Left in Spain has always suffered from a deep-seated, age-long inferiority complex. If ever it has come to power, it has  apparently been to its own surprise, and it has never really known what to do with its power. The politicians of the Left have always been, to use an expression of Upton Sinclair's, "idealists and amateurs". This is a disease of all young democracies. And the more soberly the progressives have acted, the more brutal and bloody has been the reaction to follow.

In some respects the Carlist wars of the nineteenth century were a prelude, providing many analogies, to the Civil War of 1936. On the one side one finds the Liberal Government of Madrid, a Government all too receptive to illusions; on the other the coldly calculating feudal forces of reaction, in league with the Church and the Army, whose watchwords are "inviolability of the clergy" and "absolute monarchy without parliamentary control". These high-sounding phrases merely serve as a screen to conceal the interest of the reaction in the maintenance of the status quo on the land. In both of the Carlist wars the Spanish feudal caste enjoyed the active support of the reactionary European powers, particularly that of Prussia, while the English and French democracies confined themselves largely to platonic expressions of sympathy with the other side. And always with the same melancholy result: democracy bleeds to death, the Middle Ages triumph, and passive observers beyond the Pyrenees raise their hands in pious horror and protest against the atrocities.

The triumph of barbarism bears fruit; Spain at the beginning of the nineteenth century loses its colonies and becomes the poorest nation in Western Europe, a sort of dim Tsarist State in the Mediterranean; the "Iberian outsider". There is a proverb that says: "Africa begins at the Pyrenees." 
 At the beginning of the twentieth century Spain gradually awoke from its charmed slumber. Catalonia, Asturias, the Basque country, were rapidly being industrialized; the Liberal middle classes, which were too timid and too weak of themselves to wage a successful struggle for political emancipation, were joined by an ally, the workers' movement.

In 1930 the number of miners, industrial workers, railway workers, dock workers and subordinate employees was about two million; in addition there were about 300,000 domestic servants. The urban workers' wages and conditions were not unlike those prevailing on the land, and were so low as to be comparable only with those obtaining in Tsarist Russia or the Balkans. A British Consular Report for the' year 1924, describing the housing conditions of the Spanish workers, stated that rents were so high in relation to wages that in the workers' districts several families were obliged to occupy a flat scarcely large enough for one childless couple.

Just as everything in this country, hermetically sealed and isolated by the barrier of the Pyrenees, is subject to laws of a markedly peculiar and individual nature; just as the Spanish Church still marches under the banner of Ignatius Loyola and Torquemada and the Spanish landed proprietor under the banner of the medieval feudal lords, so too has the Spanish workers' movement, from the very outset, developed its own specific peculiarities.

When in the 'seventies, at the time of the First International, the European workers' movement experienced its first split and Marx and Bakunin parted ways for ever, the Spanish workers' movement split up into two sections, the adherents of Marx, who called themselves autoritarios, and the adherents of Bakunin, who called themselves antiautoritarios, enemies of authority. The former group became the germ of the Spanish section of the Socialist International, with Madrid as its stronghold; out of the latter there grew up  the F.A.I., the "Iberian Anarchist Federation", with its stronghold in Barcelona.

Spanish, or more correctly, Catalan anarchism is a national phenomenon, and there is nothing to correspond with it in the rest of the world. It is a complete fallacy to look upon Spanish anarchism as nihilism or as a purely negative movement. The anarchistic doctrines of Bakunin, Kropotkin and Co. are, on the contrary, based on an incurable and fanatical optimism, namely on the theory that human beings are born good, and that only institutions and tyrants are to blame for the evils of social life -- hence the naïve conclusion that it is only necessary to shoot down these tyrants and abolish these institutions for all to be well with the world and for the golden age to be ushered in. The classical theory of Socialism, according to which a transitional stage of pedagogic rule on the part of the most highly developed section of the community must intervene after the downfall of the old system until all traces of the obsolete régime are obliterated from social life and the consciousness of man, and until the transitory régime itself gradually withers away, when, as a result of the improvement in material and ideological standards, it has become superfluous, and the ultimate stage of "ideal anarchy", that is, of absolute freedom, is reached -- this theory of a "roundabout way" to human happiness the Anarchists reject. As a logical consequence of their antiauthoritarian attitude, Anarchists proclaim their belief in the policy of direct action.

The extraordinary receptiveness of the Catalan workers to the teachings of Bakunin may have its roots in the infinitely easy-going, optimistic character of this Mediterranean people, and partly, too, in Catalan particularism and love of independence, which has always impelled the Catalans to adopt an antagonistic attitude towards Madrid. The Catalans, just like the hopelessly impoverished Andalusians with their predominantly illiterate population, must  have been particularly receptive to a theory that spoke of the abolition of all authority as of some magic potion which would immediately put everything right; after all, they have always come across the worst side of every form of authority. There is a very old and very popular exclamation current among the Catalans; when a woman breaks a crock or loses a button, she always says: "That's the Government's fault." This saying reveals perhaps part of the secret of Spanish anarchism.

It is, on the other hand, clear that a party which is built up on the principle of the rejection of authority, even, indeed, the rejection of authority within that very party, provides a particularly happy hunting ground for agents provocateurs, spies, and other corrupt elements. This is one of the more shady aspects of the Anarchist doctrine, and both the F.A.I. and the C.N.T., the party and Trades Union of the Anarchists and Anarcho-syndicalists, have had to suffer seriously from it. And even more seriously, of course, has the Spanish Republic suffered from it during the Civil War. The savage street fighting in Barcelona in April, 1937, was undoubtedly precipitated by agents provocateurs; but if it were not for the historical factors indicated above the influence of individual provocateurs would never have sufficed to kindle a fratricidal war behind the lines of the Civil War.

In the year 1929 Primo de Rivera's Dictatorship collapsed. The Monarchy survived it by only one year.

The revolution that followed was a bloodless one. The Dictatorship, and with it the Monarchy, exposed to the two-fold pressure of the economic crisis and the liberal tendencies of the masses, fell to pieces like a dilapidated building.

When, on April 14th, 1931, the Spanish Republic was proclaimed, the progressive parties in Spain found themselves  saddled with a completely bankrupt country which had only just skaken off the nightmare of the Middle Ages. The tasks which awaited the young Republic were enormous, and it did not prove equal to them.

It was with extreme timidity and hesitation that the Republican Government tackled the burning problems that faced it, stirring up the embers of a smouldering crater, so to speak, with a drawing-room poker.

The most urgent problem of all, the problem on which Spain's very existence depended, the question of Agrarian Reform, was for all practical purposes pigeon-holed. In some districts small collective farms under State control were established enough to rouse the reactionaries to fury, but not enough to ensure a livelihood for even ten thousand starving peasants. The technicians and officials of the " Institute for Agrarian Reform" carried out their task of parcelling out the land at a snail's pace; and when the peasants clamoured for greater speed, here and there simply taking possession of the land, the Minister of Agriculture responded to the outcry of the starving peasantry in the now classic sentence:

    "The Law of Agrarian Reform lays down certain time limits within which the reforms must be carried out; and we have no option but to abide by these limits."

The time limits laid down by the Law of Agrarian Reform provided for the annual settlement of 50,000 peasants; it would have taken exactly forty years to provide even the class of landless agricultural labourers with land. But the systematic sabotage practised by the old bureaucracy and the adroitness of the landed gentry in pulling wires made it impossible for even this minimum programme to remain anything but a Utopian dream. From 1931 until the beginning of the reaction of 1933, out of a total of forty-five million hectares of cultivable land forty thousand  hectares in all were divided up amongst the peasants; that is, exactly.009 per cent.

This was the state of affairs that was labelled by the reaction as "Communism and Anarchy".

On the other hand the first Government of the new Republic carried out a certain number of reforms. The separation of Church and State was decided upon, at least on paper, secular schools were established, and the confiscation of the property of the Jesuits was contemplated.

More concrete measures included improvements in the terms of leasehold contracts, and laws for the protection of agricultural labourers. Thus, for example, the decree dealing with the tirminos municipales laid it down that the landlord no longer had the right to hire non-local labour in order to bring down the wages of the labourers in his own village. An eight-hour day for agricultural labourers was introduced, and in Andalusia and Estremadura the daily wage rose from three to eight pesetas. The unspeakably wretched and illiterate masses learned, during this first period of the Republic, to enunciate once again a word that had been for centuries forgotten the word "hope".

    "Our wives were able to return home at five o'clock' in the evening," related a peasant who was in prison in Seville in October, 1935, "and prepare the meal, and also had time for sewing and seeing to the children's clothes. We were able to go to meetings of our organisation, and spend a little time gossiping in the street.

A March wind of optimism swept through the tortured land. At a time when the preparations of the Right to drench the young Republic in blood were in full swing, the Socialist leader Fabra Rivas declared with pride:

    "This is the real revolution. Let us see who will now dare to rob the peasants of the gains they have achieved.
 Well, someone did dare. The power of the reaction in Spain was unbroken. The Republic had not laid a finger on the conspiratorial officers' associations, it had not purged the State machinery of the old bureaucracy or put an end to its sabotage. The Army and the Civil Guard remained what they had always been. The key positions, both military and economic, remained in the hands of the enemy.

Insignificant as were the reforms introduced by the Government, the governing caste yet felt them to be a threat to its inherited privileges. It was not concerned with mere questions of detail; its struggle was from the start aimed at the uprooting of all the seeds of a new liberal era in Spain and the restoration of the Dictatorship.

The offensive on the part of the reactionaries began with a highly organized plan of sabotage on the part of the big landowners in the spring of 1933. All of a sudden there was no more work to be had on the land. True, the agricultural labourer had the right to demand an eighthour day and a wage of eight pesetas, but work he could not find. The landowners persisted in this tacit lock-out: they let their land lie fallow, and turned it over to pasturage; where formerly two hundred labourers had been employed, two or three shepherds now sufficed.

The position rapidly worsened; this policy of blackmail on the part of the governing caste succeeded in defeating almost every one of the Government's paper reforms. Expectation turned to disappointment; and in the elections of the autumn of 1933 the Right scored a victory.

But the old, worn-out trimmings of the Monarchy had vanished; the reaction in Spain had provided itself with a brand new modern façade. From now on it was to imitate with remarkable adroitness the methods of totalitarian dictatorship.

Antonio Primo de Rivera, son of the late Dictator, founded, strictly after the pattern of the German Storm Troops, and under the tutelage of German instructors, the Falange Española.
 Gil Robles, nurtured in the subtle traditions of the Jesuit Seminary in Salamanca, created in the Acción Popular, a party thinly disguised as Republican, a sanctuary for all the big landowners, wealthy peasants, and upper middle-classes, who, as in so many other countries of Europe, were panic-stricken at the collapse of economic stability and were seeking asylum and refuge in Fascism.

    Society has one enemy alone: Marxism. It must be extirpated root and branch. And only if the conservative classes take advantage of the political opportunities of the moment will the glowing dawn of a better life break for them." 1

The third leader of the reaction was Calvo Sotelo, monarchist, big landowner, and the strong man of the ancien régime.

In the other camp, the first tendencies towards the formation of a common defensive bloc, composed of Liberals, moderate Socialists and Trades Unionists were discernible.

Thus, even in the first few years of the Republic, the two fronts which were to face each other in the Civil War of 1936 were already taking shape.

Immediately after the elections of November, 1933, which put Alejandro Lerroux into the saddle, the great offensive against the Republic and its reforms began. Tension in the country increased. The economic crisis became more acute, unemployment reached the record figure of 1,500,000, the price of bread rose by sixty per cent, and the price of potatoes was doubled.

The workers prepared to carry on a struggle against their starvation wages; strikes broke out and were bloodily suppressed. The despairing peasant masses waited in vain for the promised distribution of land; here and there, in
____________________
1 	Gil Robles, in the year 1934.


 	

Andalusia and Estremadura, they began to cultivate any land on the estates of the nobility which happened to be lying fallow -- and paid for their precipitancy with torture and death. Gil Robles was openly demanding "the immediate liquidation of the legacy of the April Republic".

On June 5th, 1934, 500,000 poor peasants and labourcrs went on strike throughout Spain. The Government replied with a declaration of martial law and the introduction of a Press censorship. The strike collapsed.

Towards the end of August, 1934, the sister of Primo de Rivera, the Fascist leader, fired six fatal revolver shots at Juanita Rico, a young Socialist girl, from her car. This assassination went unpunished; but 70,000 Madrid workmen attended the funeral of the victim.

Revolution was in the air.

Six weeks later, on October 4th, 1934, when the President of the Republic, Alcalá-Zamora, invited three members of the Gil Robles party to join the Government, it broke out.

On that same night of October 4th the workers' organizations issued a call for a general strike throughout Spain.

The Government gave its troops orders to shoot.

On October 6th clashes, provoked by officers of the army and the Civil Guard, occurred in the working-class districts of most of the large towns of Spain. Inadequately organized and without a unified leadership, the insurrectionaries succeeded only in isolated districts in gaining the upper hand: In Madrid the movement collapsed; in Catalonia an autonomous Republic was proclaimed, but twenty-four hours later its President, Companys, was forced to surrender. In the Basque country the struggle continued for a fortnight. But the greatest conflict of all flared up in Asturias. It proved to be the dress-rehearsal for the Civil War of 1936.

When Gil Robles' party attained power, the miners of Asturias knew what was in store for them. 
 They remembered that in Germany too the Dictatorship had begun with the formation of a government in which the party aiming at dictatorship was at first in a minority. They knew what was meant when Gil Robles heralded "the glowing dawn of a better life for the conservative classes ": the dissolution of their Trades Unions, the reintroduction of the ten-, twelve- and fourteen-hour day, the lowering of wages by a third to a half; starvation, misery and humiliation.

After five days of street fighting in Oviedo, the Asturian miners gained the upper hand. In 1934, just as in 1936, they were unarmed. They fought with axes and picks against machine-guns, they clambered over walls, their pockets filled with dynamite, lit the fuses with their cigarettes, and were themselves blown to bits if they were too slow or a bomb exploded too near them. Mieres, Sama de Langreo, the entire mining district, were successfully held against the Government troops. The garrison at Gerona mutinied, took its officers prisoner, and went over to the miners.

The Asturian People's Republic was proclaimed, and a militia of 15,000 men created.

The first clause in the very first decree promulgated by the Asturian People's Republic laid it down that anyone caught looting would be summarily shot. All the money in the province was called in, and the revolutionary committees issued food tickets which the shopkeepers were obliged to honour. Canteens and municipal kitchens were set up; the sale of alcohol was prohibited.

Seldom before have revolutionaries been able to bring forward such incontestable testimony as to their discipline and humanity as were the Asturian miners. General López Ochoa, the Commander of the Government troops, himself paid a positively staggering tribute to the good conduct of his opponents. The substance of his testimony  	

was referred to by Fernández Castillejo, a Conservative member of the Cortes and a Captain on the General Staff a few weeks after the defeat of the Asturian Republic, in the following statement:

    "The stories of the atrocities committed by the Asturian revolutionaries are the fabrications of an exaggerated and base propaganda campaign. I condemn the events in Asturias with all my heart, but I must also condemn the exaggerated and base campaign of which they have become the object. Acts of cruelty, which I deplore as much as anyone else, were an exception and by no means the rule. General López Ochoa has given me the most emphatic confirmation as to the correctness of this view.

    "I have no hesitation in declaring that all the stories of the crucifixion of officers' sons, and of the tearing out of children's eyes, are a complete fabrication.

    "The revolutionaries killed all those who resisted them with armed force, but as a rule they respected the lives of their prisoners."

This astonishing declaration is supplemented by a whole string of evidence. The conservative Madrid newspaper "Stampa" for example, published an interview with one of the former political prisoners of the Asturian miners -- the secretary of the Oviedo Master Locksmiths' Association. "We were not ill-treated," he declared. "Our guards did not speak to us except when bringing us food. Curiously enough, our fare consisted of ham and coffee with milk. Perhaps they had nothing else; there was a food shortage."

Judain, a municipal employee, another prisoner of the miners, likewise declared to the representative of the "Stampa":

" We were decently treated. We were given bread and ham three times."

"Is it true that the revolutionaries have a contempt for money?" asked the somewhat naïve reporter. 
 " Yes, it seems so. They had all the municipal funds in their possession, but they did not touch any of the money. The leaders in particular seemed to be curiously puritanical. Before I was arrested I saw two miners come into an inn and begin to drink some wine. Shortly afterwards one of the revolutionary leaders came in and shouted at them: 'Are you here to get drunk or to carry on the revolution?' And they crept away like two. scolded children. . . ."

The first Government troops despatched by Madrid against Asturias went over to the workers. The world began to sit up and take notice. Within a few days the Lerroux-Gil Robles Government was in an extremely critical position. It could no longer depend on its troops; one of its leading officers, Lieutenant-Colonel López Bravo, openly declared:

"My men will never fire on their brothers."

At this point, Gil Robles conceived a brilliant plan to save the situation; he sent for native troops from Morocco and for the Foreign Legion to crush the Asturian miners.

Forty thousand men in all were despatched, under the command of General López Ochoa, to destroy the Asturian People's Republic. Thirty thousand of these were barbarian African tribesmen.

While this force was still on the march, one of its officers, Colonel Doval -- two years later he was one of the rebel Generals -- declared that he was determined

    not to spare the life of a single revolutionary, and to wipe out the revolutionary brood even in the mother's womb."

Even the Government in Madrid felt some qualms when they saw what was about to happen in Asturias. The Minister for War, Diego Hidalgo, declared:      The only argument against the use of African troops is that they are utterly lawless and unrestrained in war, and are therefore liable to offend against the laws of common humanity. . . ."

On October 14th, shattered by air raids, blown to pieces by heavy artillery, Oviedo fell. On October 19th, López Ochoa, the Commander-in-Chief of the Government troops, marched into the mining towns of Mieres and Sama de Langreo, in the heart of Asturias. The struggle was over. The blood bath was just beginning.

It assumed such terrible proportions that the whole of Europe turned its gaze in the direction of Asturias. Men, women, children and old men were butchered indiscriminately, without trial, without any consideration of whether they had taken part in the fighting or not. They were thrown into rivers, shovelled into common graves. The wounded were finished off in the hospitals with bayonets and rifle-butts.

The number of those massacred in the White Terror in Asturias has never been established. But eye-witness accounts, photographs and documents exist in plenty.

One of these documents is a report, signed by 564 political prisoners, eye-witnesses and observers, which was published by del Vayo in the spring of 1935. Among other things it states:

    "Apart from the individual cases mentioned below, we wish to state that the following methods of torture were employed: burning of the genital organs and other parts of the body; crushing of the testicles; crushing of the hands and the lower extremities; blows with hammers on hands and knees; the forcing of needles under the finger-nails; the scalding of various parts of the body with boiling water; the forcing of victims to kneel down on sharp stones; and mock executions.
 "Some victims were compelled to dig their own graves, others were buried up to the knees. Apart from these tortures, which present only a very incomplete picture of the appalling reality, the following were the methods of torture most frequently used: a prisoner's hands would be bound behind his back with a rope, and he would then be hoisted into the air by this rope and swung backwards and forwards. Sometimes tubs filled with water or sacks of sand were fastened to the victim's feet, so that his limbs would be torn from their sockets. Another procedure was to beat the soles of the victim's feet with clubs or rifle-butts, whilst at the same time he was prodded with bayonets or shots were ever. fired off behind his back. Other prisoners were placed in ice-baths until their skin became inflamed and peculiarly sensitive to the beatings which followed. Maria Lafuente, the sister of Aida Lafuente, who was shot by the troops, was forced to strip for her examination."

This is merely a brief extract from one of many similar documents.

After a ten days' massacre the Gil Robles-Lerroux Government considered that the time had come to apply the brakes. The African troops were withdrawn.

But the courts were still busy turning out death sentences as though on a conveyor belt; in Madrid, Oviedo, Barcelona, Santander, Zamora, Leon and Gijón, 40,000 prisoners were sentenced to a total of 300,000 years' penal servitude.

October, 1934, is a date that should be remembered. For the first time in recent history a European Government used coloured troops against its own subjects. Translated into terms of English conditions, this would be comparable to the Home Secretary's giving orders for native Indian  or African troops to be brought to England to put down a miners' strike in South Wales. The Church, in the name of Christianity, drove the Moors out of Spain; a true son of the Spanish church, in the name of Christianity, now called them back again.

A decade earlier such a thing would have been impossible in Europe. The Europe of the Locarno period, the Europe of Stresemann and of MacDonald in his heyday, would have reacted to this piece of barbarism with a storm of indignation, as it once did to the Armenian massacres. But the Europe of 1934 was apathetic, its senses were blunted and stupefied -- who could still bother about what was happening in a remote country beyond the Pyrenees? The sentimental Europe of 1924 seemed to be as remote as the Europe through which Yorick wandered in his coach. "The end justifies the means" is the principle of modern dictatorship. "The end justifies the means" is the age-old maxim of the Jesuit fraternity. The synthesis has been consummated in the person of Gil Robles, alumnus of a Jesuit Seminary and pioneer of the Fascist movement in Spain. His development is a symbol of that ultra-modern form of reaction which is bent on driving mankind back to the Middle Ages with the help of tanks and the radio.

Anyone who has spent even a few days in the rebel camp during the Spanish Civil War is familiar with that curious aroma blended of poison gas and incense which is so characteristic of Francisco Franco's modern crusade. 




	
CHAPTER III
THE OUTBREAK

AFTER THE EVENTS in Asturias the need was more and more urgently felt for all liberal forces in Spain to unite in face of the persistent attempts on the part of the Right to re-establish a dictatorship -- a dictatorship which would be far more drastic than the régime of the late Primo de Rivera had ever been. After laborious negotiations a coalition between the progressive middle class parties on the one hand and the workers' parties and Trades Unions on the other was formed under the name of the Frente Popular or People's Front. At the elections to the Cortes of February 16th, 1936, this new political bloc gained a triumphant victory.

It was the most backward country in Europe, Russia, which in 1917 was the first to carry through a Socialist revolution. It was in the most backward country of Western Europe, Spain, that a progressive coalition of this new type first came to power. It may be to these facts that the tragedy of Europe and of the Left movement in Europe can to a considerable extent be traced.

The Spanish People's Front was made up of the three democratic parties: the Left-Republicans (the Azaña Party), the Republican Union (Martinez Barrio's Party), and the Left-Republican Part), of Catalonia (Company's Party); and further, of the Socialist Party of Spain, the Communist Party of Spain, and the various small independent Socialist parties. The Anarchists took no part in the election campaign of the People's Front, and instructed their members to abstain from voting. 
 Despite the vigorous campaign of terror launched during the elections and the efforts made to suppress the propaganda of the Left parties, the People's Front won a clear victory.

The parties of the Frente Popular, including the Basque Nationalists, obtained 277 seats in the Cortes; in 1933 they had had 121. They had gained thus 156 seats.

The parties of the Right and the Right Centre, which later threw in its lot with the rebels, obtained 196 seats; in the previous Cortes they had had 352. They had thus lost 156 seats.

The proportion of the total votes cast for the Left was less favourable to it than the distribution of Parliamentary seats. The Left had gained a majority of the total votes, but this majority was not as great as the majority they gained in the Cortes. The old-fashioned and complicated Spanish electoral system was peculiar in that it increased the victory of the victorious party and intensified the defeat of the vanquished party. This electoral system dates from the time of the Monarchy, when the ruling caste wished to keep the minority parties out of the Cortes. For decades the Right had profited from this electoral system; now it suddenly turned out to the advantage of the Left, who were able to quote the proverb: " He who digs a pit for another, shall himself fall into it."

The main point is that the Frente Popular won a majority of the total votes cast. It was this victory which enabled it to benefit from those advantages of the electoral system from which the Right would have benefited had things gone the other way.

Not only were the Parties of the Right beaten, but their most outstanding leaders suffered personal defeat. Gil Robles stood as a candidate in three constituencies, one of them Madrid, and was defeated in two. Lerroux stood in two, one of them Barcelona, and was defeated in both. Primo de Rivera, son of the former dictator, and founder and  leader of the Phalanx, stood in eight constituencies and was defeated in all of them.

Four years after the proclamation of the Republic the way at last seemed clear for the transformation of the semi-feudal, old Spain into a modern democratic State. Even the most extreme section of the People's Front, the Communist Party of Spain, repeatedly and emphatically insisted that the object in view was not the realisation of Socialist demands but the introduction into Spain of " bourgeois democracy", that is, the realisation of those reforms which the middle-classes of the democratic countries of Western Europe had succeeded in obtaining by the second half of the nineteenth century at the latest.

For -- and this fact is frequently overlooked when Spanish problems are under discussion -- Spain was still, when the People's Front came into power in 1936, a semi-feudal country, with sharp social contrasts such as a Western European can scarcely conceive possible.

In November, 1935, after the events in Asturias, agricultural'wages had fallen to a lower level than even under the Monarchy. Agricultural labourers in Andalusia earned from 1.75 to 2 pesetas (7d. to 8d.) per day. There were landowners in Estremadura who employed men for twelve hours a day and gave them one meal a day in lieu of wages. The landowners were taking their revenge for the fright that the first years of the Republic had given them.

All the protective legislation introduced by previous governments was repealed by the Gil Robles régime. The law rendering illegal the importation of non-local labour was repealed. The law with regard to lease-hold contracts was repealed, and more than 100,000 tenant farmers were given notice. The distribution of the land among the peasants was declared null and void, the new settlers were evicted, and the land was restored to its former owners, who let it lie fallow. Those feudal gentlemen who preferred to leave the land in the hands of the settlers were compensated  by the Government to the tune of 500 million pesetas, while the Church received in compensation for the losses she had suffered 300 million pesetas.

At the same time all unemployment relief was abolished, and the 873 million pesetas allocated to public works by the budget of 1933 was reduced in 1935 to 628 million.

The unrestrained tyranny of the feudal aristocracy was driving the Spanish economic system once more towards ruin. Whilst in most European countries a gradual recovery after the slump was discernible between 1933 and 1935, the curve of unemployment in Spain mounted steadily, reaching its peak in 1935. Meanwhile Spain became the country with the highest duties on consumers' goods in Europe.

The masses had returned to their old state of unspeakable misery and suffering. Still 10,000 Spanish peasant families continued to live in caves and sandpits, both in Andalusia and at the very gates of Madrid. Still the Statistical Year Book showed that out of every thousand deaths among the Spanish population 500 were those of children under the age of five. Still only forty-four out of every hundred adult Spaniards were able to read and write.

This was the heritage which fell to the lot of the Spanish People's Front in February, 1936.

On February 19th, the new Government was formed with Manuel Azaña as Prime Minister. It was a liberal Government, composed exclusively of members of the liberal centre parties -- nine members of the Republican Left, three of the Republican Union and a non-political general at the War Office. No Socialists or Communists were included. In the decisive period from the February elections until the outbreak of the insurrection no Socialist or Communist was ever a member of the Spanish Government. The first cabinet in which the Socialists participated  	

was formed by Largo Caballero on September 4th, six weeks after the beginning of the Civil War.

This is a point which should be remembered, for, from the very beginning, the defeated Spanish reaction concentrated all its efforts on making the world believe that Communism had come to power in Spain. It launched one of the most perfidious propaganda compaigns Europe has ever known -- and one of the most successful.

A few days after the elections, Azaña, the new Prime Minister and veteran of the Spanish liberals, gave an interview to the correspondent of the "Paris Soir":

    Before the elections," he declared, "we drafted a programme of minimum reforms; we intend to adhere to this programme. I wish to govern according to the law. No dangerous innovations! We want peace and order we are moderates."

The propagandists of the Right, however, averred that Azaña was aiming at revolution and the disruption of society. The campaign went on, and the Government did nothing to stop it.

It looks, indeed, as though the Spanish Republic had learned nothing from the experiences of the past. Instead of once and for all sweeping away the economic foundations of feudalism in Spain, the "idealists and amateurs" strove to provide water-tight evidence of their own innocuousness; once more they surrendered to the fatal illusion that it was possible for the Middle Ages and the new era to live side by side in a state of idyllic harmony. The receipt for this tolerance was handed to them by General Franco on July 18th, on the point of a bayonet.

For the moment the reaction was engaged in rallying its forces. The more tender the Azaña Government's soft cooings, the more furious were the roars of the reactionary Press at home and abroad. During the Asturian insurrection

 it had unearthed stories of the crucifixion of officers' sons; now " vouchers issued by the revolutionary committees as rewards for the violation of women " came to light. In April the Right pass from words to deeds. The pistoleros and assassins in the pay of the Phalanx ambush local Republican leaders and shoot them down. Bombs explode, fires break out. In Toledo the Cadets of the Military School break out of the Alcázar one night and invade the town, where they strike down the sellers of workers' papers and make the streets ring with the new battle-cry, "Arriba, Espaha!" ( Spain, arise!) "Just mischievous boyish pranks," says the Government, with a superior, paternal smile.

This is one side of the situation. On the other, the peasant masses of Spain were moving. The local village pundits had drawn their attention to the declaration of the new President: " No dangerous innovations." They could not make out what was happening. They had put this Government in power precisely because they had been hoping for dangerous innovations; the dangerous innovation of being able to send their children to school, the dangerous innovation of having land distributed among them, of taking possession of or leasing the land they had tilled.

The peasants could not make out what was happening in Madrid; and since they could not make it out', they began to act of their own accord. At first in Andalusia and Estramadura, then in other provinces, spontaneous mass occupations of the large estates were carried out. The peasants had realized that they would only get the land if they took the law into their own hands. Descending in a body on the landlords' estates, they planted themselves down on their beloved land and refused to budge.

Madrid began to feel that it would never get anywhere at the old bureaucratic jog-trot. Certain elements, it is true, within the Government, in addition to the clerical reactionaries, were in favour of the immediate despatch of troops against the peasants. And troops, indeed, were  despatched; 800 Assault Guards, together with the hated Civil Guard, penetrated into Caceres and Badajoz. But the peasants' movement was far too powerful, and it had the masses on its side. The Government withdrew its troops and despatched in their stead a staff of agricultural experts and officials of the "Institute of Agrarian Reform", who proceeded rapidly to legalise these occupations of the landlords' estates.

During March about 150 peasants were settled on the land every day; by April this daily figure had risen to 500; by May to 1,000. At last the Spanish agrarian reform seemed to have been launched in real earnest.

In other respects, too, the Government had already done a certain amount. After the elections 30,000 political prisoners were set free; workers who had been victimised by their employers were reinstated; Catalan autonomy was re-established. The Cortes forced Alcalá-Zamora, unpopular because he had been President in 1934, to resign, and Manuel Azafia was appointed President of the Republic.

This was something, but it was not enough.

The people watched the preparations of the opposition, and had no wish to be deceived a second time. It realised what danger lay in the Government's vacillating, irresolute behaviour. The Government was temporising on both fronts, both with the masses and with the enemy in their midst, a line of conduct that was soon to prove fatal to it.

Excitement in the country reached fever pitch. On the one hand strikes and occupations of estates were increasing. Infuriated crowds made attacks on churches and monasteries; they had not forgotten that in October, 1934, the machine-guns of antichrist had been trained on them from the fortress-like sacred buildings of Spain, and they foresaw that on the next occasion things would be the same or even worse. 
 	

On the other hand the Generals and their allies were already openly preparing for the counter-attack. It was in vain that the clear-sighted demanded the disbandment of the reactionary para-military organisations, in vain that they demanded drastic action on the part of the Government against the flight of capital systematically organised by High Finance, which was bent on forcing the peseta down and driving Spain into bankruptcy.

On May 28th, in the small market town of Yeste, in the province of Albacete, an absurdly trivial incident (the felling of trees on the municipal high-road) was made the excuse for an organised and bloody massacre on the part of the Civil Guard, at the instigation of Phalangists. Twentythree peasants were killed and a hundred wounded. A storm of protest swept through Spain. But the Minister of the Interior of the People's Front Government telegraphed his congratulations to the Commandant of the Civil Guard in Yeste.

Every child in Spain could tell that an insurrection on the part of the reactionaries was imminent; the very sparrows were crying it from the house-tops.

Ever since the spring both rumours and authentic information had been disseminated in Spain concerning the conspiratorial activities of the Generals. As early as March, General Sanjurjo had been negotiating with Hitler in Berlin; in May and June, in Alicante and Lisbon, the conspirators made their final arrangements with Italian and German agents. For two months the workers' youth organisations had been holding themselves in readiness every night for an alarm, keeping an eye on the barracks, waiting for the decisive moment. On June 18th, Paul Nizan, a French writer, published an article ending with the following sentence:

    "The danger increases from day to day, because the forces on which the reactionaries depend have remained
 unassailed; because nothing or very little has been done to destroy Primo de Rivera's Falanges or Gil Robles' J.A.P., because nothing has really been done to purge the army, the police, the Civil Guard, the Assault Guard, the courts, etc., because the entire Governmental machinery of the Republican State remains exactly what it was under the Monarchy. A Fascist insurrection can be seen looming on the horizon of the Republic, and the social unrest, which is rife in the country and which is kept alive by the Right, is paving the way for it." This was written, as has been said, on June 18th, 1936. On July 13th, a popular leader of the anti-Fascist Assault Guard, Castillo, was shot down in the streets of Madrid by Fascists.

A wave of tremendous indignation swept through the workers of Madrid, and they streamed into the centre of the town.

The Assault Guard troop which the murdered Castillo had commanded seized Calvo Sotelo, the Monarchist leader and chief wire-puller of the reactionaries, carried him. off in a lorry and shot him on the outskirts of the city.

This gave the conspirators the excuse they had been waiting for.

Five days later the military insurrection of the Generals, which had been expected for weeks, broke out.

At eleven o'clock on the evening of July 17th, 1936, a motor lorry filled with Foreign Legionaries drew up in front of the General Post Office at Larache, in Spanish Morocco. The officer in command ordered the astonished soldiers to occupy the building. At this time of night all the cinemas are closed down for half an hour to give the cafés a chance of doing some business; a crowd, therefore,  	

collected outside the General Post Office. In a few minutes a second lorry-load of soldiers drove up. The rumour soon spread among the crowd that a military insurrection was being planned. The soldiers in the second lorry, Moroccans, hesitated to enter the building, whereupon the young officer in command lost his head, and, drawing his revolver, shot one of them dead there and then. A brief and chaotic street battle ensued, and by the time the cinema interval was over, three soldiers and two officers lay dead on the pavement. These were the first victims of the Spanish Civil War.

By the morning of the next day, July 18th, all the public buildings in Larache, Tetuan, Ceuta and the other cities of Spanish Morocco had been occupied by native troops and Foreign Legionaries. The Divisional Commander, General Francisco Franco, had arrived by aeroplane from the Canary Islands, disguised as an Arab. He issued a proclamation to the inhabitants which was posted up in all the streets and also distributed as a leaflet. This proclamation announced that the Army had decided to "reestablish order in Spain," that General Franco had taken over the leadership of this movement, and that he "appealed to the Republican sentiment of all those Spaniards who were prepared to take their share in the task of restoring Spain".

The first step towards this "restoration " was the declaration of a state of war, the abolition of the right to strike, and the shooting of three thousand soldiers and civilians in Spanish Morocco who remained loyal to the Government.

The Spanish Government immediately demanded the surrender of the rebel General. No reply was vouchsafed to their telegrams.

On the evening of July 18th a Government plane flew over the mutinous garrison, dropping six bombs on the Military Headquarters at Tetuan and a seventh on the  	

Larache aerodrome. Whereupon Franco sent the following telegram to the Prime Minister in Madrid, copies of which were posted up throughout the town:

    "Now that I have assumed my new responsibilities, I wish to protest vigorously against the unspeakable action of the Government in instructing their pilots to shoot at the civil population, thus endangering the safety of innocent women and children.

    "It will not be long before the movement for the restoration of Spain will be everywhere victorious, and we shall then call you to account for your action. The reprisals that we shall take will be in proportion to the resistance you offer.

    " We explicitly demand an immediate cessation of this futile bloodshed on your part.

    " (Signed) Don Francisco Franco,

    Commander-in-Chief of the Fighting Forces in Africa."

This classic document supplied a foretaste of the propaganda technique employed by the rebels, a technique to which they were strictly to adhere during the months that followed. It was the old cry of "Stop, thief!", cunningly resorted to in order to shift responsibility from their own shoulders on to those of their opponents.

On Sunday, July 19th, a passenger steamer and an armoured cruiser sailed from Morocco through the Straits of Gibraltar. After a brief bombardment, a white flag was hoisted on the Fort of Algeciras, on the European side of the Straits. The two vessels then docked in the harbour of Algeciras and unloaded their human freight, which consisted of Moorish tribesmen in green turbans, Berbers from the Riff, and African mercenaries from the Foreign Legion.

The barbarians' crusade had begun; the Moors had returned to Spain. 
 	

On that same day, July 19th, the military insurrection also broke out in Madrid and Barcelona, Seville and Toledo, Burgos and Valladolid, and a number of other, large garrison towns. The mutinous officers went to work everywhere in the same way, with a few trifling variations. In the Montafia barracks in Madrid they told their men that the Anarchists and Communists of Andalusia had risen and were burning the harvests, violating the women and murdering the children of Andalusia. In Seville, the capital of Andalusia, the soldiers were told that the Anarchists were looting Madrid, violating the women and burning the children of Madrid. In Barcelona, where such atrocity stories about the Anarchists would have had no effect, the rebel officers told their men that the Republic must be saved. Only in the Catholic province of Navarra, the traditional cradle of the Carlist wars, the only district where the broad masses of the people had clerical and Monarchist sympathies, were the people informed of the true reactionary character of the insurrection.

Typical of the confusion that the mutinous officers deliberately set out to create is the following scene which took place during the street fighting in Barcelona, and was described by Claude Blanchard in the "Paris Soir" of July 22nd:

    "A great crowd of people begins to collect in the Square: soldiers from the rebel ranks fraternising with and discussing the situation with the Government troops. Only by telling them that the Republic must be saved have the rebel officers been able to persuade their men to take action. From the other side of the Square loyalist soldiers approach the rebel troops, tying white handkerchiefs round their sleeves to signify their peaceful intentions.

    It is impossible any longer to tell to which camp the  various soldiers belong. I talked to a soldier from the-1, Guardia de Assalto who had changed his views three times 41 in the course of this one day. "It was undoubtedly owing to this confusion and the general obscurity of the situation that the rebels succeeded in occupying the Hotel Colón."

The conspirators had counted on a surprise victory; but they had reckoned without their host. For the first time in their existence the workers' organisations, the trades unions, the anti-Fascist Citizens' Defence Units, took the initiative, and within a few hours the People's Front had mobilised its masses. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, poured into the streets, armed themselves as best they could, and besieged the mutinous troops in their barracks. In Madrid it took them twentyfour hours, in Barcelona two days, and in Toledo three days, to get the upper hand of the rebels. The peasants organised defence committees in the villages, built barricades, and took up axes and scythes in defence of the Republic.

Apart from Morocco, the insurrection was only successful in those towns where there were Staff Officers of high rank and strong garrisons: in Seville, where the strongest military units of the South were stationed; in Saragossa, where the most important military academies, and hence the greatest number of officers, were to be found; and in the garrison towns of Burgos, Valladolid, Vigo and Corunna. These were the towns in which the General Staff had taken care to concentrate the largest stores of arms and war material.

Most of the other large towns, all the rural areas, and the overwhelming majority of the population stood by the Republic.

The Civil War had begun. 


 CHAPTER IV
THE BACKGROUND

AT FIRST SIGHT it is not altogether easy to understand how a small group of officers could have attempted to force its will on a country which had, only five months before -- in the February elections -- decided in favour of democracy and against dictatorship. Still more paradoxical does it seem that, despite the unequivocal hostility of the masses, such an attempt should have been to a considerable degree successful.

From the point of view of Franco and his friends there existed three factors which offered, if not a guarantee, at least a fair prospect, of success.

Firstly, they had at their disposal a considerable number of non-Spanish troops, including Moors and Foreign Legionaries; the para-military organisations of the Falange Española and the Requetes; and the majority of the regular army. Further they were in control of all the most important arsenals. Secondly, they counted on taking the country by surprise and, by the employment of terroristic measures, paralysing the resistance of the unarmed, untrained masses. Thirdly, they had been assured of the active political and military support of the three European Dictatorships, the Dictatorships of Germany, Italy and Portugal, the exponents of whose political doctrines they felt themselves to be, and under whose tutelage they acted. We shall deal with this question in a later chapter.
1. THE STRUCTURE OF THE SPANISH ARMY

Army officers and civil servants have always played an outstanding part in the political life of Spain. As in the  	

case of all countries where pronounced relics of feudalism persist, the most important posts in the civil service and the higher ranks in the army have always been occupied predominantly by aristocrats. The number of officers, and particularly officers of high rank, has always been enormous. In 1931, in a regular army numbering 105,000 men, there were 195 generals, 5,938 officers above the rank of captain, 5,281 captains, and 5,707 subalterns. In addition there was the Reserve with a further 437 generals and 407 officers of high rank.

This meant that in the Spanish Army there was: --

    one active general to every 538 soldiers one officer between the rank of captain and colonel to every ten soldiers, and one officer to every six soldiers. 1

As a comparison it may be stated that in the French Army in 1935 there was one officer to every nineteen soldiers. This means that there were, relatively, three times as many officers in the Spanish as in the French Army. In the old days people often smiled at the Byzantine structure of the Spanish Army, and, since Spain had not been at war for almost a century, it had the reputation of being a "comicopera army". A complete fallacy. The Spanish Army might not have been very effective in a European conflict, but it was an army admirably adapted for use in Civil War.

"It would be erroneous to imagine the Spanish Army as a huge military machine powerfully organised to obtain the highest possible fighting efficiency out of the large' portion of the Budget which it consumes. The Army is a bureaucratic machine which spends most of the money paid to it in salaries for generals and officers, a lesser amount in war material, and a still lesser sum in
____________________
1 	Annuario Estadistico, 1931.


 preparing for war. The Army, in fact, is more important as an instrument of home politics than as a weapon of war."  1

From time immemorial it had been a traditional feature of Spanish political life that army officers should form themselves into associations or juntas, which plotted, carried out coups, and generally meddled in politics on their own, always pursuing a policy which was in the interests of the ruling caste to which they belonged. All the most important reactionary changes in recent Spanish history were initiated, or at least decisively influenced, by these officers' juntas; Primo de Rivera's Dictatorship, for instance, was established by means of a coup on the part of a group of officers.

The Republic did not succeed in republicanising the army; it did not even seriously attempt to do so. In June, 1936, Paul Nizan, a French journalist whom I have already quoted, wrote from Madrid:

    There are only a very few Republican officers. I was told that only three per cent of the officers in the army were Republican. I tried to get confirmation of this, but was told by an officer in close touch with the Prime Minister that my informant was an optimist."

Four years after the proclamation of the Republic, and four months after the victory of the People's Front, liberal newspapers were still banned in the majority of Spanish barracks; the officers, on the other hand distributed Phalangist literature amongst their men, and organised Phalangist cells.

On June 2nd, 1936, six weeks before the insurrection, which everyone could see coming, the "Mundo Obrero" of Madrid wrote in a leading article: --

"There is still hope of saving the situation. But we must go about it systematically. All these people must
____________________
1 	Salvador de Madariaga, "Spain" Ernest Benn, 1930.

 	

be thrown out of the army, and it must be reorganised and staffed with Republican, democratically-minded non-commissioned officers and men."

This sentence was deleted by the censorship authorities of the People's Front Government -- so great and deeply rooted was the inferiority complex of the civilian politicians of the Left in relation to the army.

The officers' juntas succeeded in converting large sections of the army into a malleable instrument for the carrying out of their policy. Nevertheless they did not trust their men, large contingents of whom, indeed, particularly in Catalonia and Madrid, went over to the Government. They preferred from the start to base their plan for the "restoration of Spain" on the support of the Foreign Legion and Moorish troops.

The Foreign Legion, that twentieth century army of mercenaries, had proved its peculiar aptitude for the carrying out of organised massacres during the events in Asturias. As for the native standing army in Morocco, it consisted, at the beginning of 1936, of somewhere about 12,000 men, but after three months of the Civil War the number of Moroccans on the Spanish war front was estimated at about 40,000 and after a year at about 80,000. Franco had replenished his store with men taken from half-savage desert tribes; his recruits were no longer regular native troops, but guileless savage warriors, around whose necks their sergeants hung religious medallions with the image of Christ on the Cross, telling them that they were magic amulets.

The Phalanx, the actual backbone of the rebel troops, was founded by Primo de Rivera, son of the former Dictator. After the February elections the number of Phalangists began suddenly to increase at a very rapid tempo. The ruling caste, seeing its privileges threatened  	

by the electoral victory of the democratic parties, put its sons into uniforms, and those sections of the lower middle class who had leanings towards Fascism followed its example.

The programme of the Phalanx can be summed up in a few words: the establishment of a corporate state, the leadership principle (it is even ready to discuss the possibility of a monarchy, although Alfonso has never been particularly popular among the younger Phalangists), and national agrarian reform without expropriation, that is to say, no agrarian reform at all. Here too, as in all their propaganda, what they are "for" is given far less prominence than what they are "against". They are against the Marxists, against the Jews, against the Freemasons. The slogan "against capitalism" is relegated to the background, for Spain still lives in a semi-feudal era. The hatred of Freemasonry, on the other hand, is pushed well into the foreground, for Freemasonry has actually played a very large rôle amongst the liberal progressive elements in Spain.

These are merely nuances. Fundamentally the Phalanx reflects with striking exactitude the ideological features of the German, Italian and French semi-military Fascist organisations. To anybody with a knowledge of everyday life in Rome or Berlin their activities are uncannily familiar.

The Phalangists act as an auxiliary police force; at night they make raids on the small towns in the possession of the insurgents and track down any revolutionary squad they may find chalking up slogans on the walls of the houses. They are at constant loggerheads with the regular army. E. L. Taylor, a correspondent of the Chicago Tribune and one of the ablest experts on the Spanish Civil War, has summed up the chief function of the Phalanx in a single sentence:

    "They play a minor part in the actual fighting, but they like to take over the duties of the police and to supervise the carrying out of executions behind the line."
 	

Very different from the tough, ill-disciplined mobs of the Phalanx are the so-called Requetes or "Carlists", the second semi-military organisation on the side of the rebels. Whereas the Phalanx consists essentially of a mob organised on ultra-modern Fascist principles, the Carlist organisation embodies those elements in Spain which are most strongly bound to tradition. They are fanatical adherents of the principle of absolute monarchy, and equally fanatical doctrinaire Catholics, who, out of honest conviction, would welcome a Holy Inquisition for the salvation of mankind. Their chief support is drawn from the Catholic north-west provinces: Burgos, Navarra, Pamplona. The same cannot be said of the Carlist officers, who are for the most part aristocrats, sons of landed proprietors and social snobs whose Catholicism and monarchist principles are simply an excuse for resisting every progressive trend of events.

To pit against these rigidly disciplined cadres of professional soldiers the Republic had only its untrained masses, unused to any form of discipline.

The European public imagines that in Spain two armies are fighting against each other. This is a mistaken conception. In Spain a well-trained professional army, reinforced by vast contingents of non-Spanish troops, and supplied from abroad with the most up-to-date military equipment, is fighting against untrained masses, held together by no military discipline, but only by their common political ideals, without officers, without experts, without technicians, without adequate arms and war material.

I should like to give just one example of the crippling effect of this lack of trained troops on the Government side.

At the beginnifig of the Civil War the Government Fleet was about equal to the naval strength of the rebels. Nevertheless, the rebels displayed immeasurable superiority  	

in the prosecution of the war at sea; the warships of the Republic lay idle in the harbours for months on end because their officers had either gone over to the rebels or been shot, and no one knew how to control the complicated ironclad leviathans.
2. THE TREATMENT OF THE CIVIL POPULATION

This main difference between the two armies, the fact that one is a professional and the other a people's army, not only explains to a great extent the military success of the rebels; it explains also the principal difference in the way in which the two sides treat the civil population, hostages and prisoners of war; their methods of warfare.

The Spanish rebels found themselves objectively in the position of an alien invading army. The masses sympathised either actively or passively with their opponents. There was only one method of forcing the masses in the districts which they took to become neutral: the method of terror.

Sadism always plays a rôle in terror, albeit a secondary one. There may be sadistic impulses in individuals and groups of individuals in both camps. What is of importance is the value placed on such latent psychic factors.

In the theory and practice of the rebels organised massacres are assigned a decisive rôle -- one has only to remember Badajoz, Toledo, Guernica. Franco acted under an historical compulsion, he was the helpless tool of that logic of history which leaves a minority determined to assert itself against the majority no choice of methods. Terror was not merely an attendant phenomenon, but a vital function of his insurrection.

The rebel leaders have more or less frankly admitted this fact. Queipo de Llano has announced several times from the broadcasting station in Seville that his aim is not only to conquer, but to extirpate the enemy. Lieutenant Yagüe, in an interview given to the representative of the "Deutsches Nachrichten Büro" after the fall of Badajoz, declared:      " . . . the fact that the conquest of Spain by the Army is proceeding at a slow pace has this advantage; that it gives us time to purge the country thoroughly of all Red elements.

Conclusive evidence of the deliberate and systematic character of the Franco terror is provided by a document found on Manuel Carracha, a rebel officer who was taken prisoner on the Guadalajara front on July 28th. It was a copy of a circular addressed to the higher ranks of the officers in the rebel army. The document runs as follows:
"One of the most important tasks, if victory is to be assured, is the undermining of the morale of the enemy troops. The enemy has neither sufficient troops nor sufficient arms to resist; nevertheless the following instructions must be rigidly observed:
	"(1) In order to safeguard the: provinces occupied, it is essential to instil a certain salutary terror into the population. When the troops occupy a place, the local authorities must first be taught a lesson in respect; if they have escaped, a similar procedure must be adopted towards the members of their families. In every case the methods resorted to must be of a clearly spectacular and impressive character, and must indicate clearly that the leaders of the troops are determined to proceed with like severity against anyone who offers resistance.
	"(2) Occasionally it will be convenient to requisition all the metal to be found in the public buildings or in the private houses of partisans of the other side.
	"(3) It is essential that in every town occupied, information shall be obtained from the priest or other reliable persons as to the views of the leading members of the community. If there are members of the Falange in the town, or officers or non-commissioned officers who have been able to escape the Red Terror, they are  	to be enlisted. Any tendency towards laxity in the performance of their duties, or signs of insubordination on the part of the troops must be proceeded against with the utmost rigour. The same holds good for desertions. The rapidity with which we attain ultimate victory will depend on the merciless severity of the punishments meted out in such cases.
	"(4) Every town along the enemy's line of retreat and all the areas behind the enemy lines are to be considered as battle zones. In this connection, no differentiation must be observed between places harbouring enemy troops and those not doing so. The panic experienced bythe civil, population along the enemy's line of retreat is a factor of the utmost importance in contributing towards the demoralisation of the enemy troops. The experiences of the last world war shows that accidental destruction of enemy hospitals and ambulances has a highly demoralising effect on troops.
	"(5) After the entry into Madrid, the officers in charge of the various bodies of troops are to establish machinegun posts on the roofs of all the high buildings dominating their particular district, including public buildings and church towers, so that the surrounding streets are within range of the machine-guns. In the event of any opposition on the part of the populace, the streets should be put under fire without any further parleying. In view of the fact that large numbers of women are fighting on the enemy side, there should be no distinction of sex in such cases. The more ruthless we are, the more quickly shall we quell hostile opposition among the population, the more quickly will the restoration of Spain be effected."

Even Terror has its gradations, its evolutionary history, its theory. Danton was a dilettante in the application of Terror, Robespierre was a systematic exponent of it. But  	

the methods of Terror employed by the nineteenth century bear the same relation to those of the twentieth century as does a post-chaise to a motor-car. Nowadays the aim is no longer to defeat the political opponent but to destroy and exterminate him. This may seem merely to be a nuance; in reality it is a kind of revolution within the realm of Terror -- if one may say such a thing.

The Spanish insurgents have adopted in every detail the ultra-modern theory of Terror. This statement too seems to be a platitude. It is not. How concretely and consciously this theory was put into practice, can best be illustrated by a few quotations taken at random from the German Press.

    "The Generals looked for guarantees of victory not primarily in military successes, but in a systematic and thorough cleaning-up of the hinterland. . . ." 1

    "Fortunately the old attitude of sentimentality has been dissipated among the Nationalists, and every soldier realises that a horrible end is better than endless horrors. . . ." 2

    "The Marxist parties are being destroyed and exterminated down to the very last cell far more drastically even than here in Germany. Every house, every flat, every office is kept under constant observation and supervision. . . . Every single citizen, moreover, is continually drawn into the whirl of political excitement, made to participate in triumphal celebrations and mass demonstrations. The principle of modern Nationalism 'No opponent but shall be destroyed' is thoroughly carried out. . . . Just as here in Germany. . . ." 3

It is difficult to convey any idea. of the scenes that occurred during the first few days after the revolt in the districts
____________________
1 	Kurt Kränzlein in the "Angriff" of November 10th, 1936.
2 	The "Angriff" September 17th, 1936.
3 	Essener National-Zeitung October 13th, 1936.


 occupied by the rebels. The reports available are naturally few and far between; and the accounts of fugitives, passed on at second or third hand, are either incomplete or exaggerated. We know how much harm the preposterous atrocity propaganda engaged in by both sides caused during the Great War, and the author shares the repugnance felt by every newspaper man with a conscience at the thought of allowing himself to be drawn into such slimy depths. Nevertheless there is a form of journalistic vanity which is just as dangerous as the indulgence in unscrupulous and tendencious propaganda; I call it "objectivity neurosis." The journalist who is determined at all costs to give proof of his objectivity often succumbs to the temptation of maintaining silence with regard to concrete facts, because these facts are in themselves so crude that he is afraid of appearing biased. English journalists in particular, with their traditional feeling for level-headedness and decency, have often had to complain of this difficulty. But a civil war is in itself a somewhat indecent affair. "Damn it," a correspondent of a conservative paper who had just returned from rebel territory once said to me, "sometimes one would really rather be writing for ' The Daily Worker'."

In selecting the facts related below I have eliminated wherever possible second-hand accounts, only taking into consideration those facts which either have been communicated by people whose trustworthiness is beyond doubt, such as Professor Ortega y Gasset, Bourcier of the, if anything, pro-rebel "Intransigeant," and others, or are based on the personal experiences and investigations of the author in both rebel and Government territory.

The most authoritative document with regard to the rebel terror in the first few days of the insurrection is a memorandum drawn up by the Governing Body of Madrid Faculty of Law and published by its President, Eduardo  	

Ortega y Gasset, a lawyer of international reputation and of the old Republican school. Here are some extracts from it, arranged by me in geographical order:

    Civil wars, that divide families and breed hatred, have always been prosecuted in a particularly ruthless manner; the crimes that are being committed by the insurgents at the moment, however, surpass anything that has hitherto been known in the way of organised savagery. The spirit that inspires these retrogade hordes is that of the Carlist wars, the spirit that existed under the fanatical and intolerant rigime of Ferdinand VII. Once more the red caps of the 'Requetes' have risen up from the blooddrenched Spanish soil; once more Bishops and priests play their part in dastardly guerilla warfare. They give their blessing to the Moors, who have been called in to strangle the Spanish people, and hang round their necks medallions of the crucifixion, telling them that they are magic amulets."

    "It is impossible to include in this document all the atrocities which the insurgents are perpetrating on the martyred Spanish people. Every day that passes brings new scenes of horror. We will quote only a few of them here which illustrate graphically the criminal methods against which we appeal to international opinion."

    "The rebels, in all the districts occupied by them, systematically shoot workers carrying a Trade Union card. The corpses are left lying on view in the streets or heaped up in the cemeteries, each with the card of a Trade Union tied to leg or arm, in order to show the reason for the execution."

    "In the town of Seville alone, and independently of any military action, more than 9,000 workeis and peasants were executed. The Moors and Foreign Legionaries went through the streets of humble one-storey houses in the working class districts throwing hand grenades through the windows, killing women and children. The Moorish troops gave themselves up to sacking and plundering. General Queipo de Llano describes scenes of rape on the wireless with a coarse relish that is an indirect incitement to a repetition of such scenes."
 At this point I shall interrupt. the memorandum of the Faculty of Law in order to supplement its description of the incidents in Seville.

During the Civil War I was twice in Seville; the first time from August 27th to 29th, 1936, as a journalist, the second time from February 12th to May 12th, 1937, as a prisoner. Both what I heard in Seville and, to some extent, my own experiences there serve to confirm the authenticity of the above document. I should like to quote another eye-witness account, that of Jesús Corrales of Algeciras, a hotel employee. Corrales fled from Algeciras eight days after the insurrection, when he found that the rebels, failing to find him at home, had shot his twenty-one-year-old wife, Gertrudis Sarmiento, his two-year-old son, Ricardo, and his eightmonths-old daughter, Carmen. His flight took him via Seville to Portugal, and from there via Corunna, Vigo and San Sebastian to France. I met him at the end of October in Paris, where I had an opportunity of examining his documents and checking his statements by my own personal knowledge of Seville. Here follows his sworn statement, for which I take full responsibility:

"In Seville, in a small street of the district of San Bernardo, I saw with my own eyes the shooting of a group of about 150 prisoners, amongst whom there were some women. In order to keep the refractory population in a constant state of terror, General Queipo de Llano gave orders that the prisoners should not be shot, as at first, in the barracks, in the prison or the cemetery, but in the streets of working-class districts, and that the corpses should be left lying in the streets for from twelve to sixteen hours, after oil had been poured on them so as to avoid the possibility of epidemics. Mass executions had therefore been carried out since the last few days of July, according to a systematic plan, in the districts of Macarena, San Lorenzo, San Bernardo and Triana  	

alternately. The total number of those shot when I arrived in Seville was estimated at 7,000, i.e. a daily average of 100 to 150 people. The usual procedure was for the delinquents to be transported in lorries to the street chosen for the execution, where they were made to get out of the lorries in groups of ten and were then shot. Such horrible scenes took place, however, that the procedure was later on simplified and the prisoners were shot one by one in the back of the head with revolvers as they got out of the lorries."

By way of a further check here is a message from Wormser and Maurel in the distinctly pro-rebel "Paris Soir," describing events in Seville on July 20th, 1936.

    A merciless 'purge' was carried out with hand grenades and knives. No quarter was given. . . . On the orders of Queipo de Llanoall the houses in the workingclass districts of Triana were obliged to keep their doors and windows wide open and all the males were carried off as prisoners.

    "The next day, at dawn, 150 people were shot; on the day after there was a second holocaust, accompanied by cries of 'Long Live Spain'."

This account shews that the memorandum of the Faculty of Law in no wise exaggerates, but rather falls short of the full truth.

    "In Algeciras," continues the memorandum, "the pregnant wife of a Trade Union official who had fled to Gibraltar was forced to drink a mixture of castor oil and petrol and then sent to join her husband. She died the following day. A large number of other women were forced to drink the same mixture. The Moorish troops amused' themselves by throwing bombs at bakers' shops where working-class women were standing in queues."

Here again some amplification is necessary. The author stayed in Algeciras on August 30th on the way from Seville  to Gibraltar. He was told that in this little port, where the Foreign Legion and Moors from Africa first touched Spanish soil, about 400 people had been murdered, among them a particularly large number of infants and children. The author was given by a customs official the following list of names of persons executed in his own circle of acquaintances.

    Don Lino García, Lieutenant-Colonel, Republican. Don Cayo Salvadores, Professor, a high official in the Educational Service, Chairman of the Republican Association, Freemason. Don Miguel Puyol Garcia, Journalist on the staff of "El Noticiero." Ricardo Núñez, customs official. N. Candel. Rubio, President of the local Red Cross. Romero, postal employee. Ortega, Socialist town councillor, telegraphist. Montesinos, customs official. Lucas, postal employee. Francisco Domínguez, Socialist town councillor. Fermín Sánchez, Socialist town councillor. Andrés Rodríguez Peña, schoolboy from La Linea.

The lawyers' report continues:

    "In Granada more than 5,000 workers were shot; similarly all the freemasons were arrested, after the card-index of the local lodge had been discovered. The prisoners were taken to the cemetery and compelled to dig a common grave for themselves, in which they were then shot.

    "Among those murdered was the poet García Lorca, the leading spirit of the younger generation of Spanish writers.

    "In the hamlets of Pedro Abad, El Carpio and Espejo, after the shooting qf the militiamen, their wives were violated and their breasts cut off.
 	

"In the little town of El Carpio, near Córdoba, which was recaptured by the Government troops, 200 workers had previously been shot in the cemetery; the members of their families were marched to the cemetery accompanied by the village drummer, to take their last farewell of their husbands; and when assembled there, they were shot down by machine-guns on the orders of a Captain of the Foreign Legion.

"Six members of the F.A.I. ( Iberian Anarchist Federation) were locked up by Phalangists in a hut, which was soaked with petrol and set alight. All that was found of them was their charred corpses.

"In Baena (Córdoba), according to the testimony of Antonio Moreno Benavente, of the Socialist Group, who managed to escape when the rebels took the town, the rebels shot everyone whose name appeared on the files of the workers' organizations. Their cruelty, as in other places, took the form of compelling the victims to dig their own graves. They took the presidents of the Socialist Group and the Socialist Youth Party, Gregorio Lonzo and Manuel Sevillano, and the Secretag of the Socialist Youth, Eduardo Cortés, tied them together and shot them, while the families of the three men were made to look on. On the 29th (of August) 296 out of the 375 members of the parties mentioned were shot. On the 9th of August, 30 workmen were forced to repair the fortifications of the historic castle of the town, and after foryeight hours of incessant work without rest and without food, during which they were urged on with whips, they were thrown from the castle rock into the depths below. Three of them had already gone mad.

The Civil Governor of Corunna, Pérez Carballo, was shot, together with his wife, a member of the Librarians' and Archivists' Association. The deputies Aliseda, Martin de Nicolás Dorado, Antonio Acuña and man), others were also executed. . . ."

Here too the objective recital of the bare facts by the Faculty of Law falls short of the grim reality. I am in possession of a more detailed account of the murder of the Governor of Corunna and his wife. The circumstances  	

were communicated by the Portuguese Consul in Corunna in a secret report to the Portuguese Foreign Minister, Avenol Montejo. This report came to the knowledge of the then Spanish Ambassador in Lisbon, Sánchez Albornoz, who communicated its contents to me.

The Civil Governor of Corunna was a Professor at the Madrid University, by name Pérez Carballo. Shortly before the insurrection broke out, he had married Juana Capdevielle, a Librarian. Carballo, with a handful of loyalists, defended the Prefecture building of Corunna for some hours, after which he was taken prisoner and shot.

His wife, who was pregnant, collapsed and was taken to the military hospital.

Since the leaders of the Phalanx, brought up as they were in religious traditions, shrank from shooting a pregnant woman, an abortion was performed on Juana Capdeviellein hospital. After a successful operation -- pregnancy had reached the fourth month -- she was carried on a stretcher to the cemetery, lowered into a newly-made grave, shot as she lay there and covered with earth. As a result of this scene one of the stretcher-bearers went insane and had to be put in an asylum.

Let us revert to the memorandum:

    "In Saragossa more than two thousand workers were killed. Dr. Alcouldo, a well-known philanthropist, who belonged to no party, was shot, and also his seventeen-year-old son. After the shooting of the boy they made the old man wait for several hours, on the grounds that he must be allowed time to mourn his son.

    "In Caspe (Aragon) a certain Captain Negrete gave orders for the mother, the sister (who was married to a Colonel of the Civil Guard), and the four-year-old daughter of la Torre, the Mayor who had been murdered some days previously, to be shot. When fighting broke out, the rebels fired from the balconies of the houses, using their hostages, the wives and children of the members of the Left as living barricades."
 Confirmatory evidence of these facts is supplied by the following item in the "Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant" of September 5th or 6th, 1936:

    "When the Government troops advanced, the Captain of the troops of Phalangists (in the district of Caspe, D.V.) made all the women and children form a chain, so that the militia would be forced to stop shooting, to avoid hitting innocent people. The gallant Captain held the little daughter of the Mayor by the hand

Thirty-five days after the outbreak of the insurrection, Jesús Monzón, leader of the People's Front in Navarra, succeeded in escaping from rebel territory. His account is of particular value, since it gives a clear picture of the terroristic methods employed in the very stronghold of the insurgents.

    On Sunday, July 18th, two aeroplanes flew from Madrid to Pamplona. Their pilots called on General Mola, the Commandant of the Garrison and conveyed to him a message from Franco with regard to the revolt in Morocco. An hour later the Commandant of the Civil Guard, a loyal Republican, was shot. The Civil Governor entered into negotiations with Mola and capitulated. He received permission to leave the town with his wife.

    "At the news that the Governor of the town had left, an enraged crowd collected in the market-place, thirsting for victims. The first to be killed were some Carlists who, owing to their red belts and ties, were taken for Marxists. The alignment of social forces in Navarra, Spain's Vendée, was still very unfavourable to the 'Frente Popular', the membership of which was only two or three thousand.

    "Anyone known to be a Left-Winger was killed; for example, Firco, Secretary of the Red Aid, Bengaray, President of the Republican Party, Cayuela, Secretary of the Socialist Party, Arris, Vice-President of the Left Republican Party, and Stella, Mayor of Pamplona, a
 	

Catholic and Basque Nationalist. The massacres continued the whole forenoon; nearly every teacher in the place was killed.

"Thus during the first two days of the insurrection five hundred people lost their lives in Pamplona. In the whole of Navarra there were over seven thousand victims.

"On Sunday, July 19th over a hundred wives of the murdered 'Left-wingers' were herded into the marketplace. There their heads were closely shaven, this being the greatest possible disgrace for a Spanish woman, and they were driven through the streets with placards hung round their necks on which was written 'I am the wife of a Bolshevik'. Others were put in the pillory and spat upon by the crowd."

From Burgos itself, the rebel capital, as good as no reliable news has filtered through. There are a number of rumours and atrocity stories, of which the following message from Emmanuel Bourcier in "l'Intransigeant" of August 20th, 1936, seems trustworthy.

    "In Burgos an officer suggested that we should visit the prison. 'How many prisoners have you there?' I asked. -- 'One thousand five hundred.' -- For some reason or other the visit to the prison did not take place that day. On the next day I mentioned the matter to another officer. 'You want to visit the prisoners?' he remarked casually. 'It would hardly be worth your while. There aren't many of them.' 'How many?' I asked. 'About twenty,' he replied.

    "He did not say what had become of the rest. Neither I nor my fellow-journalists dared to put any questions. . ." 1

In October, 1936, the Spanish Minister of the Interior in Madrid gave me an opportunity of speaking to a number
____________________
1 	Emmanuel Bourcier in "l'Intransigeant" of August 20th, 1936.


 	

of fugitives from various places in Northern Spain that were in rebel hands. I spoke in all to twenty-nine. Two of them seemed to me particularly reliable.

Esteban Liras, an agricultural labourer from the village of Peñafiel, told me:

    "In the village of Peñafiel, from which I come, the rebels arrested the Mayor, Celestino Velasco, and a great many others.

    "He was taken to the main square, where petrol was poured over him and he was set alight. Everyone was made to look on. The rebel Commandant made a speech in which he declared that this had been done to serve as an example to all those who opposed the restoration of Spain."

Jesús Oyarzun, a farmer from Segovia, told me:

    "In Segovia mass executions take place at night in the cemetery. A searchlight and two machine-guns are used. As a result of this summary procedure it often happens that men and women who are not yet dead but only wounded, are thrown into the mass grave. This story has got round amongst the prisoners and their fear is that they will be buried. alive; for we have all long since ceased to be afraid of death alone. I was repeatedly a witness of these nocturnal executions and again and again saw individuals -- usually women but sometimes even men who were about to be shot -- throw themselves at the feet of the Phalangist and Foreign Legionaries, clasp their arms and feet and implore them -- not to spare their lives, but to shoot straight or, if possible, to shoot them out of hand."

And so on, and so on, and so on.

The overwhelming majority of the facts quoted date from the first few days of the insurrection, and come from  	

districts which fell into the hands of the rebels before the beginning of the actual struggle. These were not reprisals carried out during the war, but terrorist measures, of a prophylactic, preventive nature.

The number of victims who were executed immediately after the beginning of the insurrection in order to inspire terror in the populace, has been estimated at about 50,000.

But this was only the beginning.
3. HELP FROM ABROAD

"A glance at the map will suffice to show what would be the strategic importance of Spain in a Franco-German war. . . ." This is the opening sentence of a memorandum of the German Press Director in Spain, Herr Reder, dated May, 1935. It provides the leitmotif of German foreign policy in Spain since the beginning of the National-Socialist régime.

On July 20th, 1936, the day on which Franco's insurrection was put down in Barcelona, the Republican Authorities seized a number of files and documents left behind by the leaders of the Nazi Federation in Spain when they fled the town. These documents contained valuable evidence of the part played by Germany in fomenting the rebellion. 1

An essential feature of German Mediterranean policy was that a pro-German régime, if possible of a dictatorial character, should be established in Spain and that pro-Nazi feeling should be fostered among the population.

Ever since 1934 Germany has been mobilising its forces to this end. Spain'has been flooded with Nazi propaganda material, smuggled in with the help of the German consuls in the various ports. In 1935 360,000 pesetas were expended by the German Propaganda Ministry and other departments in an effort to influence the Spanish Press, half of which sum consisted of bribes paid to Spanish journalists. Examination of the card indexes of the Iberian Nazi
____________________
1 	Cf. "The Nazi Conspiracy in Spain" Gollancz, London, 1937.

 organisation in Barcelona, which formed part of the confiscated material, revealed the fact that twenty-two Spanish newspapers were already regarded as pro-Hitler, among them the "A.B.C.", the most widely read paper in Spain. A whole string of organisations were engaged in propagating the doctrines of the Third Reich in Spain, and playing into each other's hands: German diplomatic representatives and consuls, branches of the NSDAP (National Socialist Party of Germany), the German Workers' Front, the Nazi Women's Organisation, the Fichtebund (another very patriotic organisation), German export firms and shipping companies, and above all, agents of the Gestapo, the German secret police. The 5,000 German Nazis in Spain were preparing the ground for Spanish Fascism.

A Reichswehr agent by the name of Gunz, who posed in Barcelona as the representative of a German industrial firm ("Windkraftzentrale Wilhelm Teubert, Berlin") cooperated with the German consuls in Seville and Alicante in organising secret deliveries of arms from Germany to the Spanish General Staff. Gunz was furthermore a connecting link with General Goded, the leader of the insurrection in Catalonia, and with General Milan d'Astray, founder of the Foreign Legion.

Gunz was only one of the many German intermediaries in Spain. Agents of the Reichswehr, experienced plotters and putschists, who had gained their experience through having fought in the Freikorps and taken part in underground activities against the Weimar Republic, were at work in all the important Spanish towns, in the Moroccan ports and in the Balearic Islands.

During February and March, 1936, General Sanjurjo, who had been chosen by the rebels to lead the insurrection, stayed in Berlin. While there, he visited the important armament centres, arranged for deliveries of German arms for the insurrection and took part in a number of political discussions. 
 In May, in Alicante and Lisbon, final arrangements were concluded between the rebel leaders and the authorised representatives of Germany and Italy.

There can be no doubt that Italian diplomatic and military activity played a no less effective part in paving the way for the Spanish insurrection. The Italians, however, were not so courteous as to leave behind compromising documents in Barcelona when the insurrection broke out, and Italy's part in the preparations for the insurrection is not known in such detail as is that of Germany.

All the better known and more striking, therefore, was the rôle played by Italy after the outbreak of the Civil War.

The military insurrection broke out on July 18th, 1936.

Two weeks later the rebels were in possession of a brandnew air-fleet of German and Italian planes, manned by German and Italian pilots, mechanics and instructors; Italian tanks were already in action at Badajoz; Irun was being bombarded by German heavy artillery. Together with war material, technicians also were pouring into the country, from tank mechanics to General Staff Officers. Italian regular troops landed in Majorca; and by the end of October this largest of the Balearic Islands had become virtually an Italian possession. Week by week the number of foreigners in the rebel army grew. In the middle of November, when the Civil War had lasted for four months, Frank L. Klukohn, the correspondent of the " New York Times", wrote:

    "The rebel army is not the same army that it was at the beginning of the rebellion. Italians, Moors and Germans are now the backbone of General Franco's army. . . ."

On November 18th, by which time the capital and three fifths of Spain were in the hands of the constitutionally elected Government, Germany and Italy proclaimed General Franco ruler of Spain.

During the winter months of 1936-7, Italy landed  85-90,000 infantry in Spain, while Germany took over various specialised technical functions in the rebel army: motor transport, tanks and anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft guns, coastal batteries, and heavy artillery.

On February 9th, 1937, the Italians captured Malaga.

On April 26th the Germans destroyed Guernica.

On May 31st, German warships bombarded Almería.

On June 27th, Hitler declared in a public speech in Wurzburg that Germany desired a victory for Franco because it needed Spanish steel for its heavy industry.

On June 26th, 1937, Mussolini declared through his mouthpiece the "Popolo d'Italia" that Italy had never been neutral on the Spanish question, and that a victory for Franco meant a victory for Italy.

In this way the two Dictatorships officially and expressly admitted their own share in the preparation and prosecution of the Spanish Civil War.

The statements made by the insurgent leaders were no less relevant and explicit. General Queipo de Llano openly stated to the author that his ideal was to establish a State after the German and Italian model. General Ponte Masso de Zúñiga, Commandant of the rebel forces in Saragossa declared (in a statement to the "Deutsches Nachrichtenburo" of September 21st, 1936):

    "Our aim is to create a new a Spain. Germany will provide us with a model. We not only admire Adolf Hitler, we reverence him.

Similar declarations have been made by nearly all the prominent rebel leaders. Finally General Cabanellas, who, as President of the Burgos Junta, acts as a kind of Prime Minister in rebel territory, made the following statement to the German Press ("Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro" of September 15th, 1936):

"General Cabanellas, President of the Burgos National Junta wishes to inform the German people that Spain DT  	

-- whatever may happen -- will never forget the kindly sympathy and the moral assistance rendered to it by Germany. . . . Your Ftihrer and your people are standing guard in the East. We shall stand guard in the West.

It was only bit by bit that the world learned these facts. But Franco and his friends knew, long before the 	

The political attitude of the Spanish Church has been determinned in no uncertain fashion by these secular interests; as a result the clergy in Spain has always pursued a strictly anti-liberal and anti-Republican policy, and has always championed the cause of absolute monarchy.

During the Great War the Spanish clergy was the chief exponent of pro-German propaganda, the object of which was to induce Spain to join the Central Powers.

In its espousal of the German cause the Spanish Church did not hesitate to employ the crudest methods of propaganda. France was represented as being a decadent nation, corrupted by "cocottes and anti-clericals "; England, the egoistic and perfidious Albion, as being the arch-enemy of Spain and of the Papacy. Germany, on the other hand, was a "chaste and healthy nation, which possessed an extraordinarily powerful army and fleet and whose friendship was likely to be in all circumstances of advantage to Spain, and to contribute to the welfare and the prosperity of the Catholic Church".

In this connection it is intriguing to note that all those groups who are to-day fighting on the side of the insurgents -- the officers' cliques, the Carlists, the clergy, the conservatives-were, even as far back as 1914, passionately Germanophile, whereas those strata of the population which to-day constitute the People's Front, from the Trades Unions to the Basque and Catalan Catholics, were supporters of the allies. The social antithesis between the dictatorial régime of the Kaiser and the Western democracies had its counterpart even at that time in a similar rift within the Spanish nation.

The post-war policy of the Spanish clergy followed the same course. The clerical Press indulged in apologia for, and passionate eulogies of, Italian Fascism and German National-Socialism. The clergy and clerical Press in Spain enthusiastically acclaimed the Italian campaign in Abyssinia, and even went so far as publicly to pour contempt on England's attitude on the Abyssinian question. y precipitated the insurrection, that they could count on events taking the course they did.

The world learned also, of course, about the French airplanes, Russian tanks and Mexican munitions supplied to the Spanish Government. Some of the reports in this connection were exaggerated, most of them were true. The simple truth is that the Non-Intervention agreement, which was based on the absurd assumption that the legal Government and the leaders of an open rebellion should be treated on equal terms, never really worked on either side. But the help from abroad which the Spanish Government received was only a fraction of what was due to it as the legal Government of a sovereign state with the full right to purchase war material -- the help from abroad which the rebels received in the preparation and carrying out of the insurrection, constituted, on the other hand, an open breach of international law, and arbitrary interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.

Equally marked is the difference in the composition of the foreign troops fighting in Spain. On the one side is the International Brigade, the strength of which, after a year of civil war, is estimated at 15,000. It consists of volunteers from all parts of the world, private individuals actuated by purely personal convictions. There have been men of this kind in Europe ever since the time of Lafayette and of Byron. More than half the International Brigade consists of political refugees from the Dictator States of

 Germany, Italy and Austria. The remaining large contingents are made up of Englishmen and Frenchmen who have managed to make their way to Spain despite the veto of their own Governments. As to Russia, there is no Russian infantry in Spain, but there is a number of Russian pilots and tank drivers -- estimated at about 200 -- who are in Spain with the tacit approval of their Government. They are the only foreigners on the Government side who cannot be regarded as purely volunteers in the above-mentioned sense. As regards leadership, on the Government side there are two foreign Generals: Kleber and Julius Deutsch. Both are political refugees, persecuted by their own Governments; Kleber a Communist from a Central-European country, Deutsch a Social-Democrat, a former Austrian Minister of War.
On the other side are the 8,000 to 10,000 military experts and technicians officially despatched by the Reichswehr and about 100,000 Italian infantry, commanded by Generals on the active list, and recruited from the local groups of the Fascio. Their casualty lists are published in the official organs of the Italian Government, and their deeds officially glorified by the Duce, while State pensions are awarded to the dependants of the fallen. In other words, they form an army of intervention, which is waging war against the Spanish Government -- a regular war with the only difference that, in accordance with the new practice in diplomacy, there has been no declaration of war. There was no declaration of war, either, in Abyssinia, nor in the case of the SinoJapanese war. To pretend that the Italians who co-operated in the taking of Malaga, Bilbao, Santander were private volunteers is as good as to pretend that Manchuria was conquered by private Japanese individuals and Abyssinia by private Italian individuals, -- an hypothesis which can scarcely be said to be altogether convincing.



CHAPTER V
THE CHURCH MILITANT
1. THE REPUBLICANS AND THE CHURCH

THE SPANISH WRITER Larra has very neatly summed up the mentality of the Spanish clergy in his famous work, Nadie pase sin hablar con el portero. Recherches asks the monk who has discovered a French book among the luggage of a traveller. "This fellow Recherches must certainly be a heretic. Into the fire with him!"

Reference has already been made in the introductory chapters to the singular development of the Catholic Church against the feudal social background of Spain. We have seen that in this socially backward country the development of the Church has also remained in a medieval stage. Whereas the confiscation of Church property was carried out in France in 1789 and to some extent in England under Henry VIII, and the separation of Church and State constitutes one of the features of the bourgeois era, in Spain the Church was, until the year 1936, one of the largest landowners in the country, and all demands for secular education were regarded until quite recently as treason and heresy. The temporal, material interests of the Spanish Church were as great as those of the French Church about the time of Richelieu, and those of the English Church up to the Reformation. We have further seen that the Spanish Church had such considerable sums invested in banking, industry, and even in large-scale commercial undertakings and shipping, that in order to safeguard these material interests it was obliged to meddle even in the petty intrigues of day-to-day political life.
 	

The political attitude of the Spanish Church has been determinned in no uncertain fashion by these secular interests; as a result the clergy in Spain has always pursued a strictly anti-liberal and anti-Republican policy, and has always championed the cause of absolute monarchy.

During the Great War the Spanish clergy was the chief exponent of pro-German propaganda, the object of which was to induce Spain to join the Central Powers.

In its espousal of the German cause the Spanish Church did not hesitate to employ the crudest methods of propaganda. France was represented as being a decadent nation, corrupted by "cocottes and anti-clericals "; England, the egoistic and perfidious Albion, as being the arch-enemy of Spain and of the Papacy. Germany, on the other hand, was a "chaste and healthy nation, which possessed an extraordinarily powerful army and fleet and whose friendship was likely to be in all circumstances of advantage to Spain, and to contribute to the welfare and the prosperity of the Catholic Church".

In this connection it is intriguing to note that all those groups who are to-day fighting on the side of the insurgents -- the officers' cliques, the Carlists, the clergy, the conservatives-were, even as far back as 1914, passionately Germanophile, whereas those strata of the population which to-day constitute the People's Front, from the Trades Unions to the Basque and Catalan Catholics, were supporters of the allies. The social antithesis between the dictatorial régime of the Kaiser and the Western democracies had its counterpart even at that time in a similar rift within the Spanish nation.

The post-war policy of the Spanish clergy followed the same course. The clerical Press indulged in apologia for, and passionate eulogies of, Italian Fascism and German National-Socialism. The clergy and clerical Press in Spain enthusiastically acclaimed the Italian campaign in Abyssinia, and even went so far as publicly to pour contempt on England's attitude on the Abyssinian question. 
 The Spanish clerical Press systematically avoided all reference to the persecution of German priests and pastors by the Nazis, or to the charges of immorality brought against the German Franciscan orders, which are regarded even by anti-clericals as utterly base. In this respect again the one exception was "Euzkadi", the organ of the Basque Catholics, whose peculiar position, already mentioned, was reflected in their attitude to foreign politics.

The Spanish clergy's immediate reaction to the proclamation of the Spanish Republic in the year 1931 was of a most violent and aggressive character. The archbishops and priests turned themselves into electioneering agents, issuing pastoral letters against the Republican parties, the workers' organizations and their leaders, and not scrupling to employ the most unsavoury methods in their campaign against the Republic. On the occasion of the 1931, 1933 and 1936 elections to the Cortes, Spaniards were privileged to witness the curious spectacle of nuns being marched in a body to the polling stations to vote against the Republic.

It is quite understandable that the provocative attitude of the clergy should have aroused violent anti-clerical feeling amongst the people. Their attitude, as has already been said, was not anti-religious, but anti-clerical. There are large sections of the people who, while to this very day imbued with strong traditional religious feelings, are yet opposed to the attitude of the Spanish Church. The Church has increasingly cut itself off from the masses. The Church dignitaries' identification of themselves with the ruling caste, their open resentment of even the most elementary demands of the poor peasants, their cold and calculated policy of encouraging the wealthier peasants, has increasingly intensified this process of isolation. Not only those workers who have come under Socialist or Syndicalist influence, but the illiterate rural population too, have turned away from the Church. 
 	

The tension between clergy and people showed itself as open enmity when, during the first few years of the Republic, Gil Robles founded his Acción Popular and thus created the new form of Spanish clerical fascism. The Gil Robles party aimed literally and explicitly at the restoration of the Middle Ages; one of its leaders even declaring, on the occasion of a meeting in November, 1935, that the only means of putting an end to the prevalence of Godless Socialism in Spain was to set up a new Inquisition.

The young Republic itself, on the other hand, was far less militant. It never attempted to introduce, let alone enforce, a single reform that had not long since been embodied in the constitutions of many of the democracies of Europe; such as, for example, the separation of Church and State, the confiscation of Church property, the right of divorce, secular education in the State schools, the dissolution of the Jesuit order. The Republic respected the Concordat concluded in 1851 with the Holy See; it allowed all the religious orders, with the exception of the Jesuits, to continue to exist on Spanish soil; it allowed the Church schools for adults and children to continue to exist as private institutions, it permitted all the churches to remain open, and made no attempt to interfere with practising Catholics in the observance of their religion.

The Spanish clergy, nevertheless, was not amenable to reason or prepared to appreciate tolerance. During the rising in Asturias in October, 1934, certain fanatical priests went so far as to denounce Socialist workers to López Ochoa's hangmen, and amongst other things to conscript seminarists for the firing squads.

The cynical frankness of the document issued by the rebel Command, quoted in Chapter IV of this book, instructing officers to use church towers as strategic points during street fighting, may astound the foreigner; it was no

 	

novelty to the Spaniard. Long before the outbreak of the insurrection it was known throughout the country that a number of fortress-like monasteries and churches in Spain were being mis-used by the Falange Española as depôts for arms and munitions, and that some priests even put these buildings at the disposal of the conspirators for their nocturnal meetings. As early as the elections of February, 1936, crowds were fired on from certain church towers. In Granada, during the victory celebrations of the People's Front, panic broke out when sharp-shooters fired on the crowd from house-tops and from a church tower in the centre of the town.

The reaction was inevitable. In the stormy months between February and the July insurrection, feeling ran high in a number of villages in Catalonia and Andalusia, and found expression in the burning of churches.

During the first few days of the insurrection churches were again used as strategic points. On July 19th, in Madrid, machine-guns were fired from the Salesian monastery in the Calle de Francisco Rodriguez (in the Cuatro Caminos district), from the Cathedral of Saint Isidor and from several priests' seminaries. After the fighting barricades of mattresses were found behind the windows of a convent in 7, Calle del Sacramento. Twenty-four hours before the insurrection the nuns had been evacuated, and a troop of Phalangists had taken up their quarters there. The same thing happened in other towns of Spain. In the smaller towns in Catalonia the inadequately armed or entirely unarmed Militiamen were frequently obliged to smoke out the machine-gun nests set up in the monasteries or to blast the walls with dynamite.

The results were what might have been expected. I have seen the ruins of churches and monasteries in Catalonia; the sight of them is staggering. I have also seen the churches in Madrid which were blown to bits by Francos artillery and aircraft and the hospitals that suffered a like fate; he sight was equally staggering. It is to be expected that the propagandists of both sides should make all the capital they can out of their demolished churches; in the Great War the Allies and the Central Powers also denounced each other for the destruction of church buildings. But that there should be journalists who never weary of returning again and again to the subject of the burned churches of Catalonia, expressing their horror at the effect, without mentioning the cause, is a thing I have never been able to understand.

In November, 1936, I had an opportunity of talking to Sergeant Fernando Ocier, of the Fifth Regiment of Militia, a former mechanic, at the Montana barracks. He described to me a scene which he had witnessed in Gerona on July 22nd.

    "After the suppression of the insurrection, he said, "the romanesque church in a suburb of Gerona was guarded by a detachment of Workers' Militia. About twenty Militiamen had posted themselves some in front of the church door, others at the corners of the streets in the neighbourhood. Since things were already quiet in the district, the Militiamen were taking things fairly easily, and were smoking and chatting with passers-by. About seven o'clock in the evening a machine-gun began to rattle unexpectedly from the church tower. A Militiaman and two passers-by were wounded: chaos ensued, and no one knew what was actually happening. The Militiamen took cover and began to fire at random at the tower, but their Commandant ordered them to stop, and sent a messenger to headquarters to ask for instructions. He was loath to attack the church on his own responsibility, for it had been placed under his protection. At length orders arrived from his superior officer to storm the church. In the meantime uninterrupted machine-gun fire had been kept up; I think the people in the church must have had automatic quick-firing      revolvers as well. A woman who was imprudent enough to go near was wounded in the head and died in the doorway of the house into which she was carried. A considerable crowd had gathered, which after this incident could scarcely be kept in check. When at last the Militiamen stormed the church, losing, incidentally, two men, the choir stalls burst into flames. In the course of the night the church was completely gutted. I don't know who set fire to it; the Militiamen arrested several suspects, but the feeling of the crowd easily explains the occurrence. I myself am a practising Catholic, and go to confession twice a month, but at that moment my sympathies were entirely with the crowd. When a man in a priest's robe shoots down a woman with a machinegun for no reason at all, then he is no longer a priest.

"Later on it turned out that three scoundrelly Phalangists had been shooting from the tower; the Sacristan had fed them with ammunition. After the insurrection the Phalangists had hidden in the church and on the wireless set. they had brought with them they had heard a rebel report that a fresh revolt had broken out in Barcelona. That is why they thought the moment had arrived to blaze away with their machine-gun. Two of the Phalangists were shot, the third is in the model prison, together with the Sacristan."

When civil war followed upon the insurrection, a number of priests in Spain developed a real crusading mania.

In Galicia the Bishop of Mondoñfiedo personally assumed the command of a rebel column which was sent to the relief of Oviedo before General Yagtie's column arrived on the scene. The Bishop of Mondofiedo was a prelate who had been notorious ever since the time of the Asturian rebellion, and his hostility towards the workers had led to grave conflicts within the ranks of the clergy itself. During the first few days of the Civil War the detachment that fought  	

under his command was composed entirely of priests and seminarists; a number of these bellicose priests were taken prisoner by Government troops.

The memorandum already referred to, drawn up by the Governing Body of the Madrid Faculty of Law, describes a positively fantastic scene in Pamplona, which shows how the darkest traditions of the Inquisition were being resurrected.

    "About this time (the end of August, 1936) a procession with the Archbishop of Toledo at its head marched through the streets of Pamplona carrying an image of the Madonna del Pilar. When it was over, the image of the Madonna was set up in the middle of the principal square of the town, and the clergy were drawn up round it in military formation; after a short ceremony, sixty prisoners were shot 'to the honour and glory of the Virgin' and the accompaniment of a peal of bells."

A letter written by a Catholic priest in Valladolid to an English colleague, the Rev. E. B. Short, of Bulwell ( Nottingham), breathes the same medieval spirit.

    ". . . Much is to be done," it concludes. "They will do it. Communism . . . is to be burnt from the land. No false sentimentality. They are offered the Sacrament and shot. If they blaspheme the Sacrament, they are flogged before being shot. More than 3,000 have been shot here. Many to follow. Each case is scrupulously examined."

This unparalleled effusion on the part of a priest appeared in the Nottingham Evening News of November 26th, 1936. Five days later the same paper published the following letter to the editor:
A PRIEST'S LETTER

    "SIR,

    "Regarding the disgraceful letter to the Bulwell priest from his co-religionist in Valladolid, Spain, published last
     Thursday, it is reminiscent of the dark ages, or at least some 400 years ago. When Philip and Mary of Spain, egged on by the bigoted and cruel priesthood, sent the Armada, with numerous priests replete with various instruments of torture on board for the spiritual uplift of our heretic forbears.

    "Happily, priests and torture machines found a watery grave in the great storms that decimated the Armada.

    "Doubtless had he lived at that time, the Valladolid priest would have been on board one of Philip's galleons in charge of his pet instrument of torture.

    "It is the same bigotry and hatred that burnt Ridley and Latimer at the stake.

    "It would be interesting to know if our Valladolid Christian is 'blessing' Franco's Moors as they pass by his seminary?

    "'Essex Farm,' Kimberley, Notts."

The indictment implicit in these documents is directed against only a section of the Spanish clergy, primarily against the hierarchy at the top, the Princes of the Church and the Bishops. A considerable section of the clergy with a social conscience was staunchly Republican.

In contrast to the grim scenes in Pamplona and Gerona, really touching incidents have from time to time been recorded which reveal how close is the tie binding simple village priests to their flocks. In the village of Calahorra, in the Ebro Valley, the priest, at the peril of his life, prevented a massacre of Republicans and Socialists. Similar incidents have been reported from several little towns in the Basque provinces.

The whole course of the Civil War has shown that the Spanish people can be relied upon to react instinctively to such differences of behaviour. Personalities such as those of the Archbishop of Toledo and the Bishop of Mondoñedo  have very gravely discredited the Spanish clergy in the eyes of the people; but in those cases where the priests have displayed human feeling and shown understanding of the misery of the peasants, both believers and nonbelievers have respected them, protected them, and treated them with that spontaneous warmth which is so typical of the simple Spaniard. There were little villages in Catalonia where the Anarchists protected the priest, whose church had been occupied against his will by the insurgents, against the fury of the crowd and got him away safely.

In Madrid a Militiaman of the Fifth Regiment showed me with pride a much-thumbed letter that he had been carrying about in his pocket.

    "We feel we must express our thanks to the Militia for its kind behaviour and the assistance it has given us. Permit us to express in particular our grateful admiration for the way in which your Militiamen have respected the art treasures and objects of value in our chapels.

    " SISTERVERONICA LA GASCA.

    "Capuchine Convent, Plaza de Conde Toreno, Madrid."

2. THE INSURGENTS AND THE CHURCH

    "When the troops of the Moorish Foreign Legion entered Pamplona, their black faces still blacker from the dust and heat of the battle of Badajoz, they were enthusiastically acclaimed. 'This is no civil war, Sir,' a woman exclaimed to me, 'it is a Crusade!'"

This excerpt from a message which appeared at the end of August in a Right-wing French newspaper, is significant as illustrating to what heights of inanity people are still able to attain in the twentieth century. For the lady in Pamplona who greeted the Foreign Legionaries and Moors as crusaders is by no means an exception. The rebel propagandists set themselves from the beginning to create in  	

Spain, as also abroad, an atmosphere reminiscent of the Crusades. They relied on the assumption that all faithful Catholics in Spain were in their camp. This assumption has proved to be erroneous.

On October 4th, 1936, six weeks after the outbreak of the insurrection, Don José Aguirre, the leader of the Basque Catholic Nationalist Party, made the following declaration before the assembled Cortes:

    I regard it as of particular importance at this moment to state emphatically that we of the Basque country are all with you against Fascism, and that we are quite especially so because of our undeviating Christian and Catholic principles. You can count on our being and remaining wholeheartedly and loyally on your side. Christ chose neither bayonet nor gun to win the world. A Christian movement such as ours vindicates social progress. For what other reason did Christ come into the world? We come from the people, we are the descendants of the people, just as Christ came from the people, and we are with Him and with the people in this fight. Our Church is the Church of the poor and humble."

Behind the man who made this profession of faith was ranged the majority of the Basque Catholics. With those of the Catalan Catholics who are loyal to the Government they amount to about one third of all the Catholics of Spain. The Basque country is, moreover, the one province of Spain which has adhered most strictly to the fundamental principles of the Christian faith. It is likewise the only province of Spain in which a Christian Social movement with its roots in the people can be compared for strength with the Socialist Workers' movement. The Basques of Bilbao were, even after a year of civil war, still more Catholic than "red ".

But they would have no truck with Crusader Franco. In Irun, San Sebastian, Durango, Guernica, Bilbao -- the self-styled Defender of the Faith has had to subdue the  Catholic provinces step by step after a hard struggle, and with the help of Mohammedan troops.

What is the deduction to be drawn from this? That "true" Catholics are against Franco and that only the bishops and the hypocritical land-owners are with him? Not at all. Such an assumption would be as erroneous as the assumption that all Catholics were on his side. In the Spanish question one must be on one's guard against broad generalizations. The truth of the matter is that the rift runs right through the Catholic Church. The great majority of the Catholics of Navarra have been without doubt behind Franco from the beginning; the great majority of the Basque Catholics have from the beginning been behind the Government.

The whole question hinges not on religious, but on political, doctrines. The contrast in the behaviour of the Basque and the Navarran Catholics is inexplicable as a theological problem, but perfectly explicable as a political problem.

The Basques have striven for centuries to attain linguistic, cultural and economic autonomy. History has taught them that the liberal democratic movement in Spain favours the cause of racial minorities and that movements aiming at absolute monarchy and dictatorship, on the other hand, are bitterly opposed to all demands for autonomy. The Catholics of the Basque country had everything to hope for from the Republic and nothing from the Generals. Franco's first act after the taking of Bilbao was to abolish Basque fiscal autonomy.

In Navarra the position was exactly the reverse. The Pyrenean valleys of Navarra had remained a stronghold of medieval tradition; it was Spain's Vendée and the birthplace of the Carlist movement. In Navarra Catholicism was synonymous with the political programme of absolute monarchy, with the retention of patriarchal, feudal conditions in agriculture. 
 The Catholicism of the Basque country, a predominantly industrial province, professed the faith of the "Church of the poor and humble", the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount, of the "camel and the needle's eye".

The Catholicism of Navarra professed the faith of the Church of Torquemada, of the quarrelsome and worldly Popes of the Middle Ages, of the Church Militant.

It is one of the fundamental untruths of the rebel propaganda to designate this war a religious war. One need not be an orthodox Christian to consider it blasphemy for ambitious Generals to use God as an excuse for their insurrection. The struggle between feudalism and democracy in Spain has as little to do with religion as had those picture postcards in 1914 which portrayed God as blessing a French mine-layer or a German submarine, as the case might be.

The crusading spirit of the rebel Generals only persists so long as believers and priests identify themselves with the purely political aims of the insurrection. The moment that priests, and even bishops, cease to see eye to eye with these political aims they are treated as enemies, and either imprisoned or shot. A well-known case in point is that of the Bishop of Vitoria and Canon Don Lucius, who, at the beginning of the struggle in the Basque country, were arrested by Carlists together with thirteen pupils of the Priests' Seminary and shot.

The number of Catholic priests executed by the rebels has been computed at over 150.

The Protestants in rebel territory were given a particularly bad time.

The Protestants form a small, but socially far from unimportant, minority in Spain, since their adherents are drawn for the most part from the educated middle classes.

 The liberal and strongly social character of the Protestant Minority Church in Spain made it inevitable that members of the Evangelical community should be regarded from the first as suspect and as enemies of the Burgos régime.

Here is an extract from a document in my possession which is based on an investigation conducted by the Protestant community in Madrid:

    "The members of the Protestant Faith in Madrid, who are unconnected with any political party, deem it their duty to make known to the public the following facts with regard to the persecution and murder of dignitaries and members of the Lutheran Church by Spanish Fascists.

    "In Granada the Protestant pastors José and García Fernández and Salvador Iñiguez, together with the wife of the former, were shot. Another dignitary of the Lutheran Church, Samuel Palonuque, is, if he is yet alive, in prison.

    In Córdoba Pastor Antonio García was expelled; before he had time to leave the town all his furniture was removed by Carlists, who threatened to kill him. Antonio García and his wife fled that same night to Gibraltar without any luggage and completely without resources.

    "In San Fernando Pastor Miguel Blanco was shot under martial law in the presence of his mother and a number of members of the Protestant Church 'to serve as an example to heretics', it was stated in the official report. It is feared that his fellow Pastor Francisco López of Puerto Real has met with a like fate.

    "Since the beginning of August Carlos Linean, of the village of Miada near Badajoz, and Luis Cabrera, the Protestant teacher of the neighbouring village of Santa Amalia, have disappeared and nothing further has been heard of them.

    "In Ibahernando, in the Province of Cáceres, a number
     ofProtestants were shot, among them the well-known notable Francisco Tirado.

    "In Santa Amalia the wife of a Protestant agricultural labourer was saturated in petrol and set alight, and then, after being terribly burned, she was beheaded with an axe."

I received a typed copy of this document at the beginning of November, 1936, in Madrid. The copy bore neither signature nor date and the incidents related seemed to me so crude that at first I doubted the authenticity of the document. I made enquiries and gained possession of papers which confirm the allegations in the report, among them a letter written by Pastor Elías Araújo of the Protestant Mission in Madrid to Professor F. J. Paul of Belfast. The letter contains the text of the first report from Antonio Garcia, the Pastor mentioned in paragraph three of the above document. He confirms among other things the shooting of Pastor Miguel Blanco in San Fernando, as well as that of Pastor Iñiguez of Granada and of his predecessor Garcia Fernández (see paragraph 2 of the document). Only Samuel Palonuque, thanks to the adroit, intervention of his wife, escaped abroad after five days of imprisonment.

Further material regarding the persecution of Protestants in rebel territory was published by Dr. Inge at the end of November in the "Spectator" and the " Church of England Newspaper. Dr. Inge related, among other things, that the Protestant Pastor of Salamanca, his wife and two children were executed as "heretics" by the rebels and that the Protestant Pastor of Valladolid was burned alive in gaol. The French Protestant newspaper, " Evangile et Liberté," writing of this ghastly revelation, expressed the fear that:

    ". . . the overthrow of the constitutionally elected Republican Government would also mean the downfall      of Spanish Protestantism, as the result of a fresh wave of persecution of Protestants and the re-introduction of auto-da-fés, with the difference that instead of the formal ceremonial of the stake and the death-masks of former times the far more drastic and summary firing squads and the executioner's axe would be brought into play.

So much for the treatment of Protestants by the rebels. That their treatments of the Jews is even worse goes without saying. The rebel Press is particularly fond of referring in catch-words, strictly after the German pattern, to "Jews, Freemasons and Marxists ", who must be extirpated for the good of Spain. In Spanish Morocco, at the beginning of the insurrection, the Jewish communities were forced to contribute to Franco's war chest, and prominent Jewish citizens were arrested and shot. In Tangier Phalangists posted up anti-Semitic notices, in which the Mohammedans were adjured "to declare war against Jews and Communists". Finally, in Tetuan, in the months of July and August, 1936, regular pogroms were carried out in the Jewish districts, the organized origin of which was untraceable. Similarly popular editions of the "Elders of Zion" and translations of German anti-Semitic literature were widely disseminated.

Thus the problem of Franco's position with regard to religion may be summed up as follows:

Franco does not represent the interests of believers as against the forces that threaten religion. He represents the interests of that section of the Catholic population which is Catholic and reactionary. Catholics with Republican sympathies are persecuted by him with the same ruthlessness as are Republicans who profess no religion. The Protestants who, owing to their social status, are almost  entirely Republican, are treated as out-and-out enemies, as are the Jews.

The analogy with the attitude of the State to the Church under other dictatorships is unmistakable. In Germany, too, the National-Socialists, before seizing power, maintained that they were the defenders of the Faith and of culture against the godless Weimar Republic; scarcely had they attained power than they began to persecute that section of the Catholic and Protestant Church which did not submit to the dictates of worldly tyrants and refused to identify themselves with their methods and political aims. In Germany, too, disagreements and splits occurred within the Protestant and Catholic Churches for purely worldly, political reasons; there were Catholic Cardinals and Protestant Bishops who upheld the ancient traditions of Christendom and with exemplary courage entered the lists against tyranny; and there were also dignitaries of the Church who became the willing tools of that same tyranny. It would appear that wherever modern dictatorships of the Fascist type come to power, the Church has to undergo a historical trial similar to that which it underwent in the early Middle Ages when the power of the absolute monarchies was being consolidated -- a trial leading to the same internal divisions and dissensions. 



 CHAPTER VI PROPAGANDA  1

    " . . . The very magnitude of a lie endows it with a certain element of credibility, for the broad masses of the people are at bottom more liable to be corrupted than to be consciously and deliberately bad; thus the very naïvité of their mentality makes them fall more easily victim to a great lie than a small one, since they themselves may sometimes lie on a small scale, but would be very much ashamed of lying on a grand scale." 2

1. POLITICAL PROPAGANDA.

Propaganda has from the start played a very big part in the Spanish Civil War; and propaganda for foreign consumption has been almost of more importance for both sides than propaganda for home consumption.

Roughly there are three arguments of a political nature which Franco has employed in his propaganda abroad.

Varying stress is laid on each of these according to the country for which it is intended. These arguments are:

1. The Generals began the Civil War because the Communists had established a reign of terror in Madrid. 2. The Generals began the Civil War because the Communists were planning to establish a reign of terror in Madrid. 3. It was not the Generals but the Madrid Government that began the Civil War.

In England and France the rebel propaganda mainly turns on arguments I and 2; i.e., the Generals embarked on the insurrection in order to save Spain from Communism. For consumption within the Third Reich a much simpler line is taken; i.e., the Generals did not revolt at all.
____________________
1 	All italics used in the quotations in this chapter are the author's.
2 	Adolf Hitler, "My Struggle".

 	

No reference is made to the fact of the military insurrection on July 18th; instead it is simply stated that the Spanish Government began the Civil War.

Incredible as it may sound, this is the official German version. It can be found in a brochure, published in November, 1936, by the Eher Verlag, Munich, official publishers to the National Socialist Party. (Amongst other books published by this firm is Hitler "Mein Kampf"; Adolf Hitler is a partner in the firm, and is responsible for its publications not only in his political capacity but as a private individual.) The title of the brochure is "Moscow, the Hangman of Spain".

On page 11 of this brochure the outbreak of the Civil War in Madrid on July 19th is described as follows:

    "Strange things are happening in Madrid. Streets are cordoned off, traffic is at a standstill, men in completely unmilitary clothing, as well as young people and women, have posted themselves at the street corners. Shots ring out.

    Only the district in the neighbourhood of the barracks of Madrid is suspiciously quiet. It is considered expedient for the Workers' Government to take control of them. In the early hours of July 20th the cannonade begins. There is a hail of shells, and heavy bombs are rained on the barracks in the suburb of Arguelles. The aggressors bring up machine-guns to prevent all attempts at sorties. After four hours the garrison, half blown to bits, hoists the white flag on the Montana barracks. . . ."

This is -- I must emphasize it once again -- the official account, published by the official Party publishers, of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

The following passage on page 13 serves to amplify the one quoted above:

    "In La Linea near Madrid violent battles are raging. The streets are heaped with corpses. General Pogas,
     the new Minister of the Interior, has taken the step of' arming the civil population. Is Malaga in flames? A huge column of smoke is reported to have been seen over the town. In La Linea corpses are taken off in lorries, heaped up somewhere in sacrificial piles, soaked in petrol and consumed by the flames. When and where has anything like this ever happened, except in Bolshevik Russia?

One really has to read this passage twice to take it in. "La Linea near Madrid" is three hundred miles from Madrid as the crow flies. It is only half a mile from Gibraltar. It is, as a matter of fact, the coastal town at which Franco's Moroccan troops first disembarked. On July 19th, the date on which "corpses were taken off on lorries", it was already in rebel hands.

And so the document goes on, page after page; it is astonishing what the German official propagandists have the effrontery to put before the reader, secure in the fact that the banning of foreign newspapers deprives him of all opportunity of checking up on their statements.

The propaganda designed for France and England is not quite so crude in its methods. The fact that the Generals began the Civil War is, as far as possible, glossed over, but it is not openly denied. The main emphasis is laid, as has been said, on the assertion that Franco saved Spain from Communism and on the allegation either that the Communists were already masters of Spain before the revolt, or else that they were planning an insurrection and that Franco stole a march on them at the eleventh hour. Sometimes we find both these assertions existing side by side, without regard for the inherent logical contradiction. On page 26 of the famous Burgos "Red and Yellow Book" 1 the standard work of the rebel propagandists, it is stated:
____________________
1 	A Preliminary Official Report on Communist Atrocities in Southern Spain. Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1936. (All quotations are taken verbatim.)

     "On July 18th General Franco and other leaders declared the National Revolt to free Spain from the Communist domination.

And on page 27:

    "It is thus established by documentary evidence that this great national movement was begun only just in time to forestall the Communist Revolution."

It is impossible to comprehend why the Communists, if they were already masters of Spain, should have planned a revolution. But this is not the main point. The chief question is: how strong, in fact, was Communist influence in Spain before the Civil War?

As we have seen in an earlier chapter of this book, a Right Government was in the saddle in Spain right up to the elections of February 16th, 1936. On that day, despite the considerable handicap from which it suffered at the ballot-box, the Frente Popular, or coalition of Left parties, won a clear majority of the total votes and an even greater majority of the parliamentary seats.

"Victory of Communism in Spain", cried the propagandists of the reaction. Was it a victory for the Communists?

The distribution of seats within the Frente Popular was as follows:
PEOPLE'S FRONT, February 1936
	Parties 	
Republican Left 	84
Republican Union 	37
Republican Left Catalonia 	36
Basque National Party 	10
Socialist Party 	89
Communist Party 	16
Other Left Parties 	5
	                ________
	      Total 	277





 This means that the progressive centre parties obtained in all 167 seats, the Socialists 89, the Communists 16.

The Communists, it will thus be seen, were by far the weakest party.

Correspondingly they had neither a portfolio nor any influence worth mentioning in the governments that were formed between the elections in February and the outbreak of the Civil War in July. Their meetings were repeatedly banned, their papers censored. In Chapter IV I quoted an article from the "Mundo Obrero", the official organ of the Communists, giving warning of the danger of a military insurrection and demanding the republicanization of the army. This article was banned by the censor, and Franco remained a General.

It was not until four months after the outbreak of the Civil War that for the first time two Communists joined Caballero's Government. They held the posts of Minister of Education and Minister of Agriculture. Their inclusion in the Government came about not by virtue of any numerical claim, but because the Republic, engaged as it was in a life and death struggle, was forced to form a war cabinet in which all parties had to share the responsibility. It goes without saying that in the later phases of the Civil War the Communists considerably increased in strength -- periods of crisis always lead to a growth of the more extreme parties. This, however, was not the cause, but a consequence of Franco's insurrection.

So much for the numerical strength of the Communists in Spain before the revolt. Now a few words with regard to their policy.

After the establishment of a dictatorship in Germany  in March, 1933, the very existence of the Soviet Union depended to a certain extent on a military pact with France and the attitude of the Western democracies in the event of war. Revolutionary disturbances in the West might, as things were, merely weaken the military strength of the allied democracies, embarrass their governments and help those movements which aimed at dictatorship -- such as those of Colonel de La Rocque in France, Gil Robles in Spain, Degrelle in Belgium and so on -- to attain power. Should any of these movements gain a victory the immediate result in the country concerned would be a change to a proHitler and anti-Russian orientation. The preservation of constitutional democracy in the Western countries therefore became of vital interest to Soviet Russia -- and the safeguarding of Soviet Russia, as the Socialist fatherland, was, said the Communists, of paramount importance to Socialists everywhere.

The order of the day for the Communists was, therefore, the preservation of democracy in those countries in which it might yet be saved, and the prevention of dictatorship by a very broad and very elastic policy of coalition with other democratic parties. This policy found expression in support for the so-called People's Front movements which were inaugurated in France and Spain, and the germs of which have recently made their appearance in England.

This guiding line was as binding for the policy of the Communists in Spain as in every other country. They had sixteen seats in the Cortes out of a total of four hundred and seventy-three; any attempt to seize power in such circumstances would have been sheer madness and could have had only one result: that of assisting the reactionaries to attain power. The official thesis of the Spanish Communist Party was, consequently, that "the order of the day was not proletarian revolution but the establishment of a democratic State on the Western model." 
 In the first interview given by Azaña after the victory of the Frente Popular he stated (Chapter V) : "No dangerous innovations. We are moderates. . . ." The Communists agreed with him. They had sixteen seats in the Cortes and had been given their marching orders.

In spite of all this Franco maintains that the Communists were planning an insurrection, but were not given time to carry it out.

In the "Red and Yellow Book" already mentioned, the relevant passages run as follows (pp. 25 and 26):

"The Communist Plot.

    "All this time there had been repeated and wellfounded rumours that the Communists had planned to seize power and declare a Spanish Soviet State. That the Communist risings were, in fact, part of a carefully prepared plan is incontrovertibly proved by the synchronization of the local outbreaks and the similarity of the methods employed, as can be seen from the accounts in this book. No haphazard risings could have been so systematic. The Communist rising was originally timed for some date between 3rd of May and June 29th, but was subsequently postponed until 29th or 30th July. This gave the Right an opportunity which they were swift to seize. . . .

    "On July 18th General Franco and other leaders declared the National revolt to free Spain from the Communist domination. Secret orders issued by Communist headquarters for the formation of a National Soviet have been discovered and they give full details of the procedure which was to be followed. After the closing of the frontiers and ports, 'the execution of all those who appear on the black lists' and the 'elimination'
     of political and military persons likely to play any part in a counter-revolution was to be at once commenced.

    "The National troops, described as 'Rebels' or 'Insurgents' have been, and are to-day, fighting against the Communists and Anarchists who seized power from the weak and effete Government of those Prime Ministers appointed by President Azaña.

    "If further evidence of the complicity of the Madrid Government were necessary the appointment of Señor Largo Caballero provides it, as he was openly designated as the President of the National Soviet of Spain. Moreover, on the outbreak of hostilities, the Madrid Government, within a few days, issued arms indiscriminately to criminals released from jail, the lowest scum of the slums, to youths and even to children.

    "An interesting sidelight on the Communist plan was the provision made for a pretended 'Fascist' attack on the headquarters of the C.N.T. as soon as the movement was begun. (' Inmediatamente se simulará una agresión fascista al Centro de la C.N.T.')

    "It is thus established by documentary evidence that this great national movement was begun only just in time to forestall the Communist Revolution organized months before to establish a Soviet in Spain at the end of July."

The assertion as to the alleged planning of a Communist insurrection is based, as we see, on two points.

In the first place on the "synchronization of the local outbreaks and the similarity of the methods employed". What kind of outbreaks were these?

The book enumerates as evidence seventeen little Andalusian villages in which, it is alleged, atrocities were committed. For the moment we shall assume that all the data in the book are correct and reproduce in the following table the dates which the book gives for the outbreak of these excesses: 

 	
I. 	ARAHAL 	on July 19th.
II. 	AZNALCOLLAR 	" July 18th.
III. 	LA CAMPANA 	" July 13th.
IV. 	CAMPILLO 	" July 20th.
V. 	CARMONA 	as soon as it became
known that the move-
ment to save Spain
had begun in Seville.
VI. 	CAZALLA 	on July 18th.
VII. 	CONSTANTINA 	" July 18th.
VIII. 	HUELVA 	" July 19th.
IX. 	LORA DEL RIO 	" July 23rd.
X. 	MOGUER 	" July 2nd.
XI. 	MORON 	" July 18th.
XII. 	PALMA DEL CONDADO 	" July 18th.
XIII. 	PALMA DEL RIO 	" July 18th
XIV. 	POSADAS 	" July 18th.
XV. 	PUENTE GENIL 	" July 24th.
XVI. 	UTRERA 	" August 17th or 18th
XVII. 	BAENA 	" July 18th.

Now Franco's revolt broke out on the night of July 17th. If the events in these seventeen isolated Andalusian villages prove anything at all, it is that the military revolt aroused the most violent opposition among the Andalusian peasants and that as a direct reaction to it there was an outbreak of murders and homicidal attacks.

What else had the Generals expected?

But that the natural reaction of the population should have been used subsequently as an excuse for the insurrection, that effect should have been confused with cause, was an extremely unfair piece of demagogy. It requires, indeed, a good deal of effrontery to adduce the "synchronisation of the local outbreaks" as "incontrovertible proof of a planned Communist: rising", when the dates clearly show that the excesses can be traced to a common  and simultaneous origin, namely, the military insurrection itself.

The formula applied in this case is a classic one. It is, in effect: "In the first place the others began the whole thing, and in the second place we only began it in order to forestall them."

Now as to proof No. 2. The book asserts that "secret orders for the formation of a National Soviet" were discovered, and treats us to a few sensational quotations.

If such a document had really existed, Franco would have scored a moral victory. The publication of this document would have been a decisive blow to the Government cause. The book in which this document is discussed bears these words on the back of the title page: "First Printed -- October 1936". I am writing these lines on July 17th, 1937, the anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War, and to this day Franco has not published the document.

The alleged quotations mentioned above make no reference to the origin, date or name of the authors of the alleged documents. All of which is, to put it mildly, naïve.

But it is precisely in this exploitation of the naïve mentality of the people that lies the strength of the propaganda employed by dictators and would-be dictators. The national coup d'état, carried out just in time to prevent a Communist rising, has a suspiciously familiar ring about it. Hitler affirmed that he only seized power in Germany because he had discovered documents relating to a Communist plan for a rising, and the naïve German people believed him. To this very day he has not published these documents, and still the naïve believe him. He was forced to let most of the accused in the Reichstag Fire Trial be acquitted -- and still the naïve believe him.

The Greek Dictator Metaxas asserted after his military insurrection of August 4th, 1936, that he had only seized power because the Communists were planning a rising. The Communists in Greece were an insignificant little  group, and the documents on which his assertions were based have not been published to this day.

Finally Franco arrives on the, scene, precipitates a revolt and produces the same formula like a rabbit from a tophat: he has only begun the revolt in order to forestall the Communists; and the naïve masses are still not weary of believing this story. You have only to utter the magic word "Moscow" and they become just like children threatened with a bogey-man.

I fancy that if there were no Communists the dictators would have had to invent them.

This dictum must be taken more or less literally. Since there were only sixteen Communists in the Cortes, and since the Communist Party was numerically too weak to provide an excuse for the revolt, the rebel propagandists availed themselves of the crude but effective subterfuge of simply christening that two-thirds of the Spanish people which stood by the Government "Communists" -- and that, too, with astonishing frankness. On page 16 of the Burgos Book we read:

"Organizations of the Left.

    "The extremist organizations of the Left, which were openly Communist are:

    The Socialists -- known as U.G.T. ( Union General de Traba adores, Union of Workers). Syndicalists or Anarchist-Commuists -- known as C.N.T. ( Confederacion National de Trabajadores, National Confederation of Workers).

    Anarchists -- F. A. I. ( Federacion Anarquista Ibérica, Iberian Anarchist Federation).

    (Note: -- The word 'Communism' is hereafter used to denominate the efforts and policies of these parties.)"

Now in the first place "The Socialists" are not the U.G.T. The Socialists-that is, the Labour Party of Spain -- are called P.S.O.E. (Partido Socialista Obrero Español).  The U.G.T., on the other hand, is not a party, but a Trades Union organization. It corresponds roughly to the English Trades Union Congress.

It is astonishing to find that the Committee of Enquiry set up by the National Government, to which the authorship of the book is attributed, is not even conversant with political parties in Spain.

Still more astonishing is the fact that it has forgotten to include amongst these "open Communist parties" the P.C.E., the Communist Party of Spain itself.

The assertion that all these organizations "are openly Communist" would, translated into English terms, be tantamount to saying that Sir Walter Citrine and Major Attlee were Communists.

But even these bounds are overstepped. The catchword, the "Bolshevist Government in Valencia", a Government which, it so happens, includes the Liberal Parties of the Centre, would, translated into English terms, be equivalent to stating that not only Citrine, Lansbury and Attlee, but Lloyd George, Sir Archibald Sinclair and the late Lord Snowden were also "Reds" and "Bolsheviks".

One is in danger of lapsing into melancholia in face of a world that is prepared to swallow such inanities.
ATROCITY PROPAGANDA

I do not believe it to be true that demagogues lie for temperamental reasons. Even the most notorious demagogue dislikes consciously making untrue assertions, and only does so when he has no option but to do so.

Nor do I believe that Franco's propagandists resort to such methods out of sheer joie de vivre. They have no option.

The rebels are fighting for a military dictatorship, for a corporate State, for clericalism -- causes which are very unpopular in France and England. They are fighting, furthermore, against a liberal, democratic Republic, the structure, constitution and political programme of which  have been directly modelled on those of the Western democracies; they are fighting against such things as freedom of assembly, of the Press and of opinion, agrarian reform, the right to form Trades Unions, universal suffrage -- all of which things are part of the A B C of most Western Europeans.

Genuine political arguments, therefore, with the exception of the Communist bogey, were of no use as propaganda to Franco in Western Europe. So he deliberately chose a form of propaganda that from the time of the ritual murder myths of the Middle Ages until the time of the Reichstag fire and the Abyssinian campaign has always proved an unfailing standby whenever it has been essential to avoid awkward political discussions and to justify one's own terroristic acts by pointing to those of the other side: what has come to be known as atrocity propaganda.

This was intended specially for English consumption. For, after all, what had Franco to offer that was likely to be attractive to England? Was he to tell the English frankly that he had launched his revolt because he was in favour of dictatorship and opposed to Parliamentarism? He preferred to tell them stories of children crucified and monks burnt alive.

Was he to tell them that his patriotism consisted in letting the cities of his native land be conquered for him by Italian troops, in hounding on African natives against his own compatriots? He preferred to tell them stories of virgins violated and monasteries in flames.

Was he to tell them that he had handed over the Balearics, the property of his dearly-beloved country, to the Italians as the price for their support of his ambitious plans; that he had sent for German experts to encircle Gibraltar with batteries of long-range guns, presumably so as to safeguard the British sea route to the Dominions?

He preferred to tell them stories of mangled corpses, of the putting-out of eyes, and of Red cannibalism. This  	

kind of propaganda is always more effective and sensational and saves one the necessity of logical argument.

It would, of course, be absurd to deny that atrocities have been committed on the Government side. The Spaniards show an undeniable tendency towards cruelty; the celebrating of bull fights as national festivals is hardly an engaging trait in the character of a people. I am convinced that enough acts of brutality have been committed on both sides to satisfy Europe's demand for horrors for the next hundred years. The "black-is-black" and "whiteis-white" technique of many propagandists of the Left -Fascist devils on the one hand, democratic angels on the wother -- is just as absurd as the "red-and-white" technique of the rebel propagandists. The stories of the burning of churches in Barcelona and the villages of Andalusia are no fable; I have seen such churches with my own eyes. A good many of them served as hiding-places for rebels and priests armed with rifles. Others, however, did not, and were burned nevertheless.

Let me repeat: only demagogues and abstract doctrinaires with no first-hand experience of the Civil War can deny that a great number of abominable acts have been committed on both sides. But the essential difference lies in whether these crimes are spontaneous and sporadic acts of indiscipline-or part of a systematic policy of Terror and committed with the full knowledge and cn the orders of the responsible authorities.

And herein indeed lies the fundamental difference in the behaviour of the two protagonists.

In Chapter IV I have attempted to show, by means of documentary evidence, that the mutinous Generals regarded Terror applied to the civilian population as an integral part of their plan for an insurrection. Not out of private malevolence or sadism; but because they were planning the establishment of a military dictatorship relying for support on only a very restricted stratum of the population,  and because Terror is an indispensable function of every military dictatorship. The majority of the crimes that I have instanced in the foregoing chapters were committed partly on the direct orders of responsible officers and partly, as in the case of the wholesale execution of prisoners, on the direct orders of the Generalissimo himself (who, according to the constitution of the Burgos Junta, has ultimate power of life and death over prisoners).

On the other hand, the Republican Government of Cesares Quiroga, a Liberal, was taken completely unawares by the insurrection of July 17th. It had no troops worth mentioning for the defence of its legal authority and was faced with the necessity of hurriedly arming the Citizens' Defence Units and the Workers' Militia, if it did not wish passively to submit to the mutinous Generals. The inevitable consequence of this was that arms found their way into the hands of a number of irresponsible elements, some of them from the ranks of the Anarchists, others mere hooligans. During the first few days after the outbreak of the insurrection, when there was street fighting in nearly all of the Spanish towns, the Government was not in complete control of the masses, which only very slowly and over a period of many months were transformed into a disciplined army.

The most difficult task of all was to restrain the peasants in the outlying districts of Andalusia and Estramadura, who were in a state of raging fury.

It was Franco's clique that by its revolt had unleashed this storm. Aptly they might say with Mark Antony, "Mischief, thou art afoot, Take thou what course thou wilt." It, and it alone, bears the responsibility before history for all the mischief that ensued.

Ninety per cent of all the excesses committed by the armed forces of the Government were committed during this period of chaos and confusion, which lasted no longer than from two to three days in the large towns, and from  eight to ten in the villages. With astounding speed the Government made itself master of the situation in those districts where the revolt was stemmed. Under martial law the death penalty was instituted for all looting and molestation of private individuals. The officers of the Militia were made personally responsible for the fate of their prisoners of war. The undisciplined carnage of the first few days became a regular Civil War.

The three to four hundred thousand men who were fighting for the legal Republic on the various fronts did not constitute an army. They were armed civilians: merchants, students, artisans, workers, employees, doctors, peasants. They came fresh from civilian life. They lacked the ruthlessness towards civilians of the professional soldier. They lacked the African ferocity of the Moors. They lacked the notorious unscrupulousness of the Foreign Legionaries. Soldierly cruelty was as little a part of their character as were other soldierly qualities. They were humane and not soldierly, and they lost one battle after another. They had neither the inclination nor the need to terrorise the population, to make warning examples, to safeguard the territory behind the lines by the application of methods of Terror. For they were literally of the people; they enjoyed the confidence and sympathy of the civilian population, whose life they had shared but the day before and whose sympathies they could but alienate by terrorist acts.

Therein lies the fundamental difference between the behaviour of the two armies. Just as fundamentally different was the attitude of the two Commands. The very principles which the Madrid Government was upholding -- democracy, humanitarianism, liberalism -- are terms of derision in the mouths of Generals in backward, feudal countries. One could accuse these newly-fledged ministers of almost every failing -- of being amateur, dilettante, irresolute, timid, incompetent; of being blind and of having allowed themselves to be taken unawares; of believing in compromise  	

at the very moment when the guns of the Generals were being trained on them. But the very idea that a Caballero, an Azaña, a del Vayo or a Prieto could have displayed tendencies towards terrorism and cruelty, will seem to anyone with even a slight knowledge of Spain a very poor joke.

How much truth is there, then, in the atrocity stories disseminated without restraint by rebel propagandists and their foreign supporters?

It is true that in the first few undisciplined days after the revolt the embittered masses set fire to churches, burned palaces, went in for lynch law.

It is untrue that after this period acts of cruelty were perpetrated to any great extent, or systematically, against the civilian population or prisoners of war.

And what of the execution of the hostages of Irun?

And the torturing of prisoners of war, the crucifixion of officers, the burning alive, castrating and crippling of true patriots?

Lies -- all of it.

This cannot be proved in every case. But it can be proved in a number of typical instances.

One of the most effective propaganda campaigns launched by the rebels was that relating to the alleged shooting of hostages by the Madrid Government; and of all these stories of the maltreatment of hostages the most impressive was that foisted on the world in the early days of September, 1936: the famous myth of the hostages in Fort Guadaloupe during the Siege of Irun.

The affair caused a particular stir in France, because the alleged happenings took place in the immediate vicinity of the French frontier. I propose, therefore, to trace in broad outline the whole history of this story, from the time of its birth until it finally fizzled out, from the French newspapers -- and, moreover, exclusively from Conservative and Right-wing newspapers. 
 	

Hostages to be massacred when first rebel shell fired.

    "l'Intransigeant", August 18th, 1936.

    ". . . It is reported here that the bombardment of San Sebastian by rebel ships has just begun. It is stated that the moment the first rebel shell is fired, the 700 hostages are to be shot."

The hostages of Fort Guadaloupe reported to have been exposed to rebel fire in the streets and squares of Irun.

    "Paris-Soir", September 2nd, 1936.

    "On Tuesday afternoon the unfortunate hostages who had be enimprisoned in Fort Guadaloupe since the outbreak of hostilities were taken into the town of Irun. . . . In the evening a terrible rumour went the rounds which, alas, was soon to be officially confirmed. In reply to General Mola's brutal and unexpected ultimatum, the above-mentioned hostages were shot.

The Battle of Irun and the Massacre of Hostages.

    "Echo de Paris", September 2nd, 1936.

    ". . . The sanguinary instincts of the Marxists know no bounds. . . ."

The Massacre of Hostages.

    "Echo de Paris", September 5th, 1936. (page 1).

    "News has been received that all hostages have been shot."

    (Same edition, page 3).

    ". . . It is reported that the 170 hostages in the Fort of Guadaloupe will be shot at 9 o'clock to morrow morning.

The Fate of the Hostages.

    "Petit Parisien", September 5th, 1936.

    "According to the latest messages from British sources received from the Spanish frontier the Government troops,
     before retreating from Irun, shot all the hostages imprisoned in Fort Guadaloupe. . . ."

Some Hostages managed to escape from Fort Guadaloupe.

    "Echo de Paris", September 6th, 1936.

    ". . . In the general confusion five prisoners managed to escape and take refuge at Hendaye. They are very exhausted and have suffered not only physically but morally, for not a day passed without their being informed that they were to be shot. They do not know exactly how many of their comrades were in the Fort, but it is believed that there must have been some two hundred, the fat of whom they do not know.

The Fate of the Hostages.

"Le Temps", September 7th, 1936.

    "Contrary to the rumours that have been circulated during the last few days, the hostages in Fort Guadaloupe have not been shot. We have this news from an absolutely reliable source, having spoken personally on Saturday afternoon to one of the hostages who escaped. . . . Only Sefior Honorio Maura, former leader of the parliamentary group that favoured the 'restoration of Spain', and Deunza, a deputy of the Gil Robles party, were shot. . . ."

    Paris-Soir, September 11th, 1936.

    "The hostages have left the town. They have not been released, but they are in safety at Bilbao."

    Le Temps, September 13th, 1936.

    "There are actually 3,850 prisoners at Bilbao . . . who are quite well treated. . . . The 650 hostages who arrived on Wednesday from San Sebastian . . . received the best treatment of all."

In conclusion let us return once more to the famous Burgos Book. We tried before to analyse the political  	

arguments contained in it; let us now turn to the actual allegations it contains.

It is worth our while to do this, for the book raised a considerable stir in England, and went through five impressions in the first two months after its appearance in October, 1936. The full title of the book is:

    A PRELIMINARY OFFICIAL REPORT ON THE ATROCITIES

    COMMITTED IN SOUTHERN SPAIN IN JULY AND AUGUST, 1936, BY THE COMMUNIST FORCES OF THE MADRID GOVERNMENT TOGETHER WITH A BRIEF HISTORICAL NOTE OF THE COURSE OF RECENT EVENTS IN SPAIN

    Issued by authoriy of THE COMMITTEE OF INVESTIGATION APPOINTED BY THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT AT BURGOS

    Price One Shilling and Sixpence net EYRE AND SPOTTISWOODE LONDON 1936

Let me first make a remark as to first principles. It is a tradition for committees of enquiry into disputes to be composed of neutral personages, and in this alone lies the whole meaning of the term "Committee of Investigation". Only in such circumstances do its findings carry weight. In the Spanish Civil War there were more than enough  neutral observers available; foreign journalists, diplomats, medical missions, and so forth. The "National Government of Burgos" preferred, however, to appoint a Committee of Investigation with regard to the composition of which they made no mention.

The publication of the Burgos Committee of Enquiry is anonymous, it brings forward no neutral witnesses, produces no documentary evidence, and confines itself to referring no less than five times in the course of the foreword to its report to "the authenticity of the reports of the atrocities committed", "the trustworthiness of its evidence", "evidence which proves without doubt", on "documented and verified accounts", and a "complete and irrefutable account".

Of the introduction to the book and the political arguments brought forward in it we have already spoken. In the "documentary section" seventeen Andalusian towns and villages are mentioned in alphabetical order (Arahal, Aznalcollar, La Campana, Campillo, Carmona, Cazalla, Constantina, Huelva, Lora del Rio, Moguer, Moron, Palma del Condado, Palma del Rio, Posadas, Puente Genil, Utrera, Baena) and the "atrocities of the Reds" described, unsupported by the testimony of a single neutral witness. It so happens that I am in a position to disprove a number of these allegations.

As related in another section of this book, I was from August 25th to 28th in Seville, the headquarters of General Queipo de Llano. Shortly before this Raymond Lacoste, correspondent of the "Echo de Paris" was also in Seville. Lacoste interviewed Queipo de Llano a few days before I did. My interview with Queipo de Llano, which appeared in the London "News Chronicle", in the Paris "Oeuvre" and a whole string of other newspapers, and has never yet been refuted, is described on pp. 32, 33 of this book.

When I asked whether His Excellency had in his possession documentary evidence with regard to these excesses,  	

he replied in the negative; he had special couriers, he said, who brought him verbal information with regard to incidents of this kind from various sectors of the front.

After the interview I was told by my fellow journalists that Lacoste had been luckier than I, for he had obtained from Queipo de Llano a regular printed list of the people done to death in the village of Arahal; but that ever since Queipo had refused to give any more material to the Press, because he himself was preparing a "brochure on the atrocities". This list actually appeared in the Echo de Paris; it consisted of thirty-two names of prisoners alleged to have been burned alive by Government troops before the evacuation of Arahal. The same list of names, with the same accompanying description, appears on p. 33 of the Burgos Book in the chapter headed "Arahal".

This would appear to show that the documents on which the Burgos Book is based either originated directly from Queipo de Llano, which has all along seemed probable, since the book confines itself exclusively to Andalusia, Queipo's sovereign territory, or at least that the two stories emanate from the same source.

And now what about the trustworthiness of Queipo's information, which was communicated to him verbally by a special courier? In one case we are in a position to identify the person of such a courier. The chapter in the Burgos Book dealing with the atrocities in Lora del Rio quotes an eye-witness.

    "These facts have been gathered from the statements of a number of responsible witnesses who were present at the events described. Among them . . . is Don José María Linan, local leader of the Spanish Phalanx. He was taken prisoner from the beginning of the upheaval and was to have been shot on the night of the day when the Nationalist troops arrived to liberate the village"  Here, then, we have one of Queipo's "responsible witnesses", upon whose evidence the Burgos Book relies: the Group Leader of the Falange Española in Lora del Rio!

As against this the same Queipo announced in the "Echo de Paris" of August 22nd, 1936, through his mouthpiece Raymond Lacoste:

    "In Lora del Rio the local Group Leader of the Falange Eispañola had both legs broken; screaming with agony, he begged to be shot. Finally they sent an old priest to the half-dead man, and a final shot dispatched them both to eternity. . . ."

From this it is clear that:

Either José María Linan was shot, as Queipo de Llano alleges, before the entry of the Nationalist troops into Lora del Rio, in which case he could not have taken to Queipo de Llano the report on which the incident in the Burgos Book is based, or

José María Linan was not shot and General Queipo de Llano was labouring under a misapprehension.

That the fictitious story of the murder of a man should be described with such a wealth of picturesque and sanguinary detail is a further proof of the General's admirable powers of imagination.

One further example:

In his interview with Raymond Lacoste in the "Echo de Paris" of August 27th, Queipo de Llano declared:

    In Puente Genil 900 persons were massacred by the reds. . . ."

In the chapter of the Burgos Book headed "Puente Genil", on page 59, it is stated:

    "One hundred and fifty-four citizens were murdered here. . 	

The discrepancies in these "authentic", "trustworthy", "documented and verified accounts" on which the rebel propaganda is based amount here to some 600 per cent.

These two examples should suffice. I have not been attempting to prove that no atrocities whatever were committed in the villages mentioned. I am convinced that things were bad enough, for the period we are dealing with was the first few days after the outbreak of the insurrection. I have merely been trying to show that the allegations of the rebel propagandists are exaggerated, contradictory and unreliable.
3. SENSATIONAL PROPAGANDA

Newspaper reports in which the writers glorify the warlike deeds of their own side with the definite aim of pandering to the lowest instincts of their readers, constitute in themselves a special chapter in the annals of atrocity propaganda. During the years of the Great War we were all privileged to wallow in the effusions of this repulsive form of art. To-day its highest exponents are the German war correspondents in Spain. Their task is quite obviously to prepare the appetite of the reading public for the coming world war. I quote here a typical example:

"Typical of the Legion

    ". . . Here comes along from one of the villages an honest rustic with his shopping basket. 'What have you got in that basket?' asks the Legionary. 'Eggs.' 'Show 'em here!' Crash go the eggs on the pavement, followed by the gleam of a pistol. The 'rustic' runs, runs for his life, and even a Spaniard knows how to show a clean pair of heels! When he is ten metres away, two pistol shots ring out -- hit in the head twice -- that's over! . . .

    ". . . To conclude, here is the story of Sergeant Jaime Petrus Borras, who has been a Legionary from      the beginning, but now serves in the Villa Sanjurjo Regiment of Riff Chasseurs. The regiment had to storm the village of Sessena near Aranjuez house by house, or rather, courtyard by courtyard, and on one occasion, while his Moors were at work with rifles, knives and hand grenades, the worthy sergeant stood looking about him in one of the side streets. Suddenly a door flies open on the opposite side of the street. A Communist, rifle in hand, appears in the doorway. Jaime Petrus draws his service revolver. And -- bang! the Communist bites the dust. But in his place stands another, also in a great hurry to get out of the house. Bang! -- and he too bites the dust. In all the sergeant has fired seven times from the same spot; then comes the first Moor, somewhat glum at finding that his 'sargento' has dispatched all the Communists by himself. More than anything typical of the Legion is the fact that after this display of marksmanship the sergeant actually had two cartridges left in his nine-chambered revolver. Seven shots -- seven Communists! He told me this himself on his word of honour when I photographed him -- and a Legionary never lies. On the next day Sergeant Jaime Petrus Borras was made a sergeant-major."  1

The deliberate attempt to evoke sadistic mass instincts is here unmistakable. Even more abominable, if possible, is the exploitation of the sexual instinct. The following fantastic report, dated from Madrid, appeared on the front page of the "Berliner Nachtausgabe" on November 4th, 1936.

    ". . . The Militia issues vouchers to the value of one peseta. Each note is good for one rape. The results cannot be described. It is impossible for respectable women to walk in the streets, for if they do so they

____________________
1 	National-Zeitung, Essen, November 22nd, 1936.



     are immediately dragged into the barracks and violated. The widow of a high official was found dead in her flat. By her bedside lay sixty-four of these vouchers."

The author is prepared to swear, and presumably all English and French correspondents in Spain, whether of the Left or the Right, are also prepared to do so, that on November 4th, 1936, there was no correspondent of the "Berliner Nachtausgabe" in Madrid, and that incidents such as the one described above never took place and never could take place, and are base and absurd slanders.

But unfortunately it is not a question of an isolated phenomenon, of the spontaneous product of a disordered and pathological imagination. The old wives' tale of the vouchers issued as rewards for the violating of women is almost as old as the classic atrocity stories of the "Elders of Zion", of polluted wells and so forth. We find it in the propaganda against Russia in the time of Kerensky, even before Russia was Bolshevik; it went the rounds in justification of the White Terror in Hungary, Bavaria and Central Germany, it was unearthed from its naphthaline wrappings during Gil Robles' campaign in Asturias and was for a time the favourite theme of General Queipo de Llano.
4. WHITEWASHING PROPAGANDA

Badajoz, Toledo, Malaga, Durango, Guernica, are bloody milestones on Franco's path. Blunted as are the sensibilities of the world to-day, it has not forgotten these terrible massacres. Franco's propagandists found themselves faced with the thankless task of raising the dead to life and covering the blood they had spilt with printer's ink.

I shall here quote two typical examples of the rebels' "whitewashing" propaganda.

Let us take our first example from the Burgos Book. It concerns an earlier period, in Asturias. Let me remind the reader of the facts disclosed in Chapter II regarding  the reprisals taken by the Gil Robles-Lerroux Government in Asturias, which led to world-wide protests.

On page 21 of this book this most bloody of all post-war episodes in Spain up to the time of Civil War is dismissed as follows:

    "This revolt was only half-heartedly punished; two insignificant individuals were shot, a few men and women were imprisoned for a time, but all the real leaders escaped."

Two pages further on, on page 23, it is stated that one of the consequences of the victory of the People's Front was that:

    "An amnesty was granted to all those political prisoners implicated in the Asturias revolt of 1934."

Are we expected to believe that, if it were only a matter of a few men and women, a political amnesty had to be declared?

A few men and women! There were forty thousand of them.

A further example of rebel. whitewashing propaganda is furnished in a pamphlet entitled "The Legend of Badajoz", published by Burns, Oates and Washburn, Ltd., London, in which Major Geoffrey McNeill Moss attempts to question the authenticity of the reports with regard to the terrible massacre of Badajoz. I cannot here go fully into the contents of the pamphlet and will confine myself to the main argument.

The now classic story of the blood bath of Badajoz came from the pens of two distinguished Right-wing French journalists, Jacques Derthet of the "Temps" and Marcel Dany of the Havas Agency.

They were the first journalists to enter Badajoz on August 15th, twenty-four hours after the rebels had entered the  town. They went there accompanied by Mario Neves, a Portuguese journalist.

Major Geoffrey McNeill Moss quotes the reports of the two French journalists with regard to the horrors they witnessed. Then he quotes a message from the Portuguese journalist, which gives a much more anaemic description of the events that took place. This is the main argument adduced by Major McNeill Moss to cast doubts on the genuineness of the French journalists' reports.

The whole thing has a pretty plausible ring about it, and most readers may well overlook one small and apparently unimportant detail. Namely, that Major Geoffrey McNeill Moss, when quoting the French journalists, gives the exact dates when their reports appeared and the names of their newspapers, but in quoting the Portuguese journalist neglects to mention either.

Through a fortunate chance I am in a position to supply the missing dates. I visited Portugal during those days of August and brought a pile of newspapers away with me. Mario Neves's articles appeared on August 15th and 16th in the Lisbon evening paper "Diario de Lisboa". I have a copy of them in my files.

For Mario Neves's report appeared in two instalments. The first article really does not contain all the facts mentioned by the French journalists. It is this first article that Major McNeill Moss has used to brand the French journalists as unreliable. But the second article mentions facts of a degree of horror that not only confirms, but even surpasses the messages of the Frenchmen. As to the existence of this second article Major McNeill Moss says not a word. 1
____________________
1 	Here are a few quotations from the second article by Mario Neves, the Portuguese journalist, whom Major Geoffrey McNeill Moss brings forward as his chief witness in support of his assertion that no massacre took place in Badajoz:

"Since yesterday (this was written on the 16th, two days after the fall of Badajoz) several hundred people have lost their lives in Badajoz. It is impossible to bury them all, there is no time for that.

". . . In the courtyard near the stables many corpses are still to be seen  Intention to deceive is the last thing I would impute to Major McNeill Moss; and I can only suppose that he has been led astray. The rebel propagandists who foisted the material on him have used him to play an infamous trick. The infamy consists in their having banked on the assumption that no one in England would be likely to read Portuguese newspapers. To make assurance doubly sure, they omitted to quote the name: and date of the newspaper.

The World War has impressed on the consciousness of all politicians the pre-eminent importance of propaganda, but it has been left to the modern Dictator States to develop it systematically into a science. Germany and Italy, by setting up special Ministries of Propaganda have officially recognized propaganda as an integral part of the machinery of State. The discovery, worked out in the most minute detail, of the Communist plan of revolt and the Communist "complicity" in the burning of the Reichstag is one of the major achievements of modern propaganda; likewise the Italian propaganda campaign against Abyssinia, in which the aggressors were represented as the attacked and the war as a campaign of pacification. Both these examples illustrate the latest fashion in modern propaganda; here the circumstances are no longer, as in former times, glossed over, touched up and lightly falsified; the facts themselves are inverted.
____________________
	lying about, the result of implacable railitary justice. Among them I saw the corpse of Alférez Benito Méndez. His corpse is still wrapped in the white sheet in which he was brought from his sick bed in hospital.

". . . In the main streets one no longer sees, as one did this morning, unburied corpses lying about. The people who accompany us ('us' means Neves, Derthet and Dany) tell us that the Foreign Legionaries and Moorish troops, who are entrusted with the carrying out of the executions, wish the corpses to be left lying in the streets for a few hours to serve as an example and attain the desired effect.

"They also tell us that the selection of prisoners who are to suffer the death penalty is made after an examination of the skin. Those who have a blue mark on the shoulder which suggests long use of a rifle, may consider themselves definitely lost. . . ." 
 The German and Italian dictatorships have, in addition to giving direct military assistance to the rebels, also supplied them with propaganda models and propaganda experts. Franco's very first pronouncement on July 18th bears the stamp of these new propaganda methods; the instigator of the rebellion charges the legal Government to "cease the unnecessary bloodshed", the man who has plunged his country into Civil War reproaches the Government with "exposing innocent women and children to danger and death", and threatens to call it, the legal Government, "to account for its actions".

All the subsequent propaganda of the rebels takes the same line. The rebels, even before the insurrection, in statu nascendi, as it were, obtain arms from Germany -- and have the temerity to allege that France has broken the Non-Intervention Pact; they install machine-guns in the churches, and maintain that their opponents have desecrated the churches; with their air squadrons they set Madrid and Guernica on fire -- and allege that the Anarchists have burned Madrid and Guernica. Militiamen who have been defending the legal Government and are taken prisoner by the insurgents, are formally accused, before being shot, of fomenting a "military rebellion". In the rebel Press the Burgos Junta has from the outset been alluded to as the legal Government of the country and the Government troops as rebels. A more direct reversal of the facts would be impossible.

The Spanish War is for the dictatorships in many respects a dress rehearsal for the world war for which it is preparing the way; it is so, alas, in the matter of propaganda. The laying of the responsibility for the Civil War at the door of their opponents, the designation of a war of aggression as a retaliatory measure, the representing of acts of arson as the extinguishing of fires, of declarations of war as offers of peace -- this is how the coming world war is being prepared. 




 CHAPTER VII
THE HEROES OF THE ALCÁZAR

    "They called themselves the successors of the Cid. They hid themselves from the people's wrath behind the skirts of the women they had ravished and the swaddling-clothes of the children they had kidnapped". 1

ON JULY 18 TH, 1936, the military insurrection broke out in Toledo. The leader of the mutinous troops was Colonel Moscardo, Commandant of the garrison quartered in the Alcázar.

For three days there was fighting in the streets of Toledo, and by July 22nd the Government troops and workers' militia had gained control of the city. The mutineers retreated into the Alcázar, and the siege began.

The Madrid Government was at first inclined not to attach much importance to the whole episode. The Commander of the Government troops in the Toledo district, General Riquelme, rang up Moscardo in the Alcázar -for the telephone line between the Alcázar and the town had remained undamaged, and was yet to play an extremely strange part in the whole affair. General Riquelme urged Colonel Moscardo not to persist in his folly, but to surrender while there was yet time. After all, they were not living in the Middle Ages; they were not robber barons defending their fortresses.

Moscardo replied that he had enough ammunition to hold the Alcázar until the rebellion had triumphed throughout Spain.

"But we can blow the whole Alcázar to smithereens," retorted Riquelme, still amused rather than bellicose. He
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1 	Ilya Ehrenburg, "Toledo".

 	

could not bring himself to believe that a high and responsible officer should, in the twentieth century, embark upon the crazy adventure of defending an Arab fortress against modern artillery and aircraft. Not until the end of their brief conversation did the true state of affairs dawn upon him. Just before hanging up the receiver, Colonel Moscardo remarked casually:

"Your women, by the way, send their love to you."

On the evening of that same day, when the workers' Militiamen at last returned to their homes after three days of street fighting, news spread like wildfire round the town that on the night of the 21 St the rebels had seized the women and children in all parts of the town occupied by them -- these were preponderantly working-class districts -and had carried them off to the Alcázar.

During the next two months the world followed with breathless interest the events that were being played out round the Alcázar of Toledo. It imagined that it was the spectator of an heroic saga of modern times, whereas the drama that was being enacted before its eyes was one of the most preposterous gangsters' exploits of our day. The kidnappers of women and children were elevated to the status of legendary heroes, and the "Cadets of the Alcázar" became a symbol of the national uprising. In actual fact the technique of modern propaganda has seldom before reached such supreme heights.

History has from time immemorial exhibited a tendency towards the creation of myths; jingo historians have always consciously and adroitly exploited the masses' craving for legends. One has only to bear in mind the canonization of adventurers like Schlageter and Horst Wessel. The history of the siege of the Alcázar, which, fortunately, it is still possible to reconstruct in all its details -- in a year or two this would no longer be the case, and the actual facts would  	

be shrouded for ever in the mists of legend -- provides one of the rare opportunities of catching the distorters of history and manufacturers of myths in flagrante delicto.

Here follows the sworn statement of Antonia Pérez Corroto, tavern-keeper, formerly residing at 6 Calle de las Sierpes, Toledo, who was carried off as a hostage to the Alcázar, but managed to escape on the tenth day of the siege:

"Until nearly midday on the Tuesday after the outbreak of the insurrection, things were comparatively quiet in Toledo. On the evening of that day the rebels resumed the fighting and were defeated at every point, even in their 'strongest positions. On Wednesday the Nationalists, driven into a tight corner, resolved to retreat into the Alcázar. Fifty rebels, under the command of a Captain, broke into the houses and carried off women who were peacefully going about their household tasks.

"At noon on the Wednesday I myself was in my tavern, when several Fascists in civilian clothes entered and ordered me to hand over to them all the food I had in the place. There was nothing for it but to obey. 'You'll find food for us all right,' said an officer with a sneer. And I, my daughter and my two little ones, aged three years and thirteen months respectively, were driven out of the bar.

"We were taken to the Alcázar. We asked what it all meant, but received no answer. We thought that possibly there was some question of safety precautions or evacuation or something of that kind. We could none of us make out what was really happening.

"As we were led into the courtyard of the fortress, Government aeroplanes flew over it. An officer of the Civil Guard ordered us to go down into the cellars. Down there everything was in darkness. I asked an officer's wife for some water for my children 'There's  no water here for you,' she answered. 'But a piece of bread I begged. 'There's no bread for you,' she said. They tried to humiliate us from the very first day. On the following day food was rationed out to us. The Alcázar was full of Fascists from Toledo: there were over eight hundred Civil Guards, two hundred officers and Cadets, two hundred Fascists in civilian clothes and Phalangists, and nearly four hundred women and children, including the hostages. That same day we were put in chains. My daughter was so terrified that she was unable to eat. It was terrible to see her. The officers ate a kind of coarse black bread. I asked to be allowed to speak to the rebel leader. I was taken to him. 'You're one of those people who are always complaining, aren't you?' 'No, I am a poor mother whose daughter is at the point of death. Let me out. I am entirely innocent.' 'No one will get out of here as long as I am alive,' replied the rebel leader. I sank to the ground, weeping, and they had to drag me out of his room.

"I was imprisoned in the Alcázar for ten days. Every morning my daughter and I were allowed to take a quarter of an hour's walk in the inner courtyard where there were great piles of dead horses, which gave out a horrible stench. There were several soldiers and Civil Guards in the Alcázar who, when the supply of fresh horse-flesh gave out, began to eat the carrion. Several of them died as a result.

"The rebel officers organised the defence of the fortress. Three times a day the guards were changed in the towers, from which an incessant machine-gun fire was kept up. The Civil Guards used rifles. Fascists in civilian clothes went round the fortress and marched off anyone who talked of surrender. I believe they afterwards shot them. Twice a day we were given a meal, one at midday and the other at six in the evening; we had to queue up for them. By the sixth day the only food left  was potatoes and lentils. On the day of our escape we had eaten nothing but a morsel of roasted horse-flesh and a handful of ground corn. The water was polluted. Dysentery broke out. Every evening typewritten newssheets were distributed among the rebels, in which it was reported that the relief of the Alcázar was at hand, that Madrid was occupied by the rebels, and so on.

"On the tenth day of our imprisonment I came across a gunsmith whom I knew very well, and who had been duped by the rebels, like many others who were there. That evening he had a word with the Civil Guard on duty, and showed him an order signed by the LieutenantColonel; the signature had been forged. The guard looked at the paper, hesitated for a moment, and then led me and my daughter to the Santa Fé Gate, which leads out to the Carmen Hill. When we got there, the gunsmith said to me: 'Now go, and be as quick as you can. I have risked my head; I only hope it's some use to you.' My daughter carried one child in her arms and I the other. Shots rang out; it was the Militiamen shooting. I can't remember anything else, for I fell down in a dead faint."

It is by no mere accident that the Cadets have played an outstanding rôle in the legend of the Alcázar, that the rebel propaganda has thrust them again and again into the foreground and deliberately created the catchword, "The Cadets of the Alcázar". The term "Cadets" appeals to certain traditional conceptions of youthful heroism, to the romantic ideas associated with the barrack-square and to the man-in-the-street's worship of uniform. An aura of feudalism, moreover, attaches to the idea of a Cadet; these youthful, elegant boys, pluckily defending their fortress against a horde of "reds " -- this picture has the precise oleograph associations that the rebels wished to convey to the world. Yet everything connected with the  legend of the Alcázar is a fabrication, even the assertion that it was the Cadets who defended the fortress.

The plain unvarnished truth is that several weeks before the July insurrection the Cadets had been transferred from the Alcázar as a disciplinary measure. The provocative behaviour of these pampered sons of officers and gentlemen had long made them detested in Toledo; and when at the end of May some drunken Cadets started a brawl in the town and assaulted the sellers of workers' newspapers, all the Cadets were transferred from the Alcázar to the Campo de Alijares on the orders of Casares Quiroga, the Minister of War. Shortly afterwards, moreover, their holidays had begun, and they had broken up and left Toledo. Thus, when the July insurrection broke out, the Cadet School was deserted and empty.

How many authentic Cadets, then, were to be found among the legendary "Cadets of the Alcázar"? Only five can really be proved to have been there, namely Cadet Jaime Milán del Bosch and four of his comrades, who, on the outbreak of the rebellion on July 18th, took train from Madrid to Toledo to place their services at the disposal of Colonel Moscardo. This is the only concrete information that the defenders of the Alcázar gave to the Press after their relief. In the report in the "Temps" of September 29th, 1936, it was further stated that Bosch and his companions "found", on their arrival in Toledo, "several other Cadets who had arrived there the same evening". Let us be very generous and assume that another twenty Cadets succeeded in reaching Toledo from the furthest corners of Spain in the middle of a rebellion and a general strike. Even according to this optimistic estimate, the number of Cadets in the Alcázar would amount to exactly two per cent of the garrison. This is precisely why, after the fall of Toledo, the rebels, whilst describing the siege in the most picturesque detail, and, so as to lighten the task of the historian, giving the most precise figures with  	

regard to the supplies of food and so on, maintained complete silence as to the composition of their forces. Posterity was to know that there were in the Alcázar 250 mules, 19 horses, amongst them one thoroughbred, 250 sacks of corn, each weighing 50 to 100 kilograms, and 3 cisterns, each containing 300,000 litres of water. An astonished world was presented, in addition, with an exact statistical statement of the number and weight of the projectiles that fell in the Alcázar -- only with regard to the human beings was no word said.

One thing is certain, and that is that the actual garrison of the fortress was 1,100 strong, of which number about 650 were Civil Guards, about 150 legionaries of the 14 Tercio from Madrid, and about 300 officers and Phalangists. All accounts agree, however, that the number of women and children amounted to 400 in all, of whom 250 were hostages.

The story of the siege of the Alcázar is primarily a sordid story of blackmail. For thirty-four days the besiegers were unable to make up their minds to train their artillery on the fortress. The first shell from a 4-inch gun was fired on August 24th, the thirty-fourth day after the occupation of the Alcázar . . . after all attempts to persuade the rebels to allow the women and children to leave the fortress had failed.

Even now the Republicans did not bombard the fortress itself, but only the adjacent buildings, with the object of isolating the besieged garrison. It was not until eight days later that the first shell was fired at the outer walls. Even during the last few days of the tragedy, at a time when Toledo was already being threatened by rebel troops and the besiegers blew up the south-west tower with dynamite, the inner courtyards and cellars of the Alcázar, in which the women and children were housed, remained undamaged; and when, after a siege that had lasted seventy days, Toledo fell, and the rebels of the Alcázar were relieved by their  	

allies, they were only able to show a total death roll of 83-83 out of 1,500! -- and not a single woman among them. In other words, the besiegers, despite the aircraft and 6-inch guns at their disposal, confined their bombardment right to the very end to the outer walls, the towers and terraces, and never made a really serious attempt to blow the Alcázar to pieces in the way in which, for example, Guernica was blown to pieces. The 400 women and children, behind whose moral protection the heroes of the Alcázar had crept, made a serious siege impossible. I was shown photographs of these women and children posted up in one of the militiamen's barracks. Above them was the caption:

"Be careful of them; they are our women, our children."

Moscardo and his garrison played to the world the rôles of heroic defenders of a fortress, while the Militiamen ground their teeth in impotent rage behind their barricades of mattresses, and in their fury fired off their rifles at the stone walls.

The barricades of the loyal forces were situated fifty, forty and sometimes only twenty yards or so from the walls of the fortress. Round about ten o'clock in the morning the shooting, which was more or less ineffective on both sides, usually began. In the intervals there was an exchange of curses and abusive epithets; and then there would be more shooting. From two to four in the afternoon, in accordance with a tacit agreement, there was generally a pause for the midday siesta -- by no means an isolated phenomenon on the various Spanish fronts. Again and again, when officers of the Government forces went to the Alcázar to parley with the enemy and there was an armistice of several hours' duration, the Militiamen would approach the walls and distribute cigarettes among the Civil Guards, who had run out of tobacco. One may be tempted to smile at such episodes, but they ought rather to bring home to one the profound tragedy of an excessively good-natured people which has had a fratricidal war forced upon it by a small clique of landowners and officers lusting for power. And  behind the grand opera façade of the Alcázar was concealed the odious crime of holding 400 women and children prisoner.

It would be unfair to saddle Colonel Moscardo with the sole responsibility for this gangsters' exploit. He was merely acting on instructions from higher quarters, obeying the orders of the rebel High Command. On September 21st the Intelligence Service of the Madrid Government intercepted a message in cipher broadcast by the Burgos Junta to Colonel Moscardo, in which the latter was instructed on no account to release the women and children from the Alcázar, but on the contrary to expose them to the full view of the enemy. Moscardo's fellow-officer, Colonel Aranda, took up exactly the same attitude in the case of the siege of Oviedo, likewise on the orders of Burgos. He too was requested by the Madrid Government to allow the women and children to leave Oviedo, regardless of whether they were members of rebel or loyal families. He too sternly refused.

In all these cases we are confronted with a deliberate policy on the part of the Burgos authorities. The refusal to evacuate women and children serves a double purpose: it paralyses the besiegers' powers of offensive, and at the same time provides the rebels with the most marvellous opportunities of pillorying the barbarism of the "Reds", who, they allege, do not even shrink from the murder of women and children.

Four largish towns in the possession of the Government, apart from Madrid, have had to withstand a fairly lengthy siege in the course of the Spanish Civil War: San Sebastian, Irun, Bilbao and Santander. In all four cases the civilian population, including political prisoners, was partially evacuated the moment a state of siege was declared.

On the other hand, four largish places in possession of the rebels have been besieged by Government troops: Saragossa, Huesca, Oviedo and the Alcázar of Toledo. In all four cases the rebels refused to evacuate the women, children and hostages. 
 The Madrid Government has been unable from the outset to compete with Franco's methods of "totalitarian warfare".

From a purely military standpoint humanitarianism is always a drawback. It was because of the humane standpoint of the Madrid Government, because of its hesitation to lay serious siege to the Alcázar until it was too late, -- and also because of the inexperience and poor discipline of the Militia -- that Toledo was lost by the Government troops.

The official reason given by Moscardo for his behaviour was that the women themselves refused to leave the Alcázar.

Even Moscardo did not go so far as to allege that the children refused to leave, for they were not the children of the men and women in the Alcázar; amongst Moscardo's hostages there were about 150 eight- to ten-year-old pupils of a military academy, whose parents lived far away from Toledo and whom Moscardo had carried off to the inferno of the Alcázar.

And above all one woman was missing from the Alcázar -- the wife of Colonel Moscardo himself. She was in Toledo when the rebellion broke out, and the Republican authorities gave her complete freedom of choice either to join her husband in the Alcázar or to be taken to Madrid. Señora Moscardo, and with her the wives of seven other officers who were in the Alcázar, chose to be taken to Madrid. No one went voluntarily into the Alcázar, not even the wife of its Commandant. And yet that same Commandant had the face to declare publicly that the women refused to leave the Alcázar.

The siege had not lasted many days before desertions began to occur. Corporal Félix de Ancó Morales availed himself of a night sortie on August 12th to go over to the Government troops with ten Civil Guards. 
 	

"Not a day passed without malcontents being shot," related one of the fugitives. "The corpses were buried under the riding school. There were even attempts at mutiny, but they were nipped. in the bud."

At the end of August two other Civil Guards, Francisco Tirado Ramos, and his friend, Luis Ortega Lopez, succeeded in escaping, They made the following statements to the Press:

    "Question: Why did you want to escape?

    " Luis Ortega López: Because I knew that two of my brothers were members of the Socialist Party and were sure to be fighting on the side of the Government. I refuse to fight against my own kith and kin.

    "Question : What is the general feeling amongst the rest of the troops in the Alcázar?

    " Francisco Turado Ramos: The majority of them would have escaped if they had not been held back by the fear of being caught and shot by their officers. I don't know exactly how many of those inside were shot but it was a good number.

    "Question: How many have escaped altogether?

    "Answer: Fifty or sixty. Most of them got away by crawling along the sewer. Later on the entrance to the sewer was guarded.

    "Question: Why did the women refuse to leave when the Government offered them safe conduct?

    "Answer: They did not refuse. The majority wanted to leave, and of course all the prisoners. But they knew nothing whatever of the negotiations. The officers made all decisions without consulting anyone."

On August 15th the Special Correspondent of the conservative "Petit Parisien" telegraphed from Toledo:

On the first day of the insurrection the officers and Cadets of the Alcázar attempted to gain possession of  	

the town. Their attempt failed, and they were obliged to retreat into the Alcázar. But they took hostages with them: dignitaries of the town and unsuspecting passersby, among them women and children. They attempted also to make two or three sorties, which were unsuccessful, but which gave them an opportunity of carrying off further hostages into the fortress.

"Crouching back against a rampart I listened to the story of one of the escaped soldiers (this was one of the ten Civil Guards who escaped on August 12th with Corporal Morales, A.K.) giving an account of the horrors that were taking place behind those threatening, inaccessible walls.

"He was quite a young fellow with a face that was unnaturally pale and haggard; the terror which he had experienced still lurked in the corners of his eyes. He seemed to find it difficult to talk. At first he tried to clear himself. 'They duped us,' he declared, 'by telling us that we were going to defend the Republic against the Anarchists, who were destroying everything. When the officers saw that we no longer believed them they locked us in the riding school. There was a terrible stench there, because about thirty corpses had been buried under the ring.'

" 'What kind of corpses?"

" 'It's impossible to say. We simply heard shots as you do when there's an execution. Perhaps, too, some of the children died; a number of them were ill. And then there were the carcases of horses that had died and the remains of the horses that were killed every day for good. . . . But the most terrible thing of all was the shrieking of the women, the crying and whimpering of the children. They were locked in the cellars because of the aeroplanes. But you could hear them, hear them, hear them all the time.

"And he pressed both hands to his ears just as he must have done when he was in there.

 " ' . . . there was one of them who went mad. She howled the whole time like a dog baying at the moon. Then there was another, they said, the wife of an officer, who tried to shoot her husband with a revolver. What ghastly fear they endured! And all those little ones! A child was born there one day, in that hole of a cellar. There are things that should not be allowed to happen.

Behind the heroic opera façade hell hid its face. Conditions grew worse and worse from day to day in the Alcázar; the besieged human beings within its walls lived on a ration of horse-flesh, black bread made of bran, and a litre of putrid water from the cisterns per head per day. Two new-born babies first saw the darkness of the world in the subterranean vault beneath the Alcázar; three women went mad; three committed suicide. The officers and Phalangists shot down anyone who dared to protest against the mad folly of this adventure; horror, madness stalked the fortress. On August 9th, Zara González, a fourteenyear-old kitchen-maid, crawled through the sewer into the town, where she collapsed unconscious in a pool of blood; in the hospital she was just able, before losing consciousness again, to make a deposition to the effect that she had been violated by eight or nine officers in the Alcázar. Four days later she was dead.

And the world goes on extolling the heroes of the Alcázar.

Early in September the rebel offensive against Talavera de la Reina, scarcely thirty kilometres west of Toledo, began. The Alcázar, hitherto of secondary strategic importance, now became a real danger; it was high time for the Madrid Government to settle accounts with the enemy in the rear. But the thought of the hostages, the 400 women and children, paralysed the besiegers' strength of will, exactly as Burgos had foreseen. 
 	

On September 8th at one o'clock in the morning, Barcelo, the Commandant of the Government troops, rang up Colonel Moscardo, for the telephone still functioned, and requested him to receive an officer whom he was sending to parley with him. The officer proposed for this purpose was Colonel Rojo, former instructor at the Military Academy of Toledo and an old Republican officer who was held in universal respect and esteem.

Moscardo agreed over the telephone to receive Colonel Rojo as a mediator at ten o'clock the next day.

At ten o'clock the order to cease fire was given; two rebel officers received Colonel Rojo at the entrance to the fortress, blindfolded him, and conducted him into the interior of the Alcdzar. Two hours later he re-appeared, deathly pale, and was conducted by the Militiamen, who did not dare to question him, to military headquarters.

    "They refused," declared Rojo. "I entreated them at least to let the women and children go, but they would not hear of it. I pleaded with them for two hours. To no purpose. . . . They declared that they would all die and that the women and children would die with them, and that if they had their way they would drag the whole world into perdition with them."

Three days later, on September 12th, Talavera de la Reina fell. Toledo was now directly threatened by the rebel army. The Government had all the women and children evacuated from the town. They then sent for miners from Asturias, experts in the laying of dynamite charges, to blow up the outer fortifications of the Alcázar. But before making up their minds to proceed with this step in earnest, they made one final attempt, precious though every hour now was, to bring the "heroes of the Alcázar" to their senses. They sent for Don Enrique Vázquez Camarasa, a Canon of the Madrid Cathedral,  	

who had been reported dead three times by the rebels -once burnt alive by the Communists, twice crucified by the Anarchists -- to come to Toledo.

The Abbé Camarasa, arrived by car in Toledo at 11 a.m., and after a short parley was admitted into the Alcázar. An hour later he returned, alone, his crucifix in his right hand, a sack containing utenils for the celebrations of Mass in his left. He had baptised the new-born infants, performed the last rites over the dead, and obtained from the rebels a promise that within twenty-four hours they would reconsider their decision as to the fate of the women and children.

Twenty-four hours is a long time in such circumstances, but the Government of Madrid was patient, perhaps too patient. And its patience was rewarded: an hour before the expiry of the time limit Colonel Moscardo communicated his answer, which consisted of one single sentence:

"No one shall leave this place."

And still the Government's patience was not exhausted. On September 13th the Prime Minister, Largo Caballero, in a personal interview, requested the Chilean Ambassador, Núñez Morgado, doyen of the diplomatic corps in Madrid, for his intervention.

The Ambassador travelled to Toledo immediately. He arranged with the local military authorities that the women, children and other civilians, in the event of their being released by the rebels, should be housed in two deserted monasteries, which should be placed under the protection of the diplomatic corps, and be declared extra-territorial by the hoisting over them of the Chilean flag.

In view of so concrete an offer the Chilean Ambassador had no further doubts as to the success of his intervention with the besieged troops.

Even Colonel Moscardo realised that the rejection of this offer would put him in the wrong in the eyes of the whole world. He hit upon a way out; and that was to  refuse to receive the Chilean Ambassador, justifying his behaviour in the following statement:

    "If the Chilean Ambassador wants anything of us, let him get into touch with our Government in Burgos I through his own Government."

The kindly reader who has followed us thus far will at this point feel certain doubts arise in his mind. He will say to himself that it is simply not possible that he has been deceived in such a preposterous way with regard to the real truth about the "heroes of the Alcázar ". In order to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding, let us therefore, to conclude our account of this incredible episode, reproduce here the statement made by the Chilean Ambassador to the Press after the failure of his mission. It runs as follows:

"The Chilean Ambassador and ad interim doyen of the diplomatic corps in Madrid considers it of importance to make known the following facts in connection with his visit to Toledo: He declares:

"1. That his proposal to the force besieged in the Alcázar was confined to the question of facilitating the evacuation of the women and children, whom it was proposed to accommodate in Madrid and place under the protection of the diplomatic corps.

"2. That inasmuch as it proved impossible for the Ambassador to convey this offer in person, it was communicated on the night of Saturday to the besieged garrison by Colonel Barcelo, Commandant of the Government troops in Toledo. Colonel Barcelo telephoned to the Chilean Ambassador in Madrid at a later hour and informed him of the negative result of his mission. The Chilean Ambassador wishes to affirm that he took this step on his own initiative and on purely humanitarian  grounds, and that any other version of the incident must be designated as unauthorised.

All this took place on September 14th.

On September 18th the first mine was exploded beneath the Alcázar, destroying the south-west tower. But the breach thus caused in the fortifications was insufficient. The inner walls and the ruins still afforded the rebels adequate protection; they were, besides, able to retire to the underground vaults of the citadel, which were hewn out of granite rock and which could only have been destroyed by a systematic bombardment by heavy artillery. And still the Government hesitated; hesitated for the space of a whole week, until 4 a.m. on September 25th, before giving the order for the second mine to be exploded. But now it was too late. On the next day, September 26th, Franco's advance guard reached Toledo, and on September 27th, the town fell before the technically superior forces of the rebel army.

In the street fighting of September 27th the Government troops lost 900 men. The number of men and women prisoners shot during the next three days has been estimated at 2,000.

The garrison of the Alcázar had suffered, after a "barbarous" siege of sixty-seven days, a loss of exactly eightythree dead!

The first act on the part of the liberated heroes of the Alcázar was to go the rounds of the hospitals of Toledo and finish off the wounded Militiamen in their beds with hand grenades and bayonets.

The Archbishop of Toledo sent them his blessing from Pamplona.

General Francisco Franco conferred on Colonel Moscardo the laurel crown of the Order of St. Ferdinand.

Hitler's representative sent him a congratulatory telegram.

Nothing more was heard of the fate of the women and children hostages in the Alcázar.


 CHAPTER VIII
MADRID

THE NAME "MADRID" marks the beginning of a new and very problematical epoch in world history. Madrid was the first European capital to be subjected to aerial bombardment on a large scale. The capital of Spain served, so to speak, as an experiment in vivisection for the next war.

It is true, that in the war of 1914-18 Zeppelin raids were made on London and Paris. But they were mere child's play in comparison with what can be done now in the light of subsequent developments in aerial warfare.

It is true that there were aeroplanes in the war of 1914-18. Their pilots performed knightly deeds of derring-do and fought romantic battles in the air in which five or seven machines, at the most, participated. When one compares these thrilling combats with the battles between whole fleets of planes, such as took place in the summer of 1937 over Madrid, the airmen of the World War seem almost as romantic and remote as the Knights of the Round Table. 
 	

In order to record with the greatest possible exactitude the effect of the experiments in modern aerial warfare tried out on Madrid, I shall take as a basis a specified period of four weeks.

The following is, so far as circumstances permit, an exact chronological record of the period from October 24th to November 20th, 1936.

On August 16th the Commander-in-Chief of the rebel forces, General Francisco Franco, declared to the correspondent of the "Petit Parisien":

    "I shall never bombard Madrid -- there are innocent people living there whom I have no wish to expose to danger."

Thirteen days later, on August 29th, Franco's airmen hurled their first bombs on Madrid.

They tore two enormous holes in the garden of the War Ministry, scarcely twenty yards from the wing which housed the General Staff, stove in the roof of a garage in the Calle Maria Rosa de Luna, destroyed eight motor cars and wounded three people. The last bomb exploded in a public park in the west of Madrid without causing any damage.

During the next few days the people of Madrid organized air-raid precautions, and cleared cellars to serve as shelters. Every second house bore a notice: "Shelter for X persons." Posters appeared in the streets instructing the inhabitants to betake themselves to cellars or underground stations immediately the alarm siren was sounded. Anti-aircraft defence drill was instituted, to the great joy of the schoolchildren, and the annoyance of the teachers.

The civilian population did not take the whole thing very seriously. For years they had seen in cinemas, newspapers and anti-war pamphlets descriptions of the coming war in the air, in which towns collapsed like card-houses, children playing in the streets were blown to bits by bombs, and babes at the breast died in their mother's arms. But all this was just "the films" or "Pacifist propaganda", which was  	

accepted with a slightly shocked shake of the head; that the same thing could happen in reality was beyond their powers of imagination and was therefore not believed.

The people of Madrid had two months after that first bombardment in which to forget their fright. Then on October 23rd, at 9 o'clock in the morning, the first attack by a German Junker squadron was made over the capital of the Spanish Republic. The particular objective of the rebel leaders was the North Station. Little real damage was done and only a small number of civilians were wounded.

During the course of October 24th twelve bombs were dropped; in the neighbourhood of the North Station, in the vicinity of the city gas-works, and over the suburb of Getafe. Two women standing at the door of a baker's shop were killed and five people severely injured.

On October 30th, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the general air and land offensive against Madrid began.
FOUR WEEKS OF HELL

It was shortly before dusk. Chattering crowds thronged the Puerta del Sol, Madrid's Forum; in the narrow streets of the working-class districts children played in the afternoon sun. Women stood in queues at the doors of bakers' shops and dairies, for there was already a shortage of provisions. Schools in Madrid close at 5 o'clock, and hundreds of children poured, shouting and laughing, into the streets.

In the Plaza del Progreso, a square situated in one of the oldest districts of Madrid, at ten minutes past five, three children were playing at soldiers in a deserted building site opposite an infants' créche. They saw something black fall from the sky; and one of them shouted in fun, "A bomb . . . a bomb!" and all three of them threw themselves flat on the ground. They were the only surviving eyewitnesses of the destruction of the infants' home and the entire Plaza del Progreso. A few minutes later twelve unrecognizable little corpses were dug up out of the ruins. 
 	

Franco's squadron, consisting of six three-engined Junker bombers, had silently and almost noiselessly approached the town at a very great height. The bombs were dropped on the unsuspecting city out of' a clear sky. In the streets of Getafe sixty children lay dead, blown to pieces, maimed. The tower of the old church of San Ginés, in the centre of the town, slowly leaned forward and then crashed to the ground with a noise as of thunder. In the Calle de Luna a bomb fell in the midst of a queue of women waiting outside a dairy. Thirty-five women, some with children in their arms, were killed. On the opposite side of the road was a butcher's shop. The butcher was killed amongst his hanging carcases of sheep and calves. A woman who had just entered the shop holding a child by the hand was beheaded. Ten seconds before the explosion witnesses had seen coming along the street a donkey laden with all the worldly possessions of a family of refugee peasants, followed by an old man and two little girls. Ten seconds later the only things that could be distinguished from a bloody mass of remains were two little hooves that had been hurled into the gutter some distance away.

In the centre of the town, where there are no barracks or any kind of military defences, twelve bombs fell in all. One exploded in the Calle de Fuencarral, killing ten passers-by and causing the petrol tank of a motor car to explode, so that the occupants were burned to death. In the Calle de Espada the children of Militiamen and other war victims, who were housed in a day nursery, were buried beneath the ruins of a fallen house. Of a bus that, crammed full of passengers, was running from the Calle de Preciados towards the Plaza del Callao, all that was left was a few scattered metal parts and a few rags and tatters. Another bomb fell in a little park outside the Puerta de Toledo.

"The little park," Ginés Ganga, a member of the Cortes, who was an eyewitness of this, told me, "was full of old women sunning themselves, courting couples and  mothers taking their children for a walk. The explosion stunned me; when I opened my eyes I saw shapeless fragments of flesh lying scattered all round on the grass; arms, legs, all naked -- I don't know how that came about -- and queerly distorted. The only partially intact corpse was sitting on one of the benches; to judge by the clothing it most have been an old woman; she was leaning forward on crutches -- only the head was missing. . . ."

On the following day Madrid buried its dead. There were 200 of them and two thirds of them were women and children. Only 180 could be identified. A further 300, for the most part hopeless cases, lay in the hospitals.

On November 2nd Madrid was bombed three times. In the Calle Jaime Vera, a narrow, wretched alley in the south of the city, three children were killed and eight women injured. Half an hour later seven dead bodies were picked up in a neighbouring alley. That same evening the corpses of fourteen women and eight children were laid out in the hall of a boys' school which had hastily been converted into a mortuary.

On November 4th, at 8 a.m., the market in the suburb of Vallecas was bombarded. Result: twelve women and children killed.

On November 8th the bombardment of Madrid by German heavy artillery began. Simultaneously a squadron of Junkers and Caproni bombers appeared over the workingclass districts in the south and west of the city.

On November 9th and 10th Madrid was bombarded almost uninterruptedly from the air, and from the south by heavy artillery. The spire of the Cortes building was smashed to atoms. In the Prado, which contains one of the most valuable collections of paintings in the world, two bombs exploded. It was rumoured that 350 people were killed and injured in these two days alone. About 1,000 injured were housed for safety in one single building, the Hotel Palace. 
 	

During the night of November 10th thirty bombs of the heaviest type and a number of incendiary bombs were dropped on the North Station, the Plaza de la Independencia, the former Royal Palace and the neighbourhood of the Puerta del Sol. By midnight five houses were in flames. Twelve thousand refugees from the southern districts of the city spent the night in the open or in the shafts of the underground.

From early morning on November 12th until the night of the 13th bombs were rained almost incessantly on all parts of Madrid.

At midday on November 14th twenty bombs destroyed whole blocks of houses in the Calle de Atocha and Pacifico, a suburb in the south-east of the city. The main entrance to the underground station at Atocha, in which hundreds of passers-by had taken refuge, was demolished; eighty victims were unearthed from the ruins.

The next day was a Sunday. The civilian population of Madrid poured out into the streets to enjoy the early afternoon sun and to draw breath after the nightmares of the preceding week. Whole processions of families thronged outside the over-crowded hospitals, waiting to visit their wounded relatives. But the industrious German pilots observed no Sabbath. At 4 p.m. a squadron of aeroplanes appeared over the northern quarter of the town. The big hospital of Cuatro Caminos, distinguished like all the hospitals of Madrid by a red Cross on its roof, was favoured with five bombs. Whole families died together in the wards, in the mortuaries. Not far away a water-main was hit by a bomb, and the spurting water, mingling with the blood of the streets, covered the pavements with a reddish slime, and scattered arms and legs all around. The net result of this Sunday afternoon's work was 53 dead and 150 injured.

On Monday, the 16th of November, two air raids were carried out. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon bombs were dropped on the wretched workers' dwellings in the narrow  streets of Cuatro Caminos. Shortly after 9 o'clock in the evening incendiary bombs were rained on the building of the Faculty of Medicine and the adjoining clinic, on the First Aid Station in the broad Avenida de Recoletos and on a Red Cross hospital in the immediate neighbourhood of the Plaza de Colón. A hundred dead? Two hundred dead? It is impossible to say exactly.

And all that had happened hitherto was only a foretaste of the inferno that was to be let loose over the Spanish capital on the following day.

From November 17th onwards, during the night of the 17th to 18th and throughout the whole day of the 18th, General Franco endeavoured, with the help of his foreign pilots, to burn the city of Madrid, with its million inhabitants, to the ground. From this time onwards it is impossible to give exact information as to how many houses were destroyed, how many men, women, old people and children were burned, killed or blown to pieces with fire and dynamite.

In the early afternoon of November 18th Madrid was swept by a sea of flame. The three largest hospitals of the capital, the Hospital San Carlos, the Madrid District Hospital, and the Central Red Cross Hospital, were in flames. The Puerta del Sol was in flames. The Hotel Savoy was in flames. Down the main thoroughfares, the Calle de Atocha, the Calle de León, the flames, shrouded in immense clouds of black smoke, danced their way from house to house, fanned by the icy wind of the Sierra.

This hellish bombardment continued throughout the night. Sleepless, speechless, paralysed with terror, hundreds of thousands of Madrilefios spent the night in cellars, every moment expecting the building above their heads to collapse, and leaping tongues of flame to make their way down the stairs. The tunnels of the underground on the line Cuatro Caminos-Ventas was torn up by bombs, and the city's entrails were exposed to view. In the heart of the city, on the pavements of the Puerta del Sol, there was a  	

yawning crater twenty yards deep and fifteen wide. Fifteen incendiary bombs fell in the immediate neighbourhood of the Central Telephone Exchange alone. It is reported that the casualties were 200 dead and from 500 to 1,000 wounded.

On November 18th the bombardment reached its peak. The proudest buildings of the capital -- churches, convents, great museums, the National Library, several embassies, the Ministry of the Interior, a market and whole blocks of houses -- fell a prey to the flames. The bombs were of the heaviest type; a house in the Calle San Augustín was rent asunder from attic to cellar by a projectile, and in this explosion alone thirty people were blown to bits. Over the centre of the town, round about the Puerta del Sol, the grim engines of modern warfare rained down death and destruction for sixteen hours on end.

At half-past eight the following morning the black giant planes appeared once more over the Puerta del Sol. For a moment they surveyed the results of Franco's insane fury, then hurled, as if in farewell, a few more bombs and vanished in the dim glow of the southern sky. On the evening of November 23rd heavy rain-clouds from the Sierra brooded over Madrid.

A million people breathed again. The rain lashed the faces of the defenders of Madrid, of the homeless women and children, and drenched them to the skin. In the mist, in the icy wind, in the blood-stained mire of the streets they slept, stretched out on the paving stones. At last, at last, they might venture to sleep. Low clouds chased across the sky over a mortally-wounded city and extinguished the last conflagrations. For the space of a few days there was peace for the hundreds of thousands of women and children, the sick and the mortally wounded of Madrid.
THF CASUALTY ROLL

The following, necessarily incomplete, figures are based on enquiries made at the Madrid hospitals and mortuaries,  supplemented by announcements in the foreign Press and messages from the Reuter and Havas agencies. The figures are under- rather than over-estimates, since the missing are not taken into consideration. The list applies to our specified period of four weeks, from October 24th to November 20th.
October 24th 	Bombing of the North station. 2 dead,
5 wounded.
October 30th 	Bombing of Madrid and Getafe. 200 dead,
180 of which identifiable, 300 injured.
November 2nd 	Attack on the southern district of the
City. 24 dead, 70 injured.
November 4th 	Bombardment of the Vallecas market. 12
dead, 20 injured.
November 8th 	Aerial and artillery bombardment of
Madrid. Many dead and injured, exact
figures not available.
November 10th 	Intensive bombardment of the district
between the Cortes building and the Mini-
stry of War. About 100 dead, 200 injured.
November 11th 	Continuation of the bombardment of
the Centre and north-west of the city.
About 80 dead, 400 injured.

In the course of a bare three weeks, therefore, before the beginning of the general attack from the air, at the lowest estimate 400 people had been killed and more than 1,200 injured, exclusively civilians -- the figures of the military hospitals are not included. The following figures refer to the decisive week November 12th to 19th.
November 12th-4th 	Bombing of the Centre of the city,
the districts of Atocha and Pacífico.
About 80 dead, 350 injured.
November 15th 	Beginning of the general bombard-
ment of the City. 53 dead, 150 injured.
November 16th 	Bombing of Cuatro Caminos and
the hospitals. 100 dead, 250 injured.
 November 17th-18th 	 Climax of the bombardment. At
least 250 dead, 700 injured.
November 19th 	Final day. 11 dead, 2,000 injured.

These figures show that in the space of six days some 500 people were killed and 3,400 injured. How many of the latter succumbed to their injuries I have been unable to ascertain.

The total roll of victims among the civilian population of Madrid between October 24th and November 20th amounts, therefore, even at this cautious estimate, to some 1,000 dead and 2,800 to 3,000 injured. The English and American Press arrives at the same result for the same period, while the French newspaper estimates are somewhat higher.
ART TREASURES AND ARCHITECTURAL MONUMENTS

It is difficult at the moment. to gain a general idea of what masterpieces of Spanish architecture, what pictures in the Prado and other museums, what collections and manuscripts in the National Library were sacrificed to the insurgents' vandalism. The following facts refer exclusively to the period of four weeks previously specified: October 24th to November 20th, 1936.

Of the churches that were destroyed in the bombardments, only those are here mentioned which were world-famous for their art treasures. In the course of the shelling of Madrid on November I I th the Cathedral of San Francisco was almost completely destroed. Two days later the Church of San Ginés with its famous altar piece was razed to the ground. In the course of the bombardment on November 17th the Monastery of San Jerónimo, with its chapel, in which the last Spanish King, Alfonso XIII, was married to Princess Ena of Battenberg, and the Church of the Holy Trinity were completely gutted. On the same day German incendiary bombs set fire to the famous Dominican Monastery in the Calle de Atocha; despite all the efforts of the Defence Junta it was impossible to save the building. 
 Amongst the totally or partially demolished museums and public monuments, the Prado, partially destroyed by the explosion of two bombs, deserves first mention. The Palace of the Duke of Alba, which housed one of the most famous collection of pictures in the world and which had been turned into a People's Museum by the present régime, was completely burned out.

The old building of the Faculty of Medicine in the vicinity of the South Station, converted into a Red Cross hospital during the Civil War, was demolished by shells and set on fire as early as November 12th. During the latter part of November a total of thirty-five incendiary bombs fell on the National Library, destroying, in particular, the archives and the Archaeological Museum. In addition, several buildings in the Botanical Gardens, in the Agricultural School, in the Students' Hostel "Rubio" and in the Rockefeller Institute were damaged by incendiary bombs and partially destroyed.

Nor was the property of foreign powers allowed to go unscathed. On the night of November 16th-17th the French Embassy was twice bombed, one of the bombs falling through the roof of the Chancellery; it is a wonder that no further damage was done. The Casa de Velázquez, the property of the French Ministry of Education, was uninterruptedly shelled and bombed for four whole days by rebel aircraft and artillery; not one stone is now left standing upon another. In addition the Rumanian Embassy was set on fire. Finally the Central Telephone Exchange, a five-storey building, the property of an American company, was badly damaged by bombs.

Of the hospitals destroyed suffice it to mention the children's crêche in the neighbourhood of the Plaza del Progreso, shelled on October 3rd, and the hospitals of Cuatro Caminos, San Carlos, the Faculty of Medicine, and the Madrid District Hospital, which were destroyed between October 15th and 19th.

Among other public buildings completely destroyed were  the editorial offices and printing works of the Republican newspaper, "La Libertad", in the Calle de la Madera, and the vast building in the Calle del Marqués de Cubas which contained the offices of the morning paper, "El Liberal", and the evening paper, "Heraldo de Madrid".

It should be mentioned in conclusion that whole districts of Madrid were burned out, in particular all the blocks of houses between the Puerta del Sol and the Calle de Preciados, more than half the houses in the Calle de la Cruz, the adjoining houses in the vicinity of the Cortes, and a group of tenement buildings in the Calle de Atocha and the Calle de León.

On November 30th, 1936, Captain Macnamara, M.P., a member of the All Party Group of Members of Parliament which visited Spain, stated in an interview with Reuter's correspondent:

    "A third of Madrid is in ruins." And he added:

    "We have been witnesses of the most infamous acts the world has ever known."

EVERYDAY TRAGEDIES

    I was at home that afternoon," Josefa Martinez, a maid, who was wounded in the air raid of October 30th, told me. "I had no idea there was an air raid. Suddenly there was a terrible crash, I felt a terrific blow and found myself lying. on the kitchen floor. Then I noticed that my thigh was bleeding. As I was being carried away, I saw the little daughter of my mistress lying in the corridor, dead. She had been playing there. She was eleven years old. Just before the explosion the decorator had left the house. He had been flirting with me; I hear that he too was killed."

The expression "a bolt from the blue" has acquired for the people of Madrid a literal significance, for Franco's squadrons almost always approach the town at such a height that it is impossible either to recognise the planes  	

or hear the hum of their engines clearly. Without warning, from a clear sky containing no presage of danger, the bombs fall and mangle the humble folk as they go about their daily tasks, stand outside the baker's shop, or wash up in their kitchens. Suddenly the familiar background of everyday life is transformed into a scene of tragedy.

    "I had just gone for the milk," related another maid, Emilia Garcia, "when from somewhere or other there was a terrible flash. Then there was a clap of thunder and I found myself lying on the ground; I had fainted and had been carried into a coal merchant's, and blood was pouring from my temples. I could scarcely see, but when the ambulance came for me I saw through the window that the street was full of bloody fragments of flesh; the pavement was red all over, and I fainted again. . . ."

    "Women and children who had taken refuge from the bombs were sitting in the cellar," writes Ilse Wolff, a journalist, describing a scene in a tenement house during an air raid. "Smoke poured in. White dust descended on them. The air grew heavy, and one could hardly breathe. The children began to scream, the mothers were seized with panic. There was a roar above their heads. A floor had fallen in. They snatched up the children and ran out into the street. Bright flames licked the house. A few brave ones who lived in the lower floors ran upstairs again, threw a few bits of clothing, a mattress, out into the street. A child was missing. Other children were crying for their mothers who had not yet come home. Another roar. The lift had fallen in; you could see an arm, a leg, sticking out of the ruins. The Fire Brigade and ambulance men arrived. The dead and wounded were taken away. . . ."

Here is a last glimpse from the pen of my friend Louis Delaprde, of the "Paris Soir", who, a few days after he had written these lines, was killed in a passenger plane, attacked by an insurgent bomber. 
     "Yesterday," he wrote, "I saw three little girls standing quietly in the middle of the Plaza de las Cortes during an air raid with their heads in the air and their hands behind their backs. A Militiaman pulled them into the doorway of a house. The moment he had gone the children trotted back again into the street. An old newspaper-woman, who had a stand nearby, said to me with a shake of her white head: 'Why shouldn't they have their little fun? Our last hour has struck. . . ."

An air raid, while it lasts, is not a political event in the mind of the person experiencing it, but a natural catastrophe, like an earthquake or the eruption of a volcano. One man keeps his presence of mind, a second loses his nerve, a third reacts with apathetic callousness. It is a question of nerves and constitution, and not of political conviction. During an air raid the civilian population is not a political entity, it is neither heroic nor anything else; it is merely cattle for the slaughter.

And this is why I can no longer pretend to be objective. Franco deliberately and consciously provoked this slaughter. On August 16th he declared that he would never bombard the capital of his mother country, and on August 29th he began to bombard it. He is a liar. He had turned his compatriots, private individuals in offices, factories, kitchens and so forth into cattle for the slaughter. This is no political act, it is a challenge to civilization.

Anyone who has lived through the hell of Madrid with his eyes, his nerves, his heart, his stomach -- and then pretends to be objective, is a liar. If those who have at their command printing machines and printer's ink for the expression of their opinions, remain neutral and objective in the face of such bestiality, then Europe is lost. In that case let us all sit down and bury our heads in the sand and wait until the devil' takes us. In that case it is time for Western civilization to say good night.

 CHAPTER IX
THE LAST DAYS OF MALAGA

IN THE MIDDLE of January, 1937, the Second Division of the insurgent army, commanded by General Queipo de Llano and reinforced by approximately 50,000 Italian infantry, began the fateful offensive against Malaga.

I had just finished my first book on the Spanish Civil War. It appeared in Paris in the middle of January, and the English edition was in course of preparation.

I left Paris on January 15th, took train to Toulouse and from there flew to Barcelona. I stayed in Barcelona for only one day. The city presented a somewhat depressing picture. There was no bread, no milk, no meat to be had, and there were long queues outside the shops. The Anarchists blamed the Catalan Government for the food shortage and organized an intensive compaign of political agitation; the windows of the trams were plastered with their leaflets. The P.O.U.M. -- the Trotskyist Party -- was even more unrestrained in its agitation. The tension in the city had reached danger-point. I was glad not to have to write an article on Barcelona. I left by the four o'clock train for Valencia with William Forrest of the "News Chronicle". His destination was Madrid, mine Malaga.

The train to Valencia was crowded out. Every compartment contained four times as many Militiamen, sitting, lying down or standing, as it was meant to hold. A kindly railway official installed us in a first class carriage and locked the door from the outside so that we should not be disturbed. Scarcely had the train started when four Anarchist Militiamen in the corridor began to hammer at the door of our compartment. We tried to open it, but could not;
 we were like animals in a cage. The guard who had the key had completely vanished. We were unable to make ourselves understood through the locked door owing to the noise of the train, and the Militiamen thought that it was out of sheer ill-will that we were not opening the door. Forrest and I could not help grinning, which further enraged the Militiamen, and the situation became more dramatic from minute to minute. Half the coach collected outside the glass door to gaze at the two obviously Fascist agents. At length the guard came and unlocked the door and explained the situation, and then ensued a perfect orgy of fraternising and eating, and a dreadful hullabaloo of pushing and shouting and singing.

By dawn the train was six hours behind time. It was going so slowly that the Militiamen jumped from the footboards, picked handfuls of oranges from the trees that grew on the edge of the embankment and clambered back again into the carriage amidst general applause. This form of amusement continued until about midday. There was no loss of life; only one man sprained his ankle as he jumped, and stayed sitting on the embankment, evidently hors-de-combat so far as the Civil War was concerned.

Valencia too disported itself in the brilliant January sunshine with one weeping and one smiling eye. There was a shortage of paper; some of the newspapers were cut down to four pages, three full of the Civil War, the fourth of football championships, bull fights, theatre and film notices. Two days before our arrival a decree had been issued or




















lose Malaga, and we may lose Madrid and half Catalonia, but we shall still win the war."

There is a good deal of Oriental fatalism in the Spanish manner of conducting the war -- on both sides; that is one reason why it seems to be so happy-go-lucky, brutal and rhapsodic. Other wars consist of a succession of battles; this one is a succession of tragedies.

An hour later we drive on, despite the broken bridge. It means a détour of about ten miles over practically impassable field paths, the last mile through the bed of a stream ten inches deep. Our light car gets through where a heavier vehicle would be water-logged.

Last stop before Malaga: Almuñécar. There is a once famous hotel here; Count Reventlow recommended it to us in Valencia. The hôtelier, a guileless fat man from Zurich, apologises in German.

"You are my first guests for two months," he says. "I regret that you won't find my hotel as clean as usual, but you know there is a war on in Spain."

We say that we have heard so too. After two hours of waiting we get an excellent dinner and drive on.

First impression: a city after an earthquake. Darkness, 
 entire streets in ruins; deserted pavements, strewn with shells, and a certain smell which I know from Madrid; fine chalk dust suspended in the air mixed with shell powder and -- or is it imagination? -- the pungent odour of burned flesh.

The straying lights of our head-lamps cast their gleam on piles of débris and yet more débris. Pulvis et praeterea nihil -- Madrid after the great air attack and artillery bombardment was a health resort compared with this town in its death-throes.

In the Regina Hotel unprepossessing but good-humoured Militiamen are spitting on the marble pavement and eating the only available food -- fried fish. We are the only guests in the hotel; the waiter tells us that this very afternoon a house nearby was destroyed by a 500-kilo. bomb, which killed fifty-two in that one house alone.

The other waiters are gathered round the table discussing the air raid and everyone's reaction to it; how Bernardo hid behind the table, Jesús gazed out of the window and Dolores, the cook, crossed herself fifty-seven times before she fainted.

I take a stroll with G. G. But the darkness is so menacing that we hurry back shivering and very uneasy. The porter looks at the star-lit sky, and remarks: "Fine air raid weather to-night." His daughter lost both her legs in yesterday's bombing and he wonders whether the bridegroom will take her without legs.

Friday, January 29th.

No bread for breakfast, nothing but black coffee; the food supplies of the town, like the munitions supplies, broken down as a result of irresponsible negligence; the damaged bridge at Motril has done is work, and the town with its 200,000 inhabitants is literally starving.

Busy all the morning visiting offices: Propaganda Department and Residence of the Civil Governor; come across  	

good will everywhere, but hopeless red tape and lack of organization.

Impossible to get a message through; there are no censorship facilities for foreign journalists at all. After endless palavers we succeed in having a young officer with a slight knowledge of French appointed censor.

After lunch I go down to have a look at the harbour. Opposite the harbour is the British Consulate. There is quite a sizeable hole in the faÇade; a shell from a rebel cruiser dropped there without warning, but fortunately it did not explode. The English warship, too, is no longer moored in the harbour. Europe doesn't seem to be interested in the fate of Malaga.

A few men and women come running up from the harbour, their faces turned towards the sky. A moment later the bells begin to peal: an air raid warning. There aren't even any sirens. Everyone runs hither and thither in feckless confusion; the panic is much worse than it ever was in Madrid. The town is smaller; targets stand out more clearly against the sea; and the population is obviously demoralized. Incidentally a false alarm.

Later, interview with Colonel Villalba, officer in command of the Malaga forces. Admits frankly that things are going badly, but says that ten days ago, when he was appointed, they were still worse.

"I first inspected the most exposed front: the coast road Malaga-Marbella-Gibraltar," he tells me. "I found no trenches, no fortified positions, nothing but two Militiamen sitting smoking cigarettes a mile away from the enemy positions. 'Where are your troops?' I asked them. 'Somewhere in the barracks,' they replied. 'If the rebels were to attack, we should see them and have plenty of time to warn our men. Why should they sit out in the rain?'" Go to bed filled with gloomy forebodings; try to persuade myself that it is all imagination.  	

Saturday, January 30th.

Visit to the Marbella front. Drive along the coast road; no sign of a sentry until, after about thirty-five miles, we are stopped at a barricade of stones; this is the "front". To the right of the barricade the Militiamen have begun to dig a trench; they sit around, their spades on their knees. G. G. focuses her camera. "Comrades," cries the Commander, "get busy. You are being photographed." He asks us what we "think of his front". I ask him what he proposes to do when the tanks' arrive. He shrugs his shoulders. "I shall take my men up into the Sierra."

Sunday, January 31st.

Colonel Alfredo was supposed to be coming for us at 11 o'clock to take us to the Antequera sector. We wait for him in vain. At noon a Lieutenant of the Militia arrives and tells us that Alfredo is ill and that he has been deputed to take us to the front. We drive off about 4. I check our route by the map, for fear that we may take the wrong road and fall into the hands of the rebels. This may easily happen owing to the discontinuity and disorganisation of the Spanish fronts. It has happened to a number of journalists; and even to quite a large number of officers on both sides.

After twenty minutes it becomes clear that we have taken the wrong road. The names of the places don't tally. I draw the Lieutenant's attention to the mistake. He smiles at the foreigner who always thinks he knows best. As usual not a sign during the whole drive of a sentry, a patrol, or anything to suggest we are near the front lines. At last we come upon two Militiamen marching along the high road. It transpires that we have taken the wrong turning; we are on the Alfernate and not the Antequera road, which we meant to take. The next village is six or seven miles away, and is called Colmenar.

I ask in whose hands Colmenar is.

"Ours," says one of the Militiamen.  "No, the rebels'," says the other.

The Lieutenant is furious. Finally we drive on to Colmenar. At the last curve in the road before the village we all peer out, our hearts thumping; what are we going to see -- the green turbans of the Moors, or the black caps of the Militiamen?

Neither the one nor the other. There is no sign of any military personage in the whole of Colmenar. The front is seventeen miles further on to the north.

The Lieutenant suggests taking a field-path, not marked on the map, across country to Antequera. It is already dusk. We mutiny and insist on driving straight on. We won't hear of any unfamiliar field-paths. After half an hour we reach the front at Alfernate. It looks somewhat more reassuring than the sector we visited yesterday. There is a concrete shelter on both sides of the road. But the road itself is open. It runs straight on to the rebel positions, three miles away.

I ask the Captain in command of the sector why he hasn't blown up the road. He says indignantly that they would never do such a thing; they might need the road for a possible offensive. The shelters on both sides would suffice to stop an advance on the part of the enemy infantry.

"And what about tanks?"

The Captain shrugs his shoulders."Nothing's any use against tanks."

"All the same," I ask, "what are you going to do if they come?"

"We'll go up into the Sierra."

(As a matter of fact it was in this very sector that rebel tanks broke through five days later, thence to roll on unchecked to Malaga.)

Monday, February 1st.

To-day at last we managed to visit the Antequera front, which we tried to reach yesterday. It is the most picturesque and the craziest front I've seen in this war.  Just as nearly everywhere in Spain, with the exception of the sector round Madrid, the "front" here too is synonymous with the high road. Now the high road MalagaAntequera-Córdoba runs, just before passing through Antequera, over a high mountain pass. The mountain range is called Sierra el Torcal and is a spur of the Sierra Nevada. The pass is three thousand feet high. The ridge -- sheer rock -- looking down on the pass is about fifteen hundred feet above it. There, up above on the Devil's Rock, squats Captain Pizarro, gazing down at the road below to see if the rebels are coming. Beside him are a telephone and a steel wire. When the rebels come Pizarro is to telephone down to the post below. Since he is convinced that the telephone will fail to function at the critical moment, he has provided himself with the wire, which runs eight hundred yards to headquarters below; when he gives it a tug, a bell rings. Sometimes a bird comes and pecks at the wire, and then the alarm is sounded below.

This has been going on for six months; since the outbreak of the Civil War nothing has stirred in this picturesque sector but the clouds at Pizarro's feet as they drift from rebel into Government territory and thence back again.

Pizarro, by the way, claims to be a direct descendant of the conqueror of Peru. Six months ago, when he and his company first occupied this post, his men had neither blankets nor cartridges. The nights are cold in the Sierra, and at their feet lay the enemy town of Antequera, where there were sure to be cartridges and blankets in plenty. Captain Pizarro, feeling the blood of the Conquistadors in his veins, marched down one stormy night with a handful of men to Antequera, made a raid on the commissariat and came back with blankets and cartridges. Soon afterwards they ran short of cigarettes. So Pizarro raided Antequera and brought back cigarettes. Then came the spring and the peasants had no seed for sowing. The Alcalde made a solemn ascent to the Devil's Rock and suggested that Pizarro  	

should make a raid on Antequera and bring back seed corn. And Pizarro made a raid on Antequera and brought back seed corn.

Never before had any journalists, let alone foreign journalists, turned up in this isolated outpost of the Civil War. The occasion was duly celebrated. We went down to the post below, where a sheep was slaughtered; as we were sitting down to our meal someone from above pulled at the bell and from the hill opposite a salute was fired.

Pizarro gleefully showed us all his treasures: a machinegun (we each of us had to fire off a few rounds), his cavalry horses (two of them were led right into the peasants' living room where we were having our meal and they sniffed at the dish of mutton), and a chest full of hand-grenades (we were invited out of politeness to throw one, but we refused with thanks). G. G. in particular, charmed them, firstly because she was a woman, secondly because she was wearing trousers and thirdly because she had a camera. She was given a present of a live kid; it is lying down beside my typewriter as I type these lines, bleating for its mother and quite unaware of the fact that it is a symbol; a symbol of the excessive good-nature and childishness of this people who have had Moors set upon them too. . . .

Yes, why indeed?

I really cannot think of any reason.

Of course I also asked Pizarro, obsessed as I was with my idée fixe, what he proposed to do if there was a tank attack.

"Let them come," he said. "We shall strangle them with our naked hands, those devilish machines."

(Postscript, London, Autumn. They did come five days afterwards. I wonder whether Pizarro was killed outright or was only executed later.)

Tuesday, Februay 2nd.

Wrote an article in the morning.

Midday paid a visit to Sir Peter Chalmers-Mitchell.  	

He is the Grand Old Man of Malaga. In 1932, after having created the Whipsnade Zoo, the result of thirty years of planning, he bought a house here, to lead a peaceful and retired life. Peaceful indeed. . . . Adventurous spirits like him have a positive genius for getting themselves into messes with the most innocent air in the world. He has just finished his memoirs, "My Fill of Days." The well-cared-for house, half Spanish, half Victorian, and the neat garden, are just like an enchanted isle in this spectral town. We make friends at once; Sir Peter invites me to move to his house if the situation becomes critical. He is determined to stay on whatever happens. I have a vague feeling that I shall stay too. This town and its fate exert a strange and uncomfortable fascination over one. It is difficult to escape the spell.

When I think over what I have seen on the various fronts, it all seems hopeless. But the strangest thing of all is the absolute quiet on all the fronts. Malaga is bombed from the air at least once a day; at the front not a single shot is fired. The last rebel attack was carried out on the Granada and Gibraltar roads simultaneously ten days ago; since that, nothing. I have a growing impression that for some reason impossible to understand, like so much else that is inexplicable in this bizarre war, the insurgents have given up the idea of attacking Malaga. I have had several talks with Villalba; he has the same impression. The town is still without food and without munitions; but it looks as though in some miraculous way it will be saved -- a repetition of the miracle which saved Madrid in the days that followed November 6th, when the Caballero Government had fled to Valencia and Franco could have stepped into the Puerta del Sol at his leisure. By November 10th the defence had been organized and Franco had missed his chance.

After some hesitation I wire to the "News Chronicle";

"Growing impression rebel offensive overblown stop" 
 Wednesday, February 3rd.

Did some work, visited the Civil Governor, strolled about the town. At least fifty per cent of the town is in ruins. A veritable Pompeii. The other half, if possible, is in an even more wretched state. The majority of the shops, offices, banks, etc., are closed. The people in the street incredibly ragged, shabby, hungry, miserable. I am glad to be back in my hotel; we have moved to the Caleta Palace, which affords rather more protection against air raids. The hotel guests are mainly pilots. The one in the room above mine had his observer shot down yesterday. He sobbed the whole night long; there was a constant coming and going of comrades, trying to console him.

In the evening I learned at military headquarters that Queipo de Llano had begun a formidable offensive on the north-western sector. Nothing but grave faces at headquarters, general whispering, jumpiness. I have a feeling that the last act of the tragedy is about to begin.

What a fool I was to send off that optimistic telegram yesterday!

Thursday, February 4th.

The offensive began, surprisingly enough, in the sector Ardales -- El Burgo, and -- still more surprisingly -- it was repulsed. Watched the fighting from a hill. Horrible butchery. Spoke to a deserter, Antonio Pedro Jiménez, from Dos Hermanos, near Seville. Says that there is a newlyestablished munitions factory, built and run by Italians; says ten to twenty lorries are transporting Italian infantry to the front all through the night.

Visited headquarters late afternoon, asked Colonel Alfredo how things were going on. "Ça va mal," he replied. "Enemy attacking simultaneously on all sectors." Asked how long he thought the town could hold out. Answered three days at most. Can't get any message past the censor.  mechanism with obvious satisfaction. The pen was a present from my wife. I don't set over-great store by symbols, but the thought that my old pen, which I had used to write my first book on Spain, should fall as booty into the hands of a rebel officer was particularly galling to me.

When they had finished searching me, all that I had left was my wrist-watch, which they had fortunately overlooked.

I was taken back to the now dark room.

Again hours went by. I paced up and down, the rifles of the Civil Guards before my eyes, with a feeling of utter hopelessness. I had eaten nothing since breakfast, but didn't feel hungry. About 10 p.m. a non-commissioned officer came and  ordered me to be put into a lorry. Five men took their places behind me, their rifles on their knees, and the lorry drove off.

I was convinced that I was going to my execution. The streets of fallen Malaga were as dark as before. Soldiers were camped everywhere: Moors with their grubby green turbans, Phalangists and Foreign Legionaries. But no Italians were to be seen in the town; the rebel leaders obviously attached no importance to parading the national liberators before the eyes of the civilian population. In any case the civilian population apparently preferred to celebrate their liberation behind closed shutters.

The passage of our tumbril evoked the usual derisive jeers from the soldiers. I tried to discover in what part of the town we were -- I assumed that the execution, as is customary, would take place in the cemetery -- and puffed away furiously at the last but one of my English cigarettes. At this moment I felt neither excessive fear nor any other feeling except a wish that the whole thing might be over as quickly as possible and without further torture. I calculated that they could not possibly aim straight in the dark, and that they would therefore place me in front of the lorry's headlights or finish me off with a revolver shot as I alighted. This latter seemed to me an ideal way of dying; but out of superstition I did not dare to hope for it.

Finally I summoned up enough courage to ask a soldier. He said in quite matter-of-fact tones that I was not going to be shot yet, but taken to prison. Then he took a light from my cigarette and said to the man behind him:

"This fellow thought he was going to be shot at once."

"Rot," replied the man, whose face I could not see, over his shoulder in a good-humoured booming bass. "Rot. It's not such a quick business as all that, hombre."

Spaniards use hombre -- man -- in every sentence.

It was an immense relief, and at the same time a disappointment; waiting is always a torment for nervy people, and waiting without hope is the most ghastly thing possible. 
 	

We drove up to the prison, and the driver rang the night bell. That a prison should have a night bell is quite logical, but somehow it seemed odd to me. The great iron door opened, and we marched down a long, ill-lit corridor into the office. I was searched all over again, and made to strip down to my underclothes. One official tapped the soles of my shoes with an iron hammer, another passed his hands through my hair. Having an aversion to sock-suspenders, I always wear golf stockings, and the official asked me whether I had ever disguised myself as a woman. Once again I had to grin in spite of my despair.

"Lleva calcetines de mujer," (wears women's stockings), wrote the official in my record. As he was doing so, I managed to catch a glimpse of the record that had been made out by Captain Bolín and was lying on the table in front of the official. I read that I was a very dangerous character -- I presume that was because of the hypodermic needle -- that I should be most carefully guarded and kept incomunicado -- that is to say, isolated; and that I was a caso internacional -- an international case -- or spy.

And now, to crown all, came the "women's stockings". The chain of evidence was complete.

Finally my finger-prints were taken, and I was allowed to put all my clothes on again with the exception of my belt, which was kept in the office.

Then I was taken to a cell.

For the first time I heard the sound of a cell door being slammed from outside.

It is a unique sound. A cell door has no latch, either outside or inside; it cannot be shut except by being slammed to. It is made of massive steel and concrete, about four inches thick, and every time it falls to there is a resounding  	

crash just as though a shot has been fired. But this report dies away without an echo. Prison sounds are echo-less and bleak.

When the door has been slammed behind him for the first time, the prisoner stands in the middle of the cell and looks round. I fancy that everyone must behave in more or less the same way.

First of all he gives a fleeting look round the walls and takes a mental inventory of all the objects in what is now to be his domain:

    the iron bedstead, the wash-basin, the W. C., the barred window.

His next action is invariably to try to pull himself up by the iron bars of the window and look out. He fails, and his suit is covered with white from the plaster on the wall against which he has pressed himself. He desists, but decides to practise and master the art of pulling himself up by his hands. Indeed, he makes all sorts of good resolutions; he will do exercises every morning and learn a foreign language, and he simply won't let his spirit be broken. He dusts his suit and continues his voyage of exploration round his puny realm -- five paces long by four paces broad. He tries the iron bedstead. The springs are broken, the wire mattress sags and cuts into the flesh; it's like lying in a hammock made of steel wire. He sits up. He pulls a face, being absolutely determined to prove that he is full of courage and confidence. Then his gaze rests on the cell door, and he sees that an eye is glued to the spy-hole and is watching him.

The eye goggles at him glassily, its pupil unbelievably big; it is an eye without a man attached to it, and for a few moments the prisoner's heart stops beating.

The eye disappears and the prisoner takes a deep breath and presses his hand against the lhat I was going to be handed over to the special jurisdiction of General Queipo de Llano aroused in me a feeling akin to that of a roamer in the jungle who has inadvertently trodden on the tail of a tiger.

We got into the train. It was an ancient train with a funny little engine and funny little carriages that looked like wooden boxes on wheels. We wormed our way into a  	

third class compartment in which a large peasant family was already installed: father, mother, grandmother, a half-grown daughter and a baby. The family moved up closer to one another and respectfully left the two corner seats by the window to the two Civil Guards. I sat next to the lanky Don Pedro; next me was the mother with the baby, opposite me the grandmother, and next to her in the corner the adolescent daughter. She was very pretty, and she cast stealthy glances at my grimy, but still recognizably foreign, suit. I kept my hands hidden in my sleeves like a monk, so that the handcuffs were not immediately visible. The train ambled off.

The grandmother had already got into conversation with Don Pedro and Don Luis. At first they talked of the weather, then about the orange crop, then about the war. I learned that Motril had fallen some time ago, and that the fall of Almería was hourly expected. Both the peasants and my guards avoided expressing any opinion or taking sides; they referred to Franco's army not as "los nuestros", "our people", but as "los Nacionales". The guards referred to the other side as "los Rojos" (the Reds) but the grandmother spoke of them as "los Valencianos". The family came from Antequera, the village that Pizarro used to raid for cigarettes and seed corn. In the first chaotic days after the insurrection they had fled to Malaga to take refuge with relatives and had been unable to return to their own village, which was on the other side of the Front. Then "los Nacionales" had taken Malaga, and now they were returning home.

Don Luis asked the husband what things had been like in Malaga under the Reds.

The man shrugged his shoulders and said that he had never troubled his head about politics. and on this side the Germans and Italians. Then she clapped her hand to her mouth, and enquired with a sly, apologetic smile if I were a German airman.

No, I told her, I was an English journalist.

The daughter looked at me with interest. Don Pedro and Don Luis grinned, but tactfully and discreetly held their tongues.

The grandmother wanted to know what the King of England thought about "the whole Spanish muddle".

I said that His Majesty had not yet come to any final conclusion, for the opinions of his advisers were somewhat contradictory.

Whereupon Don Pedro enquired, giving a crafty wink and baring his equine teeth, whether there were also "Reds" in England. Don Luis too winked at me and burst out into raucous laughter. They both nudged me with their knees, and would obviously have been offended if I had not shared in their mirth. I did my best and joined in. It was a little secret between the three of us.

"After all," said the grandmother, "he's a Red himself."

This remark released a positive flood of laughter from Don Pedro and Don Luis, and the grandmother was very proud of her joke.

And since we were all in such merry mood, she took down from the rack, with the help of the mother, their basket of provisions and a bottle of red wine.

She offered us lovely red paprika sausage and cheese and white bread and wine. The Civil Guards accepted with alacrity; I refused. The whole family pressed me to eat. I did not move my hands from my sleeves. It was a ghastly situation. The guards looked at each other; then Don Luis seized me firmly by the arm and removed the handcuffs. The whole family literally goggled, and sat there in a state of suspended animation, like wax figures in a panopticon.

"Holy Mother of God!" cried the grandmother. Then she looked at me and added softly: 

Ty prison courtyard. It was protected by a solid iron grille, and outside the grille was fixed fine wire-netting, rather like a steel mosquito net.

Against the wall to the right was the iron bedstead, which could be folded back against the wall to allow more room for pacing up and down; opposite it was a steol table with a chair welded to it, also collapsible. At the foot of the bed was a large wash basin with running water; opposite it the W.C.

The warder tested the straw mattress, to which was attached a linen tab with a date stamped on it, obviously to show when the straw had last been changed and the mattress cleaned. He brought in a good woollen blanket and said that he would change both mattress and blanket for 

The grandmother said that it was foreigners who were to blame for the whole tragedy; on the other side the Russians,   elegantly dressed men with immaculate creases in their trousers and brightly polished shoes paced up and down apart from the others, with portentous expressions. I christened them "the dandies" and wondered what could have brought them here.

I wondered, too, whether all these men were political prisoners or criminals. Their faces seemed to suggest the former: but I noticed that about nine or ten of them were wearing a stripe in the Bourbon colours on their shirts, and that these were by no means shunned by the rest. This did not fit in with my ideas as to the atmosphere amongst political prisoners.

Everyone in the courtyard was smoking, and tobacco and cigarette papers were being handed round freely. After having been treated to cigarettes on the journey, I found my renewed abstinence particularly hard. I bored a tiny hole with my index finger in the wire mosquito net in front of my window -- large enough Jor a cigarette to be pushed through. It was quite easy; I only had to force the wires apart a little. I knew that the inside of my cell must appear dark from the courtyard and so I pressed my face against the iron bars and began to make signs to those outside that I wanted sometling to smoke.

At first I had a feeling that it was only by chance that no one looked in my direction. I began to call out, but there was such a din in the quadrangle that I found it difficult to make myself heard; for after all I did not want to shout. All the same, those nearest to me must have heard. But no one responded.

To be ignored in this way gave me an extremely uncomfortable feeling. Now I noticed, too, that some of the prisoners could perfectly well hear and see my signals as they passed, but quickly averted their heads. And once more it occurred to me that no one came within ten paces of that part of the wall where my cell was.

At last I saw one of the peasant lads in a linen jacket 
 drawing the attention of some of the others to my window. But he did so very discreetly. Three or four of his companions looked stealthily in my direction. I gesticulated more vehemently and signed to them to pass a cigarette through to me. They seemed worried and at a loss to know what to do, and looked round anxiously at the warder, although he was at the further end of the courtyard. Then one of them quickly put a finger to his lips and shrugged his shoulders, and the group hurried off.

It takes some time to make out details in the chaotic bustle and stir of a courtyard containing three or four hundred people. Thus it was not until now that I noticed that a faded and scarcely visible white line, rather like the marking on a neglected tennis court, was drawn parallel to my wall. The line began at the end of my row of cells, in front of No. 44, the cell containing Caballero, ran past my window, and ended some cells further to the left, as far as I could tell in front of cell No. 36. Further down, from No. 35 downwards, the prisoners approached the wall quite freely and spoke to the inmates of the cells through the windows. But from Nos. 36 to 44 there was a no-man's land ten yards wide between the wall and the white line. The cells opposite this line, which included mine, were obviously taboo.

I also realized now that the men in the courtyard were afraid. Afraid of being watched. They obviously knew that every one of their movements was being spied upon. They could see what I could not see; that from the upper storey windows watchful glances were cast at the court below. The noisy, unhampered goings-on outside my window turned out to be an illusion. There must be something peculiar and uncanny behind all this demonstrative gaiety.

I suddenly felt as though I were present at a ghostly carnival. It seemed to me as though all these men who were playing football and leapfrog and strolling about in the bright sunshine of the courtyard were only waiting for the second cock-crow.  	

Why had I been put into one of the taboo cells? Why was I not allowed to join the others, in the court and why were the prisoners in the court so afraid of looking in my direction? Was it indeed fear -- or was it the instinctive dread with which the healthy avert their gaze from the gravely ill, who bear the stamp of death on their brows?

And now at last I admitted to myself what had gradually been dawning on me from the start. I had been put in one of the condemned cells.

The midday meal arrived: bean soup cooked in oil and a hunk of white bread. The soup was served in the same bowl out of which I had drunk my breakfast coffee and had slaked my thirst with water. Once more it was Angelito who brought me my food, this time, however, accompanied by a warder. The warder had a red full-moon face, and spoke a little French. He was glad to be able to air his knowledge to a foreigner, and listened patiently while I enumerated my requests: I wanted to be shaved, I wanted a bit of soap, a comb and a towel; I wanted pencil and paper in order to write to the British Consul; I wanted a book to read from the prison library, and some newspapers; I wanted to be allowed out into the courtyard like the other prisoners; I wanted back the money that had been confiscated from me to buy cigarettes and a change of linen.

He listened to all this attentively, and nodded after each sentence as though to indicate that he considered my wishes quite proper and reasonable.

I said that he had better write them down so as not to forget anything.

He replied that he never forgot anything, for he had a very good memory, and tapped his forehead to emphasize this. Then he said that he would come back in a moment, and disappeared. I waited for him to return, and he did in fact return -- exactly a fortnight later, when his turn of  	

duty brought him to my cell again. He was just as friendly, talked away just as assiduously as the first time, and listened just as patiently while I enumerated exactly the same requests that I had repeated three times a day for a fortnight to his fellow-warders -- and with just as little success.

The midday meal arrived shortly before one; at one the prisoners were brought back into their cells from the courtyard. The siesta in Spain lasts from one to three; in offices, factories, at the front and in prison.

For about a quarter of an hour the great quadrangle lay empty and deserted.

Then immediately opposite my cell the door was opened and two prisoners were let out into the courtyard.

They were both very tidily and neatly dressed. They immediately began to march up and down at a rapid pace. One had a slightly swaying, dandified gait, and something definitely daring and enterprising about him. I christened him "LordByron". His friend was quieter and more selfcontained; his cheeks were extraordinarily hollow, and he gave one the impression of being a consumptive.

They walked up and down the whole length of the courtyard without stopping for two hours, until the stroke of three. Then a warder took them back into the prison. Ten minutes later the crowd of the morning was once more let out into the courtyard.

I passed the afternoon spying out of my alcove window, but I no longer tried to signal or to get into touch with the throng outside. I was glad enough for no one to look in the direction of my window, glad to take part in the brilliant life outside as a silent and invisible onlooker.

Shortly before seven the evening meal was brought: lentil soup cooked in oil and a hunk of bread.

The prisoners were fed outside.

Shortly before eight they were brought back into the building. The empty courtyard was soon flooded with darkness.  At nine a bugle was sounded. At ten the Spanish last post, a very sentimental and melancholy melody, was sounded.

In the cell above me someone took his shoes off and let them fall with a clatter on to the stone floor.

Then the noises died down and the deaf silence of the prison filled every crack and cranny as though with cotton wool.

But the electric light in my cell burned the whole night long.
V

DURING THIS SECOND night in Seville I repeatedly started up out of my dreams, thinking I could hear noises and the oily voice of the Malaga prison. But there was utter silence. It was good to have a light burning, even though the bulb in the ceiling shone straight into my eyes.

Electric lights scare away nocturnal spectres. Still drowsy from my nightmare, I told myself that this was a real prison and not a slaughter-house like the place in Malaga; after seven months of civil war conditions had no doubt become normal again. Here there were certainly no more executions. True, I had been put in a condemned cell, but that probably meant nothing at all. The day here had its prescribed course, life was ordered, there were bugleblasts, even the mattresses bore tabs stamped with the date. Incidentally it occurred to me that, despite the warder's promise, my mattress and blanket had not been changed. This annoyed me; and then I felt glad at being able to get annoyed again about trifles. Lord, I begged, go on giving me my little daily vexations. Permit me, O Lord, to continue to be discontented with this existence, to curse my work, not to answer my letters, and to be a trial to my friends. Am I to swear to grow better if Thou lettest this cup pass from me? We both of us know, Lord, Thou and I, that such extorted oaths are never kept. Do not blackmail me, Lord God, and do not try to make a saint of me. Amen. Then the bugle-blast woke me: up.

 This time I got up at once, washed and tidied myself as well as I could without soap and comb, and cleaned out the cell; I was full of good resolutions to adapt myself to the new order of things. A tune from a German film haunted me: "A new life is just beginning." It was a stupid film which I had seen a year previously and never given a thought to again. In the night the tune had buzzed in my ear like a tiresome fly, and I couldn't get rid of it. "A new life is just beginning."

At eight the prisoners came out into the courtyard again, and I took up my observation post. By now I seemed to myself to be like some Parisian petit-bourgeois who, in shirtsleeves and with pipe in mouth, leans out of the window to watch the stir and bustle of the market.

Later on I busied myself with the equation of a hyperbola again. The walls of this cell were beautifully white and unsullied, and provided an extensive surface upon which to write. A piece of wire from my bedstead once more served me for pencil.

I also began to scrawl my diary on the wall, but I stuck over it. As long as I was thinking them out, my sentences seemed quite sensible, but no sooner had I begun to scribble them down than I fell as though bewitched into the sentimental penny novelette style. At midday there were beans in oil again. I wondered whether they cooked once for the whole week.

Punctually at one Byron and the consumptive once more appeared in the courtyard, to disappear punctually again at three. I racked my brains wondering what crime they could have committed not to be allowed out with the rest of the prisoners; I decided they must be in a kind of intermediate stage between the solitary confinement in which I was kept and the comparative freedom of the others.

That afternoon a minor catastrophe befell me; my watch stopped. It gave me an awful fright. I thought to myself that if there were no longer any ladder-rungs of hours and minutes on which to cling, I should be bound to sink  beyond hope of salvation into the stupefying sameness of time. But I poked about among the wheels with my iron all-purpose gadget until it went again.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in mathematics, reciting poetry and the Trojan war.

Then once more there was lentil soup and the last post.

And once more an electrically lighted night set in.

The next day was Tuesday, February 16th. I had already scratched strokes on the wall so as not to lose count of time according to conventional reckoning.

The first thing that the morning bugle-blast impressed on my consciousness was that it was a week to-day since my arrest. I thought to myself that dates were kept in prison in very much the same way as in the case of newly born infants; first of all the weeks were celebrated, then the months, then the years.

To-day it was the turn of Bible history, then French literature. But these subjects had little attraction for me. I realized with horror that my education consisted chiefly of lacunae, and that the moths had devoured it like old academic robes. I just could not concentrate, or lose myself in a day-dream. The footballers in the courtyard observed no offside rules; they irritated and bored me. The helm of my thoughts no longer responded to my touch. I turned the wheel in vain; it ran free. I killed time by killing flies. In the midst of this occupation I had an attack of Thou-Shalt-Not-Kill feelings; it was like a slight touch of religious mania. All attempts to think rationally hurt me physically, and I had a feeling that all the nerve centres of my brain were inflamed.

The barometer fell and fell. "Change" had long since been passed, the needle had long since travelled through "storm, wind, and rain"; all that was left was dense gloomy fog and depression.

And, to crown all, another sleepless night, which, without  	

transition, dragged in its wake the next day, the eighth, with its repetition of bugle-calls, oily beans, of still more pitiable and unsuccessful attempts to think, to pull oneself together, to be a thinking being and not a pitiful rag.

On the afternoon of this eighth day I had a feeling that it was impossible to sink any lower. I thought, as one does in one's naïveté, that the stage would soon be reached when madness would set in. Then it occurred to me that Dante had sat chained to a bench in a dark dungeon for four years, unable either to pace to and fro or lie down. For four years, that is, one thousand five hundred days. And he did not go mad. So not even the hope of going mad was left.

I tried to keep this example before my eyes; and the fate of Roman slaves and prisoners chained to the galleys; and to take heart from the consoling thought of the relatively "lesser evil". But that is one of the tritest of consolations. It has always infuriated me to hear a mother exhorting a child who refuses to eat its nasty porridge to think of "the poor children who have nothing to eat". There is a degree of misery where all quantitative comparisons cease to mean anything. To tell a man who has had a foot amputated that there are others who have had both feet amputated is not to console him but to jeer at him. Moreover, it occurred to me, an ordinary "lifer" has one advantage; at least he knows that he is not going to be hanged, and so adapts himself. A life sentence is after all a life sentence, and affords a certain psychological minimum in his existence: security and the cessation of fear. One gets used to everything, runs an old saying. Uncertainty is almost as bad as death, says another.

These were monotonous reflections and they went round in my head like a mill-wheel; a threepenny mill-wheel of the cheapest and commonest wood.

Moreover, I had no need to envy the "lifers" much longer. Three days later I received the first official communication from the authorities. I had been condemned  	

to death, but this sentence might be commuted to life-long imprisonment.

In the midst of all this misery a Messiah appeared at half-past four, in the person of the barber.

During these first few days I was continually being surprised by my own psychological reactions. The unusual conditions in which I was living produced unusual reactions; the whole machinery of my mind functioned according to new laws, completely strange to me. I felt like a driver who thinks he knows his car inside out and then suddenly realizes that it responds to pressure on the accelerator with a swerve and to the application of the brakes by looping the loop. The appearance of the barber, for example, precipitated such an earthquake in my feelings that I literally had to clutch on to the water-tap so as not to fall down. I felt, horribile dictu, my eyes grow moist. The barber was reflected through the prisms of the tear-drops in my eyes in all the colours of the rainbow, in a shimmering halo. He was the redeemer who was to save me from every ill. He had come, and all was well again, and the granite blocks of my fears and misery floated off gracefully into the air as though they had been filled with gas.

In the physics of madness a pebble can not only set an avalanche in motion but can also stop it.

The avalanche of my despair melted away into the white flakes of the soft foam with which the barber lathered my cheeks. Ring the bells, ring the bells, I am being shaved; I am back on earth again.

Whilst I was being shaved Don Antonio; the nice warder who had been on duty in the patio the day before, stood by supervising the ceremonial.

He was the first warder to enter into a real conversation  with me; for since I was incomunicado it was forbidden to talk to me, and up till now the warders had confined themselves to a few monosyllabic remarks when bringing me my food. The cell was like a vault enclosed in three-fold armourplating; the three-fold wall of silence, loneliness and fear.

Oh, the immense solace of simple human friendliness! The barber soaped away, Don Antonio sat down and smoked on the bed, and the three-fold wall collapsed like the walls of Jericho. The barber asked me whether the razor scratched. I said that it was a very fine razor. Don Antonio asked me whether I wished to smoke. I said that I would very much like to smoke. The barber shaved away. Don Antonio rolled me a cigarette and lit it for me. Oh, Susanna, oh, Susanna, life is lovely after all!

Every heavy smoker knows that the first cigarette after several days of abstinence produces a feeling of slight tipsiness. I smoked almost without stopping, taking deep, thirsty puffs, and the cell began to rock slightly.

A few minutes later, when the barber had begun to cut my hair, I had gained control of myself sufficiently to enter into a sensible conversation with Don Antonio.

I learned that the inmates of the big patio were actually all political prisoners; partly war prisoners, partly Republicans, Socialists, Communists and Anarchists from Seville and the surrounding villages.

In addition there were a number of Phalangists and Legionaries from Franco's army who had been imprisoned on account of desertion or breaches of discipline. There were even two Moors; I had heard one the evening before gurgling melancholy Arabian songs.

Don Antonio refused to say a word about the lengths of the sentences or discuss the question of the prisoners' trials; but he shrugged his shoulders expressively and I gained the impression that the majority of the prisoners, particularly the peasants, who were suspect because of their views, had not been brought to trial at all. 
 	

A few prisoners also had been brought over from Malaga a week previously. But they were no longer there. I asked with understandable interest what had become of them.

"Se marcharon" (they have gone), said Don Antonio, with a shrug of the shoulders, and he refused to say anything more on this point.

I asked whether there were any criminals in the prison.

"A few," said Don Antonio. "They exercise over there in the 'beautiful patio'." The "beautiful patio" was in the other wing; it was smaller, and there were flowers, trees and benches in it. Formerly -- by formerly Don Antonio always meant the time of the Republic -- formerly the beautiful patio had been for political prisoners, and the big or ordinary one for criminals. Now things had been reversed.

The riddle of the national cockade worn by the political prisoners was also cleared up. Cockades were sewn on to the shirts of those prisoners who performed some particular function, like Angelito, the orderly, the librarian, etc. I asked what sort of curious bird Angelito was. Don Antonio said he was a petty criminal; he had beaten his mother-in-law with a leather strap; luckily she had not died, but had only been paralysed on one side.

Finally I asked Don Antonio what he thought of my own personal prospects. But this was the third point on which Don Antonio refused to be drawn.

On parting I enumerated my usual list of requests, from money to pencil, from Consul to soap. He promised, as all the other warders had promised, to see to everything promptly; the result was exactly the same as in the case of all the others. This combination of utter good nature and utter unreliability in the Spaniards again and again had the effect on me of some natural phenomenon. "Mañana, mañana" (to-morrow, to-morrow) they said, with the most enchanting smile, or "ahora, ahora" (in a moment, in a moment). Both these expressions are used synonymously, and mean, according to the context: "Some  	

time; perhaps; we must hope for the best; Allah is great; there's no need to despair."

On departing, Don Antonio gave me ten cigarettes and the barber the broken half of an old greasy comb and a bit of soap. These were simply terrific presents. My standard of life was beginning to rise perceptibly.

On the afternoon of this Wednesday and the morning of the Thursday that followed it the fine weather persisted. I gave myself up again to my mental pursuits and amused myself by inventing a peripatetic dialogue between Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud on the causes of the Great WarBoth wore white togas, spoke in the manner of the disciples of Socrates, and flapped their white drapery excitedly in the midst of a group of admiring young men.

At midday there was potato soup for the first time, with so much red pepper in it that the oil gleamed a bright scarlet. My standard of life was unmistakably rising, and, following the Coué system, I scratched on the wall: "Every day, in every way, things are getting better and better."

That afternoon, however, it rained, and the courtyard remained empty. I missed the usual hubbub and I carried on a desperate windmill struggle against a fresh wave of melanchely.

In the evening there was a sensation. Don Antonio was. on duty again, and he asked me, while Angelito was ladling out the lentil soup into my bowl what English prisons were like. I said hastily that I would gladly tell him everything about them if he would stay a while and not bang the door in my face this time. I was avid of every word I was permitted to exchange with a fellow human being. Don Antonio stood leaning against the door somewhat hesitatingly. He said that he had wondered for a long time whether there were baths in every cell in English prisons. I said there were no baths, but hot and cold showers and soap ad lib. Don Antonio said that when the war was over  he was going to England to study prison conditions there. I said that he must come and stay with me so that I might have an opportunity of returning his hospitality. He laughed and went off. I begged him to stay a while, but once more he banged the door in my face.

But these few trifling words had the effect of a stimulating drug, the effect of which lasted several hours.

And then the last post sounded again, and it was time to take off one's shoes, lie down fully dressed on the bed and, the electric light burning above one's head, to play "catch-as-catch-can" with sleep, which is, after all, one way of passing the time.

And I blessed the wisdom of the Lord, who has so ordered the world that the day has only twenty-four hours and not twenty-five or thirty.
VI

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19TH, began, like all other days, with my scratching a fresh mark on my wall calendar. I discovered that a week had gone by since I had been brought to Seville -- another "celebration day". Three more days, and I should be able to celebrate the fourteenth day since my arrest. The little marks on the wall displayed a dangerous tendency to increase by division like bacilli on a dung-heap. And still I had not been brought up for trial, had not even been informed officially of the reason for my arrest. Bolín, who had arrested me, had presumably long since returned to the Salamanca headquarters, and Queipo de Llano, to whose paternal care he had handed me over, did not seem to be taking an exactly lively interest in me.

I worked out the most varying theories as to what was going on behind the scenes. The most likely explanation seemed to me that Queipo had sent for my dossier and that some authority or other was at the moment too busy to translate my book and my articles, amongst them my inter 	

view with Queipo himself, which were to constitute the main body of the evidence against me. If this were the case, then I had no cause to rejoice at the time thus gained.

On the other hand I was convinced that protests must by now have been got going on my behalf. The "News Chronicle" would protest, the journalists' associations would protest, and quite a nice little scandal would be raised. But what did Franco care about protests? Not a brass farthing. It had become a tradition during the last few years that dictators acted and democracies protested, a division of labour which seemed to please everybody.

At five o'clock in the afternoon, however, the unfriendly powers in whose hands my fate lay sent their first deputation to me. They employed, oddly enough, as official emissary, not a military examiner or any other dignitary of that kind, but a smiling young lady. She wore a wellfitting Phalangist uniform, was called Helena, like the goddess who kindled the Trojan war, and acted on the side as correspondent of the American Hearst Press.

She arrived in the company of two equally elegant young officers.

It was, as I have said, on the stroke of five that the key rattled in the lock, the door swung open and the three of them strode into my cell. They greeted me with extreme politeness and then looked round, somewhat at a loss, for something to sit upon.

The sudden opening of his cell door at a time other than the regular feeding time is always a shock to a prisoner. For the first few moments I was thrown into such confusion by the sight of the three uniformed figures that I murmured some idiotic kind of apology at being unable to offer the young lady anything better to sit on than my iron bedstead. But she only smiled -- a rather charming smile it seemed to me -- and asked if my name were Koestler, and whether I spoke English. To both questions I replied in the affirmative. 
 Then she asked me whether I were a Communist. To this I had to reply in the negative.

"But you are a Red, aren't you?"

I said that I was in sympathy with the Valencia Government, but did not belong to any party.

The young lady asked me whether I was aware what would be the consequence of my activities.

I said that I was not.

"Well," she said, "it means death."

She spoke with an American twang, drawling out the vowel sound in "death" so that it sounded like "dea-ea-h-th", and watched the effect.

I asked why.

Because, she said, I was supposed to be a spy.

I said that I was not, and that I had never heard of a spy who signed articles and a book attacking one side in a war and then afterwards went into the territory of that side with his passport in his pocket.

She said that the authorities would investigate that point, but that in the meantime General Franco had been asked by the "News Chronicle" and by Mr. Hearst of New York to spare my life; that she happened to be the correspondent of the Hearst Press in Spain, and that General Franco had said that I would be condemned to death, but that he might possibly grant a commutation of my sentence.

I asked her what exactly she meant by a commutation.

"Well, lifelong imprisonment. But there is always hope of an amnesty, you know," she said, with her charming smile.

A perfect cyclone of thoughts rushed through my head. First of all I had had a set of dirty postcards to thank for my life, and now here was Randolph Hearst himself as my second saviour -- my guardian angels seemed to be a somewhat poor lot. And then, what was the significance of that fateful phrase, "might possibly grant a commutation"?

But I had not much time for reflection. The young lady  on my bed asked me in charming conversational tones if I would like to make a statement to her paper with regard to my feelings towards General Franco.

I was pretty bewildered by all this, but not so bewildered as not to perceive the fateful connection between this question and that "might possibly" of General Franco's. This was something like a Biblical temptation, although Satan was presenting himself in the smiling mask of a young woman journalist; and at that moment -- after all those hellish days of waiting for torture and death -- I had not the moral strength to resist.

So I said that although I did not know Franco personally I had a feeling that he must be a man of humanitarian outlook whom I could trust implicitly. The young lady wrote this down, seemingly very pleased, and asked me to sign it.

I took the pen, and then I realized that I was about to sign my own moral death sentence, and that this sentence no one could commute. So I crossed out what she had written and dictated another statement, which ran:

    "I do not know General Franco personally, nor he me; and so, if he grants me a commutation of my sentence I can only suppose that it is mainly out of political considerations.

    Nevertheless, I could not but be personally grateful to him, just as any man is grateful to another who saves his life. But I believe in the Socialist conception of the future of humanity, and shall never cease to believe in it."

This statement I signed.

The temptation of Satan had been resisted, and I patted myself inwardly on the back and rejoiced at having a clear head once more. I had good need of it too, for Miss Helena's next question was what did I actually mean by a "Socialist conception of the future of humanity"?

This question called for an academic dissertation, and I  was about to launch forth on one. But the three Phalangists were hardly a sympathetic audience for my passionate rhetorical efforts. The young lady cut me short and suggested the lapidary formula:

"Believes in Socialism to give workers chance."

She said Americans understood things the better the more briefly they were put.

In God's name, I said, Amen.

Then she asked me how I could account for the fact that I had stayed in Malaga after the Reds had gone.

I tried to explain with, as far as possible, American brevity, the whole complicated story of Sir Peter, Alfredo's car, and the whole apocalyptic atmosphere in Malaga. I myself felt that it did not sound very convincing.

But she was courteous enough not to express any doubts, and I asked her what had happened to Sir Peter.

She told me that he too was in prison. This was untrue; Sir Peter had by this time long since been on English soil and was moving heaven and earth to secure my release. But that was precisely what I was not to be told.

On leaving, my fellow-journalist of the Hearst Press further told me that she worked with Captain Bolín in the Press and Propaganda Department at the Salamanca headquarters, that Madrid was on the point of falling, and that she would try to arrange for me to be moved to a better prison. I said that I should be most grateful to her if she could do this, for General Queipo and I had a longstanding aversion to each other.

"Thank you so-o-o much," she said. The officers saluted once again with extreme politeness, and off went the three of them; and I sank exhausted on to my bed, which now smelt most unwontedly of some Parisian perfume.

I was incapable of collecting my thoughts. Death sentence, life-long imprisonment, the correspondent of the Hearst Press, the Propaganda Department, the Phalangist uniform and the perfume were altogether too much for my poor head.  	

The visit of the correspondent of the Hearst Press acting on behalf of the Propaganda Department -- or should I say the visit of the female Phalangist acting on behalf of the Hearst Press -- to whose competence I pay full tributetook place on February 19th. It was the only official contact I had, during the course of three months, with the authorities who held me prisoner. The first and last official examination of me by an examining magistrate took place on May 8th, four days before my release.

The day after this visit I felt enormous relief. The second day I remembered the fateful "might possibly"; the third day it became an obsession.

Doubt is a bacillus that eats slowly but surely into the brain; the patient positively feels the dirty little beast grazing on his grey matter. But in every long-drawn-out illness the patient eventually reaches a stage in which he has, it is true, not reconciled himself to the pain, but has succeeded in arriving at a modus vivendi with his illness; he knows how to behave when the attack comes on. Mental misery likewise comes on in spasms; it is only in bad novels that people are in a permanent state of unhappiness for the whole twenty-four hours of the day. The real man spends at least twelve hours in eating, drinking, working and other distractions that banish his misery into the dungeons of his consciousness. From there the agony makes itself heard only as a muffled bass in the symphony of the daily round and produces a vague feeling of uneasiness. Uneasiness and not unhappiness is the most common form of human suffering. Until an acute attack comes on; and then one simply takes a pill.

Every man needs a different pill to help him to arrive at a modus vivendi with his misery. Job cursed God when his sores festered; the prisoners in Malaga sang the International. I,  too, had my pills, a whole collection of various sorts of them, from the equation of a hyperbola and "my fill of days" to every kind of synthetic product of the spiritual pharmacy.

In other words, the human spirit is able to call upon certain aids of which, in normal circumstances, it has no knowledge, and the existence of which it only discovers in itself in abnormal circumstances. They act, according to the particular case, either as merciful narcotics or ecstatic stimulants. Anyone who has ever gone in peril of his life knows that dream-like feeling of having his consciousness split in two, so that with one half of it he observes himself with comparative coolness and aloofness, as though observing a stranger. This partial paralysis of the consciousness is one form of narcotic; there are many others. The consciousness sees to it that its complete annihilation is never experienced. It does not divulge the secret of its existence and its decay. No one is allowed to look into the darkness with his eyes open; he is blindfolded beforehand.

This is why situations lived through are never so bad in reality as in imagination. Nature sees to it that trees do not grow beyond a certain height, not even the trees of suffering.

I actually had no fear of the moment of execution; but only feared the fear that would precede that moment. The oily voice was far more terrible to me than the crack of the rifles which it conjured up.

The days went by.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

It was on Friday that I had received the visitors who brought the momentous news; from then to the next Friday the entries in my prison calendar are blank -- no memorable event took place.

By memorable events are understood, in the murky bell-jar of prison, things like getting potato soup instead of  	

bean soup for the midday meal, a few privately exchanged words with the warder or the orderly, a cigarette given one by the warder, a spider in the window, or a bug in the bed. These are breath-taking experiences, they employ and stimulate the free-running mechanism of thought for hours at a time. They are substitutes for visits to the movies, making love, reading the newspapers and the cares of daily life. Storms in teacups are, for those whose horizon extends no farther than the rim of the cup, quite as real as storms at sea.

The seven blank spaces on my calendar represented, then, the most absolute degree of uneventfulness imaginable. Nothing, not the least thing, not the least fraction of the least thing, happened which might cause the faintest breath of air to stir the idle sails of the windmill of time. Just as the bear, hibernating, feeds on his own fat, so did I, in my head, feed from the dishes of thirty years of reading, learning and living. But my brain was drained dry and the few drops of thought that I squeezed out of it were pale, like thrice-brewed tea.

It is a peculiar mechanism, the brain; it manufactures only if a market through the medium of the word or the pen is assured it beforehand. If there is no demand for its products, it goes on strike. One can fool it for a time by pretending to oneself to be the public; but it soon sees through the swindle. One's own ego is by no means an entertaining companion. After six weeks of solitary confinement I was so sick of myself that I only spoke to myself in formal terms and addressed myself as "Sir".

The astonishing thing, the puzzling thing, the consoling thing about this time was that it passed. I am speaking the plain unvarnished truth when I say that I did not know how. I tried to catch it in the act. I lay in wait for it, I riveted my eyes on the second hand of my watch, resolved to think of nothing else but pure time. I held it like the simpleton in the fable who thought that to catch a bird you had to put salt on its tail. I stared at the second hand for minutes on end, for quarters of an hour on end, until my eyes  watered with the effort of concentration and a kind of trancelike stupor set in -- and what I did not know afterwards was how long a time I had been observing its passing.

Time crawled through this desert of uneventfulness as though paralysed in both feet. I have said that the astonishing and consoling thing was that in this pitiable state it should pass at all. But there was something that was more astonishing, that positively bordered on the miraculous, and that was that this time, these interminable hours, days and weeks, passed more swiftly than a period of time has ever passed for me before. . . .

I was conscious of this paradox whenever I scratched a fresh mark on the white plaster of the wall, and with a particular shock of astonishment when I drew a circle round the marks to celebrate the passage of the weeks and, later, the months. What, another week, a whole month, a whole quarter of a year? Didn't it seem only like yesterday that this cell door had banged to behind me for the first time?

Everyone is familiar with these paradoxes of time. It seems that those days which, owing to their uneventfulness and dreariness, seem longest, shrink to nothing as soon as they have become the past, precisely because of their uneventfulness. In the perspective of the past they have no extension, no volume, no specific gravity; they become geometric points, a diminishing vacuum, nothing. The greater the sum of blank days, the lighter their weight in the memory. The time that, when it is the present, passes most slowly, passes swiftest of all in the memory.

And the converse is also true. When events pile one upon the other and time gallops -- then and only then is the span of time traversed cherished in all its details in the memory. The periods that pass most swiftly are in the memory the slowest. It is in flight that time leaves behind the most visible traces.

It is truly a strange will-o'-the-wisp, this time. If we experience time of such a quality that we have to look at our watch, to count the minutes, as soon as its existence is  brought to our consciousness -- we may be sure that it will be extinguished in the memory. The only time that is unforgettable is that time during which one forgets that time exists. Only that time is fruitful which remains chaste and unsullied by the touch of consciousness. . . .

Speculating on the subject of time was one of my favourite nostrums, and at times the only remedy that could help me to while it away. There was a bizarre, bitter, ironical consolation in the knowledge that these interminable, torturing hours, as soon as they had ceased to be the present, would shrink to nothing, like an indiarubber pig, when the air escapes from it with a squeak. It was a constant swimming against the stream; the agony lifted as it converted itself into the past; one remained always at the same spot in the river, but all that was floating downstream was vanquished and overcome.

This time problem is the main problem of existence for every prisoner. That is why I dwell on it at such length, although it brings my narrative to a standstill. My case is like that of the motorist who breaks his journey to examine the engine of the car that is to take him on further. And it is the problem not only of the prisoner, but of everyone who exists in unnatural, confined, hermetically sealed conditions; in sanatoria, in the colonies. Often, very often, I found myself thinking of the "everlasting soup" in Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain", and the marvellous reflections on Time indulged in by his young hero in the hermetically-sealed and isolated world of a sanatorium for consumptives; he, too, a captive, held prisoner not by social, but by biological chaos.

. . . Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

    ". . . The wind goeth towards the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full. . . ."
 	

While I was living down the eight blank days on my calendar and speculating upon time, out in the courtyard outside my window, the courtyard of the leap-froggers and football-players, thirty-seven men were shot.

But I did not know this at the time.

There were one or two individuals whom, when they entered the courtyard in the morning, my eyes greeted as old acquaintances. One was the old grandpapa who, rain or shine, always wore his fine woolly coat and paced up and down in the shadow of the wall with a book in his hand which he never read. Another was a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy, dirty and delightful, like all' Mediterranean children; his companions called him cariño, darling. Then there was Pedro, a semi-imbecile who played the part of the village idiot; the others would cuff him, trip him up and even spit at him -- drawing-room manners were at a discount in the patio. Pedro seemed to enjoy this treatment; he would fall clownishly on all fours, and, highly flattered, wipe the spittle from his face -- until quite suddenly and unexpectedly he would fly into a temper, chase his tormentors, shake his fist at them and let forth a volley of abuse. The first time I saw this little scene it revolted me; then I too, like the others, came to welcome it as a diversion.

In the very first few days after my arrival in Seville I had been particularly struck by one of the prisoners -- a thick-set man with a squint who wore a foreign-looking pullover with the red-yellow-red stripe of an official sewn on to it. He walked about with a certain air of condescension amongst the peasants in their faded linen smocks, and associated for the most part with the "dandies". I tried to guess his profession, and decided that he must be a professional boxer. He was the librarian. I realised this a few days later when I saw him handing out books to the others in the patio.

All my efforts to get something to read had hitherto failed.  	

Nevertheless, with dogged persistence, three times a day, at meal times, I pegged away at my list of requests, which was now headed by the request for a book. The warders responded in various ways; one with indifference, another with a hypocritical "mañana", or "ahora", a third by slamming the door; the net result was always the same.

Then I began to make signs to the fat boxer outside. On the average he came past my window three times every morning and three times every afternoon during his perambulations; I lay in wait for hours for this moment. At last, after nine or ten days, I succeeded; he looked across at me and nodded his head almost imperceptibly to signify that he had grasped what I wanted.

I waited in a state of excitement the whole afternoon for his appearance in my cell. I speculated greedily as to what would be the first book he would bring me. I waited until the evening and then all the next day, continuing to make signs which he either did not see or refused to see, and then waited another whole day. At last, on Saturday, February 27th, when I had given up all hope, my lucky moment arrived. During the midday meal the fat librarian came down the corridor past the open door of my cell.

I called out to him, and in my agitation spilt my soup at Angelkin's feet. The librarian stood irresolutely in the corridor, but I was in luck, for one of the nice warders happened to be on duty and he signified that he had no objection to my borrowing a book. The librarian had a whole pile under his arm, and he gave me the top one. It was a Spanish translation of John Stuart Mill's autobiography.

And squeezed under the cover was a half-squashed cigarette.

It was a red-letter day -- a real red-letter day. A day that must be celebrated with due ceremony.

I went on eating my beans deliberately, washed my bowl with special care, and put it in the window alcove to dry. Then I sat down on the bed, lit the cigarette and began to read.  	

I read devoutly and fervently -- and very slowly. I could not make out at least a quarter of the words, and, having no dictionary, I had to ponder the meaning of each sentence. But this only increased my enjoyment. I learned to read anew, with a long since forgotten concentration on every sentence, every adjective. I felt like someone who has been bed-ridden and who in learning to walk anew is acutely conscious of the play of his muscles. I fancy the Romans must have read in this fashion when books were written by hand on long parchment rolls; devoutly, sentence by sentence, only a few inches of the roll a day, so as to keep the rest for the morrow. When writers were obliged to use parchment rolls they knew how carefully people read them, and had confidence in their readers. Nowadays readers may have confidence in the writer, but writers have no confidence in the reader.

It was incidentally a particularly happy chance that it was John Stuart Mill's autobiography which lay on the top of the librarian's pile. I have always believed that in the administration of Divine Providence there is a special department entirely occupied in seeing that the right book comes into the hands of a reader at the right moment.

A Hemingway or a Joyce or a Huxley would have had a positively devastating effect at that particular moment. But here I stood at the foot of one of those monumental pillars of the monumental nineteenth century, a man whose life was an outstanding historical example of that kind of creative puritanism, free from crabbed selfcomplacency, which regards abstemiousness not as an end in itself but as necessary for the attainment of a spiritual object. He was, indeed, a pillar of strength, this old nineteenth century figure; you could walk round him and tap the weatherproof stone with the palm of your hand, your face turned upwards to where he vanished in austere architectural perspectives -- a position of the head that is exceedingly good for the mind.

 	

The second book that I was given to read was de Maistre's Voyage Autour de Mon Quartier, and the first sentence that leaped to my gaze as I turned the pages was the soliloquy of the author, imprisoned in his room, as he surveys his library:

    "They have forbidden me to go to and from the town and to move about freely in space; but they have left the entire universe at my disposal; its boundless, infinite space and infinite time are at my service. . . ."

This sentence became pill number one.

The prison library contained about sixteen hundred for the most part very good books. They had been got together in the Republican era, and the new inquisitors had up till now forgotten to carry out a purge. There were even revolutionary pamphlets dating from the years 19301931, biographies of Caballero, Azaña and so forth.

This was typical of the whole prison. Everything was still carried on at the old jog-trot -- a very Republican, very humane and very Spanish, slovenly jog-trot. Ninetyfive per cent of the warders and subordinate officials belonged to the old personnel. They were steeped in the humane routine of the Republic, and their sympathy with the new régime was unlikely to be very great, even though some of them had, willy-nilly, to assume Phalangist uniforms. With three exceptions, all the warders were kindly and humane, some of them even unusually nice -in so far as their instructions would allow. And sometimes they would even disregard their instructions.

Somehow this vast prison made one think of the realm of the Sleeping Beauty in the midst of the turmoil of war. I heard later that it sometimes happened that, twenty-four hours before his execution, a prisoner would be sent up for a medical examination, and be ordered a milk-diet because of suspected appendicitis. The inertia of routine showed itself to be more  	

powerful than the forces of the present; tradition contemptuously outlived death. It was an extremely humane, positively comfortable prison -- picnics were held by the open gravesides.

All this was true of the warders and subordinates, who were in close and constant contact with the prisoners without having any say as to their fate. The higher you went in the hierarchy the more bleak, the more cold the atmosphere. To Spanish Generals no man below the rank of sergeant is a human being. For us inhumanity began with the sergeant.

In prison the sergeant is represented by the "jefe de servicio", the head warder. For my first acquaintanceship with a head warder I had to thank, symbolically enough, a defect in the flushing of the W.C.

This was on the 28th, the day after I had been given my first book.

In the morning the cistern began to leak. I was too absorbed in John Stuart Mill to bother much about it. By the time the midday soup arrived the whole cell was wet. I drew the warder's attention to this and he promised -- ahora, ahora -- to send the fontanero, the plumber, along. In the meantime I was to mop the flags with the floorcloth.

I did this, and then went back to John Stuart Mill. The plumber did not come, of course. By dusk the water was several millimetres deep on the cell-floor and the cistern was leaking worse than ever. By the time the evening soup arrived I no longer had any need to draw the warder's attention to the state of affairs; he could see the extent of the damage for himself. "Ahora," he said kindly, "I'll send the fontanero along." But in the meantime I was to mop the cell with the floor-cloth so that the water did not overflow into the corridor.

I did this, cursing, but by now a steady rivulet of water was pouring from the cistern and by the second buglecall the water was almost ankle-deep. Since the plumber had still not come, I began to drum furiously on the door -a proceeding which is forbidden after the second bugle-call.  	

After some time of persistent drumming the door flew open and in stormed the jefe de servicio, followed by a trembling Angelito.

The jefe was short and fat; he filled his Phalangist uniform to bursting-point and yet it was crinkled, like the skin of a badly-filled sausage. He had a scar on his face that began at the nose and reached to the right ear, half of which was missing. He was not a prepossessing sight. He roared until the walls shook.

"What have you been up to here?" he thundered.

I said that the cistern was to blame, and not I.

"You're only to speak when you are spoken to," he roared. "And when I come in, you've got to stand to attention over there by the wall."

I waded over to the wall and stood to attention. The jefe flung his cigarette-end irately on to the floor. The stump was peacefully swirled out of the door by the current.

"Mop the floor," bellowed the jefe.

I said that I had mopped the floor three times already (it was only twice), but that it had been of no use.

The jefe said that if he ordered it I had got to mop the floor six, ten, or twenty times, to mop it all day and all night; he brandished his rubber truncheon under my nose and promised to order me a "flagelación" the next day. Then, spitting into the flood, he strode out, banging the door behind him.

I set about drying the floor once more. Before I had finished the door opened and in came Don Ramón, one of the nicest of the warders, followed by the plumber. He put his finger to his lips and grinned. I realised that he had smuggled in the plumber after the "last post" against the jefe's orders and the prison regulations.

This incident had given me my first introduction to the ruling class of the prison. Thanks to the happy ending,  	

however, it had taught me a useful lesson. I reflected that the fontanero would never have come if I had not kicked up a row; consequently, I thought to myself, I shall get my list of requests -- from Consul to cigarettes -- attended to soonest if I make a fuss. I waited one more day, reciting my list with particular importunity at each meal-time -- and then, finding that I was again fobbed off with "mañana" and "ahora", on Tuesday, the 2nd March, I began my first hunger-strike.

The effect was beyond all expectation immediate.

When, in the morning, Don Ramón appeared with Angelito and the vat of coffee, I announced that I did not want anything. Don Ramón asked me if I had a stomachache. I said that I wished to speak to the Governor, and that I refused to touch any food until he arrived.

Don Ramón seemed very surprised, and Angelito grinned. They went away without a word.

At midday I again refused food. A different warder was on duty; he said nothing, but simply banged the door and went away. The matter must therefore already have got round. This seemed a favourable omen.

At six o'clock in the evening the door flew open and a solemn' procession entered my cell. At the head the Governor, then the head warder, then Angelito, and finally one of the "dandies".

The Governor was a meagre, not unkindly little man. I learned later that he belonged to the old staff. They had not dared to sack him, for his knowledge of the workings of the prison had made him indispensable, but they had stuck a Phalangist officer right under his nose and had limited his sphere of action to purely technical matters.

The Governor looked at me for a while and then asked what was the matter with me, at the same time signing to the "dandy" to act as interpreter. I said that I knew enough Spanish to make myself understood, but he replied that he preferred to have an interpreter, so that he might get everything quite clear.  	

The little man inspired confidence. I briefly told him my case and came out with my list of requests. He said that he had to abide by his orders; I was "incomunicado" and might therefore neither write letters nor get in touch with the Consul. He had no say, either, he said, as to my future fate. But he would try to get my confiscated money returned to me and would try to see that I got those purely technical alleviations that lay within his power. In return I was to undertake to eat again.

I did this, and the procession marched out. But I buttonholed the '"dandy" in the doorway, and managed to cadge a one-peseta voucher from him to buy cigarettes.

I waited impatiently to see whether the Governor would keep his word, or whether he too was one of the "mañana" type.

But the very next morning in came Angelito, accompanied by Don Ramón, with an armful of the most fabulous treasures. He laid them all out on the bed, and the two of them stood by with benevolent expressions on their faces as though about to distribute presents from a Christmas tree. I was positively dazzled, and I examined each object minutely and lovingly. There were in all:

    a stump of pencil,
    five sheets of white paper,
    a piece of soap, a face-towel,
    a shirt.

Don Ramón explained that the paper and pencil were not for writing letters, but for "composing", for the Governor thought that if I were allowed to "compose" again it would "lighten my heart". Then he added, with a wink, that since everything that I wrote might be taken away at any time to be examined, I had better write only "nice things". 
 	

I promised to write only nice things. Once more I had that exalted feeling of overwhelming, boundless joy that I had had when the barber had come, and when I had been given my first book.

I debated with myself which luxury I should sample first, the pencil or the soap. The soap won; I scrubbed myself from top to toe, put on the new shirt, washed out the old one and laid it in the window alcove to dry.

Then it was the turn of the pencil.

My diary dates from this day onwards. Bearing in mind the fact that I was "to write only nice things" I worded it in the style of the "Uncle-Bertie-seriously-ill-informAuntie" telegram. If at night ten prisoners were shot, I wrote: "Woke at ten, bad dreams."

My diary of the last days of Malaga, which was confiscated on my arrest, I reconstructed from memory, as also the events of the first three weeks after my arrest. 1

By a particularly happy accident I managed to smuggle this diary out of prison when I was released. The following entries are for the most part unchanged; I have simply translated the flowery language back to normal speech and in places amplified the entries.
VII

Wednesday, March 3rd.

Morning received pencil, paper, soap, towel, shirt. If I only had a toothbrush I should almost be a human being again.

At breakfast gave Angelito the dandy's voucher for one peseta to get me eight packets "Hebras" cigarettes and four boxes matches from canteen. He said prison canteen
____________________
1 	Out of a sense of pedantry I should mention here that one or two dates in the series of articles which I published after my release in the "News Chronicle", are not quite correct. The luggage containing my diary was not at hand at the moment, and I therefore got the dates of certain events mixed up. The accounts of the events themselves were in no way affected by this.

 	

not open till eleven. Spent morning copying out extracts from Mill. Write almost microscopically to save paper.

Midday still no cigarettes. Angelito off duty, vanished, and with him the peseta.

Read all afternoon. When evening soup came got cigarettes. Angel says no more cheap "Hebras" in canteen; brought one packet "Especiales", twenty for 80 cmos., one box of matches for 5 cmos. Didn't want to return vouchers for remaining 15 cmos., said a little propina (tip) was due to him on every purchase. Told him no tip till I got back my confiscated money. Answered: "You can wait till you're blue in the face," but finally forked out the 15 cmos.

Thursday, March 4th.

Morning finished John Stuart Mill. Tried to signal to librarian through window that wanted book changed, but no use.

Am rationing cigarettes. Yesterday smoked four, night two, twelve left -- want to make them last three days. Perhaps by then my money will come.

Evening.

Signalled librarian all afternoon. No use. At seven taken to prison office. Secretary showed me telegram from Salamanca to Governor:

    "Governor provincial prison Seville stop money personal effects prisoner Koestler with Colonel Fuster General Staff Second Division Seville stop Bolín"

So Bolín returned to Salamanca? This is reassuring. Secretary informs me Governor has written to Colonel Fuster requesting him to send my money and luggage to prison.

Long live the Governor.

 On way back from office passed Cell 44. Card with Caballero's name still there, but 42 and 43 no longer have cards. Wonder what has happened to inmates.

Whole day signalled librarian. No use. Money and luggage not yet arrived. Midday fish soup with boiled lettuce leaves. Seven cigarettes left.

Saturday, March 6th.

Morning tried to signal librarian. No use. Got into a rage and chain-smoked all seven cigarettes. Money and luggage not arrived.

Midday handed over to Angelito last 15 cmo. voucher. At five he brought one cigar at 10 cmo. and one box matches. Smoked three puffs, then put it out. Five puffs after supper. Still have almost half left. To-morrow is Sunday, so money can't come.

Sunday, March 7th.

Morning Mass in the gallery outside my cell. Watched through spy-hole prisoners marching along four abreast. During Mass three or four faces remained in my field of vision. All peasants; seemed to have little interest in the service. Then sermon; i.e., front-line news rather than sermon. Could only understand about half. Parson threatened all "Reds" with eternal damnation. Said still time to recant. Observed effect on those in my field of vision. Listeners exchanged cigarettes, picked their noses, spat discreetly on floor.

On march back priest passed for a second through my field of vision. Short, swarthy, greasy fellow, type of army padre in Great War.

Afternoon librarian arrived unexpectedly, brought De Maistre's "Voyage autour de mon Quartier". In my delight smoked rest of cigar, kept stump to chew tobacco. Chewing quite good substitute. 
 Monday, March 8th.

Such craving to smoke that I ate up entire cigar-stump. Three fantastic new arrivals in patio. They are respectably-dressed lawyers, I imagine, or doctors or something -- but all three have long black beards and are deathly pale, literally as white as a sheet. Embraced several other prisoners on entering courtyard; all three wept. Imagine must have been long time in solitary confinement and were being let out in patio for first time. I suppose I must look just as fantastic -- to-morrow whole month of isolation up.

Asked warder midday if I, might write to Governor requesting him to press for my money and luggage. Warder said Governor was taken to hospital yesterday for serious operation. Advised me not to write to his substitute.

Given up all hope of getting back things. Is better, too. Hoping means waiting, and waiting makes one nervy.

Wednesday, March 10th.

Yesterday first month of imprisonment over. Am incapable of visualising future at all concretely, despite constant speculation and forging plans. But all plans are somehow dreamlike, unreal. All thought more and more takes form of day-dreaming. Whenever cell door opens fresh air from the corridor makes me dizzy and I have to hold on to the table. If a warder addresses a word to me I grow hoarse with excitement.

Finished De Maistre overnight; ever since early morning signalled vainly again at window. Librarian seems purposely to avoid looking over here, perhaps because too lazy to bring a book. Surely he must have enough imagination to realize what a book means to a man in solitary confinement. I had imagined more solidarity among political prisoners.

Out in the patio they are starting to build a lavatory. They are building with bricks, right in the middle.

Have awful cravings for tobacco. Believe everything would  be bearable if I had a cigarette. Tried to cadge one from Angel at supper-time. Says he has none, while all the time his pocket is full of them. But he calls me "Arturito" and at every opportunity pats me affectionately on the back.

Thursday, March 11th.

When the prisoners are led out into the patio and when they come back, they march fbur abreast along the corridor past my cell. They walk slowly, with shuffling steps; most of them wear felt slippers or bast sandals; I stand at my spy-hole and follow the procession with my eyes, as one face after another comes within my field of vision. All have a habit of reading out the name-cards on the cell doors as they pass. Often I hear my name spelled out in undertones fifteen or twenty times in succession: "Ar-turo-ko-est-ler". Sometimes one of them will read the rest, too: "In-co-mu-ni-ca-do. O-jo"."O-jo" means: "keep an eye on him". Sometimes, when I am absorbed in reading or lost in a reverie, the sudden murmuring of my name seems to come from a chorus of ghosts.

To-day midday, as they came in for siesta, someone threw a piece of paper into my cell as if in fun.

    London, Autumn, 1937.

    It was a piece of brown cigarette paper screwed up into a ball. Unfolding it, I read the following lines:

    "Comrade, we know that you are here and that you are a friend of the Spanish Republic. You have been condemned to death; but they will not shoot you. They are much too afraid of the new King of England. They will only kill us -- the poor and humble (los pobres y humildes)

    "Yesterday again they shot seventeen in the cemetery. In our cell, where there were once 100 there are now only 73. Dear comrade foreigner, we three are also condemned to death, and they will shoot us to-night or to-morrow. But you may survive and if
     you ever come out you must tell the world all about those who kill us because we want liberty and no Hitler.

    "The victorious troops of our Government have conquered Toledo and have also got Oviedo, Vitoria and Badajoz. And soon they will be here, and will carry us victoriously through the streets. Further letters will follow this one. Courage. We love you.

    THREE REPUBLICAN MILITIAMEN."

    No further letters followed. I learned later that two of the men were shot that very night, and the third, whose sentence was commuted, was sentenced to thirty years penal servitude -- the Spanish equivalent to a life term.

    I had to learn that letter by heart. It has literally become a part of my body, for half an hour after I received it my cell was visited by the guard of inspection. I had no time to tear up the note, and so was obliged to swallow it.

Friday, March 12th.

Morning librarian. Brought Agatha Christie "Muerte en las Nubes" (Death in the Clouds). An old usuress is bumped off in an aeroplane with a poisoned Indian blowpipe. . . .

Out in the patio the poor and humble are still playing football and leapfrog. Impossible to discover if any are missing, and which.

My paper is coming to an end; am writing so small that my eyes water.

Saturday, March 13th.

Yesterday evening one of the imprisoned Moors sang again. The song consisted of two words, repeated over and over again: "Ya la-ee-lay -- ya la-ee-lay" -- Oh night! I have often heard it in Syria and Irak, the camel-drivers sing it as they trot behind their beasts at night. Always the same two words, plaintively drawn out.
 	

Then I had a visit from a little black cat. She leaped up on to my window-sill from the courtyard. Should have loved to have her in my cell, but she couldn't get in because of the wire netting, and I couldn't even stroke her. She went off in disappointment and sprang on to the next window-sill -- No. 42. Apparently she found the night too cold and wanted to find a cosy hiding-place. She could get in nowhere and wailed half the night like a baby. She must have thought the people living in this house very unfriendly to stretch queer wire netting over their windows expressly to prevent little cats from climbing in.

To-day the little black cat was in patio the whole day long, and another, a white one. Everyone was kind to them -- much kinder than to poor Pedro, our village idiot. He flew into one of his rages again.

Afternoon pouring rain, courtyard empty.

Evening. Still raining. Large puddles have formed in the courtyard, almost ponds.

To-day four weeks since ray arrival here.

Sunday, March 14th.

Again unable to sleep. Got up about one and looked out into the courtyard. The rain had stopped, the stars were reflected in the black puddles. It was so still that I could hear frogs croaking -- from somewhere outside probably. This gave me the illusion of being in open country.

Morning, Mass again, but this time no sermon. Perhaps news from front is unfavourable and divine inspiration absent. I wonder what's happening in the world outside. Sometimes I think perhaps the world war has already broken out.

My socks are completely done for.

Midday new warder; a bull-dog with brutal, fleshy features. Has a striking likeness to Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh in "Mutiny on the Bounty".

Signalled to librarian all day. No good.

This afternoon was suddenly transferred to next cell,  No. 40. Was not told why. Fittings precisely the same, only the view of the courtyard slightly different. Feel strange and ill-at-ease in the new cell. Miss familiar scratches on the wall.

Monday, March 15th.

Morning librarian. Brought Stevenson "The Adventures of David Balfour" and five fresh sheets of paper. Tried to borrow a peseta from him; but he said he had nothing himself. Gave me a cigarette -- the first for days. Smoking first made me drunk, then sea-sick.

Midday they forgot to bring me food, perhaps because in new cell. Drummed on the door till fists ached; finally at four got a bowl of beans, not from the big vat, but straight in the bowl. Suspected that it had been scraped together from the leavings, but ate it all the same.

Now the bull-dog is on duty all the time. This is very depressing. Hitherto the warders have sometimes said a kind word when bringing meals, such as: "Eat up, Arturito, and get fat," or something of the kind, and the cheering effect of a few words like that would keep me going for an hour or two. The whole mood of a night or an afternoon depends on the tone of voice of Angelito or the warder when they bring me food. I react to friendly or unfriendly waves like a seismograph. Bull-dog has a terribly depressing effect.

Despite all my feelings of self-respect I cannot help looking on the warders as superior beings. The consciousness of being confined acts like a slow poison, transforming the entire character. This is more than a mere psychological change, it is not an inferiority complex -- it is, rather, an inevitable natural process. When I was writing my novel about the gladiators I always wondered why the Roman slaves, who were twice, three times as numerous as the freemen, did not turn the tables on their masters. Now it is beginning gradually to dawn on me what the slave mentality really is. I could wish that everyone who talks of mass psychology should experience a year of prison.  	

I had never believed the saying that a dictatorship or a single person or a minority can maintain its ascendancy by the sword alone. But I had not known how living and real were those atavistic forces that paralyse the majority from within.

I did not know how quickly one comes to regard a privileged stratum of men as beings of a higher biological species and to take their privileges for granted as though they were natural endowments. Don Ramón has the key and I am in the cage; Don Ramón as well as I look upon this state of things as entirely natural and are far from regarding it as in any way an anomaly. And if a crazy agitator were to come and preach to us that all men are equal, we should both laugh him to scorn; Don Ramón with all his heart, I, it is true, only half-heartedly -- but all the same I should laugh.

Tuesday, March 16th.

Another week gone. Five weeks since the day of my arrest. And almost four weeks since the state-visit of the Hearst girl.

If Franco had commuted the death sentence surely they would have let me know.

But it's doubtful whether they would also let me know of refusal to commute. In that case does one not hear that one's sentence is confirmed until the last moment?

After all, I was never told of the Malaga court-martial sentence.

Vaguely I recall precedents. Hoffman, for example, Lindbergh baby murderer, learned of the rejection of his appeal only twenty-four hours before going to the chair. Don't know which is preferable. Fancy preferable not to hear until the last moment.

The beastliest thing of all would be not to be informed of the commutation at all; to be left for months or years in uncertainty.  	

My mind has been following up this train of thought in all its permutations every day for the past week. Only wonder that my spirits are not much lower than they are. If ever I get out they'll all hold up their hands and say how dreadful it must have been. And all the time I shall have a knowing little feeling that, after all, everything was not so bad as they imagine. Funny how elastic the limits of what is bearable are.

During the first few days I actually counted my shirtbuttons: reprieved -- shot -- reprieved -- shot. Then I gave it up because an unfavourable result always terrified me.

The joke is one can't really ever completely convince onself that the whole thing is reality and not an obscure game. Who really believes in his own death? I can't help thinking of Sir Peter's telling me that one should disinfect the hypodermic syringe before committing suicide, or else one would get an abscess. I fancy there must be some exact mathematic relationship; one's disbelief in death grows in proportion to its approach.

I don't believe that since the world began a human being has ever died consciously.

When Socrates, sitting in the midst of his pupils, reached out for the goblet of hemlock, he must have been at least half convinced that he was merely showing off. He must have seemed to himself to be rather bogus and have secretly wondered at his disciples' taking him so seriously. Of course he knew theoretically that the draining of the goblet would prove fatal; but he must have had a feeling that the whole thing was quite different from what his perfervid, humourless pupils imagined it; that there was some clever dodge behind it all known only to himself.

Of course everyone knows that he must die one day. But to know is one thing, to believe another.

If it were not so, how could I feel as I write this that the whole thing is a theoretical discussion which doesn't concern me in the least ? 
 	

True, at least once a day there is a short-circuit in my consciousness, and for minutes on end I behold the reality in a full blaze of light, as though illumined by some psychical explosion.

Then no thoughts, no pills avail; only brute fear remains. But it passes, everything passes; even the minute when one stands before the firing squad and the lead pierces its way through mouth and nose and eyes. And then it is all behind one.

So why get agitated, when it all passes?

Up to now I have kept myself under control and not written about these things. I must not do so again; it agitates me too much.

If only I could somehow get that little cat into the cell.

Wednesday, March 17th.

Have used up almost all the paper in two days. From now on will write things which have no connection with the diary (mathematics and other stuff) on the tiles above the wash-basin. Can be rubbed out later.

Great event in the afternoon; was taken to have a showerbath. The prison-bathroom is positively luxurious. In addition to showers and baths there is a swimming pool. Of course almost nothing works now. The pool is empty and filthy, the bath-taps are out of order; only two cold showers function. But it was it marvellous feeling to be clean again. Lucky find in the pool: an old bit of toilet-soap.

Caballero still there; cells 41 and 43 are empty, but on No. 42 there is a new Spanish name.

Thursday, March 18th.

The three newcomers in the patio have lost their black beards, and are shaven and already slightly sunburnt. Was glad to see a tall blond young fellow whom I have missed in the patio for some days re-appear. Had feared. . . .

Finished Stevenson, enjoyed it tremendously. Marvellous  	

how well English authors are translated into Spanish. Now the business of making signals to the bibliotecario starts all over again. . . .

Friday, March 19th.

Early this morning asked again to be shaved; but they told me to-day is fiesta, holiday. Perhaps it's Good Friday. Easter will come and perhaps I shan't even notice it. . . . .

There was a service again this morning and there was good fish soup at midday. We now have soup every Friday and sometimes there is a morsel of meat among the beans or potatoes. At midday the librarian came and suddenly spoke French with a Parisian accent. I was very astonished since hitherto had not remarked foreign accent in his Spanish. Promised me new book for to-morrow, and advised me "pas se faire de mauvais sang". I would rather he lent me a peseta. Later a new warder came into my cell; don't know what he wanted; he laughed amiably and went off. A little later the new jefe de servicio came -- Phalangist uniform, cold, formal. Asked him whether he could not do something about my money. Promised to let me know to-morrow.

Saturday, March 20th.

Angel brought me new book at the request of the librarian; Gabriel Miro "The Cherries in the Cemetery". Weak stuff, chit-chatty, sentimental. Through the window watched a couple of chaser 'planes leaping and looping in the blue air like young dolphins. Perfect symbol of freedom. Wondered what kind of world I should find if I came out of here in ten years' time without having had papers or news in the meantime. Made rapid survey of changes from nineteen twenty-seven to nineteen thirty-seven; much less difference than one might imagine.

Afternoon saw through spy-hole two black-clad women walking down the corridor, probably on some errand of mercy. One had finely chiselled Velasquez features; it was  pleasant and comforting to see them; it is really strange how cut off one is here from half of humanity.

Late in the evening I heard some newcomers brought in; one cried; but I did not dare to look through the spyhole.

Sunday, March 21st.

Rain, rain, the whole day. The courtyard is a swamp. Someone made a speech before Mass, but I could not understand it. Read and dreamed. I find myself sinking more and more into day dreams -- I lose myself for three or four hours on end, pacing up and down, up and down, in a half-dazed state.

Afternoon my watch stopped again. Got a terrible fright, but poked about in the works till it went again.

Monday, March 22nd.

In the night my bed collapsed -- I found myself on the ground and dreamed that I had been shot. Confirms the curious phenomenon that the fraction of a second between crash and waking is enough to construct post factum an entire story. The sound of the crash is only admitted to consciousness by the time the story has been quickly improvised -- till then the crash must wait on the threshold of the consciousness.

. . . Was reminded of my friend A.N., when he was being psycho-analysed. He seemed to me like a wounded horse dragging itself across the bull ring and trailing its entrails behind it. A far from pleasant sight.

Could not go to sleep again. Compared psycho-analysts to sewage-cleaners; the penetrating smell of their profession clings to them even in private life. In their eyes is always a look suggestive of spiritual sewage-cleaning.

Note with displeasure that I am becoming more and more malevolent in my solitude. Sentimental and malevolent.

Got three cigarettes from Angel at midday. Will try to smoke only one a day. 
 Planes again. Heinkels and Capronis, with white crosses on tail fins. Seven of them.

Evening barber came; offmowed beard with haircutting machine. Asked him why not with razor; he said razorshaving costs money.

Tuesday, March 23rd.

Actually have two cigarettes left, but no matches. Angel had none on him this morning. Promised me some midday. Only one sheet of paper left.

Wednesday, March 24th.

Smoked last cigarette at twelve. Once more have got obsession of button-counting. In walking up and down take care always to tread in middle of flagstones; if, after pacing up and down five times, haven't touched the line, I shall be reprieved. Often before had attacks of such compulsions, hitherto always managed to fight them down; to-day for first time let myself go.

Six weeks to-day since arrest.

Thursday, March 25th.

Got de Maistre's book for the second time; so read it for fourth time. Nice sentence: "L'ange distributeur des pensées."

At midday the warder surprised me with the fantastic announcement that my money would arrive in the afternoon. He advanced me two cigarettes.

Waited in fever of impatience till evening, telling myself continually it was a mistake -- from an involved superstitious belief that if I thought it a mistake, then it would be all right. At last the evening soup came. Asked warder; he laughed, said he had confused me with another English prisoner, who had now got his money. . . .

The other Englishman, it turns out, is the "dandy", who interpreted during the director's visit. He is a merchant from Gibraltar (Spaniard of British nationality), who is  	

here for smuggling currency. Asked what he was doing with political prisoners. Warder said that in wartime currency manipulation is a political offence.

Friday, March 26th.

Grey day; nervy state, stomach-ache and melancholia. At midday suddenly heard German spoken in the patio. Couldn't believe my ears. A thick-set, red-checked, blond young man in a blue mechanic's overall stood on the white taboo-line, obliquely opposite my window, speaking cautiously into cell 37.

Then he paced up and down and kept calling out sentences in German to number 37 as he passed.

He wanted to write to his Consul, he said, but they wouldn't give him any paper.

He was in a cell with six others, he said, all lousy Spaniards.

They were all Reds here, he said; one had to be very careful.

I couldn't catch the replies from 37. Grasped only that the inmate of 37 must be called Clarlos, spoke German and was an old friend of the blond fellow.

I wonder what it all means.

Saturday, March 27th.

Have thrown my socks away; they were no longer wearable. My shirts and pants are only rags now; my suit, which also serves me as pyjamas, looks like a stage costume out of the Beggar's Opera.

At midday offered to sell my watch to warder for hundred cigarettes. He refused. An hour later theatrical sensation -life is a clumsy producer -- got first letter from D, and hundred pesetas.

I was really half-crazy with excitement. I embraced Angelito in presence of the warder and the prison secretary, who brought the letter.

 Angelito grinned sourly all over his crinkled old woman's face, and was suddenly full of devotion and charm. He gave me ten cigarettes straight away as an advance against future tips; then they all marched off.

The letter is dated March the 8th -- so it has taken twenty days to come.

It consists only of five or six cheering sentences, deliberately trivial in order to get past censor. It went in some mysterious way to the British Consul, Malaga, who passed it on to the Military Authorities, who forwarded it to the prison authorities. Whence it is obvious that my wife, despite all efforts, has so far been unable to discover my whereabouts. The last sentence says that I must without fail get a few words in my own handwriting to her via the consulate. From which I gather she certainly doesn't know whether I'm still alive or not.

Drummed on the door and asked whether I might answer the letter. The warder had obviously already received instructions on this point, for he said promptly I might not. I said I wanted to write only one sentence: that I was alive. He said it was impossible.

Then Angelito came to change the hundred peseta note into prison vouchers. He asked fawningly whether he could get me provisions from the canteen. With a lordly gesture I gave him fifteeis easier, it goes down at one swoop.

Wednesday, April 7th.

Got Jules Verne "Round the World in Eighty Days". Thought it would be fun, but it does not amuse me at all. Either Verne is to blame or else my heart, which is constantly giving me trouble. Am forced continually to think of it and am incapable of concentrating on reading or writing for even ten minutes at a time.

    I began to have day-dreams about food. I dreamed of beefsteaks, potatoes and cheese with the same voluptuous fervour as that with which schoolboys dream of film actresses. I fancy that if the function of eating were so restricted and hedged about with taboos by society as the function of love, the psycho-analysts would have their work cut out to deal with repressed hungercomplexes and thirst neuroses. If a man dreamed of a violin it would signify that his dark instincts were yearning for a leg of mutton, and if a man quarrelled with his father in a dream, it would mean that he wanted to have more porridge for breakfast.

Thursday, April 8th.

Have made a discovery.

This afternoon the blond German had another conversation with the mysterious Carlos. He said that Carlos should  	

write a letter to his Consul and put it on the window-ledge in the north corner of courtyard; he, the German, would then get it sent on for him. I wondered how on earth Carlos could do this when he was in an isolation cell.

Then during the siesta I saw the tall man with spectacles stroll casually to the window described and fumble about there. So the mysterious Carlos is identical with the new siesta-promenader.

Then, later in the afternoon, the German went and took the letter.

This has been my only distraction to-day. My heart is giving me such trouble that I am unable to read. The Devil take Phineas Fogg; his cold-bloodedness is a direct provocation.

    I had thought that the craving for food ceased after four days. It doesn't.

    Quite the contrary.

Friday, April 9th.

Two months to-day since Bolín appeared in Sir Peter's house with his revolver.

Have at last got rid of Phineas Fogg and have been given Tolstoy "War and Peace".

A new promenader has appeared in the patio during the siesta. A little Andalusian peasant with a wild black stubble of beard and soft, blue, slightly prominent eyes.

My heart no better; to-day the sixth day. . . .

Have thirty pesetas left. Shall buy no more extra provisions, only cigarettes and soap.

Ever since I have been ill time has passed appallingly slowly. Twice or three times as slowly as before. It not only limps, it drags a leaden weight behind it. This is because I am unable to read, to write, to concentrate-in brief, to forget time. This theorising about time is gradually becoming an obsession. When I was still young in this prison I tried to lie in wait for the hands of my watch, to  experience pure time. Now I know that an inexorable law prevails: increasing awareness of time slows down its pace, complete awareness of time would bring it to a standstill. Only in death does the present become reality; time freezes. -- he who succeeds in experiencing "pure time" experiences nothingness.

    I had to take great care to see that my deception with regard to the food was not spotted. Not only did I throw away my rations, I also had to go on buying things from the canteen and dispose of them bit by bit. My shortage of money at last gave me an excuse to rid myself of these additional tortures.

Saturday, April 10th.

I have always thought it very funny when old ladies say that they cannot read war books, because they agitate them too much.

But now certain passages in "War and Peace" cause me such palpitations that I have to stop reading. When I read the passage describing the shooting of prisoners after the taking of Moscow by Napoleon I had to be sick. But all I got up was greenish bile.

    I kept feeling my pulse and waited impatiently for the time when it would at last be irregular. Nothing of the kind. Frequent attacks of giddiness and physical weakness -- that was all after six days without food. The craving for food did not diminish, but increased. I remember reading descriptions of how starving men gradually get a pleasant sensation of weightlessness and utter lightness. All bunk.

Sunday, April 11th.

Since for the moment I am unable to go on reading the bloodthirsty Tolstoy, I have started making up crossword puzzles. It is much more amusing, but also much more difficult than solving them. From one combination I got "Eumene". This certainly means something, but what?. . . 	

find such jokes exceedingly distasteful." "That's true," he said, extremely astonished, and from then on mended his manners somewhat. He abused the "Reds", and said they tortured their prisoners, put out their eyes, etc. I said that was absolutely untrue; I had imagined the same of the opposite side; one always thought the worst of the enemy. He said that also was true, and then added, with a grin: "Here in prison you're all treated like gentlemen, until you're shot; but if one of you falls into the hands of the Moors at the front it's no laughing matter, I can tell you."

I asked him whether, as a Catholic, he approved of the torturing of human beings. "Well, no," he said with an embarrassed smile. And so it went on for a while; inbetween-times we talked about England, about Darwin, and whether men would ever fly to the moon.

This visit lasted nearly two hours. I wondered what it could all mean.

Then the mysterious librarian told me his story. He was not a professional boxer at all, but the proprietor of an advertising agency in Paris. Shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War he had gone bankrupt and had fled to Spain. His creditors had got on his tracks, and the French Government had requested the Spanish Government to arrest and extradite him. He was arrested in Seville a week before the Insurrection. The librarian -- we will call him "Henri" -- appealed against his extradition. Then the Civil War had begun, conditions in prison "had undergone certain changes", as he discreetly put it, and now it was Henri's dearest wish to be handed over to the authorities of his own country. All the more so since his creditors, touched by his dramatic story, had declared themselves ready to compound. The French Consul in Seville had done his best to get the lost sheep sent home again, but now the rebel authorities were unwilling to let him go. To them a Frenchman is a "Red", and the place for a "Red" is the prison patio. The ludicrous thing is that Henri alleges  that he is a member of the "Croix de Feu," Colonel de la Rocque's Fascist organization.

Henri told his story with an air of injured innocence, and we kept having to laugh, Don Ramón, the youth with pince-nez, Henri and I. The two warders must have known the story inside out, for they nodded benevolently at every sentence as though listening to a well-worn anecdote. When he had finished the Phalangist declared that Henri too would be shot sooner or later; and then the tea-party broke up. As I saw my guests to the door, Don Ramón beckoned with his finger and allowed me to get a glimpse of the outside of my cell door.

I had been given a new plate; my name was on it -- but "Ojo" and "Incomunicado" had vanished.

So this was the solution of the mystery. My solitary confinement, thanks to the good offices of the Governor, was at an end.

Round about seven the Phalangist returned, and informed me officially that from to-morrow morning onwards I was to be allowed to walk in the patio during the siesta hours, from one to three. I asked if I might now at last write to the Consul. He said "Yes", but letters must be written in ink and I could not buy pen and ink until to-morrow, as the canteen was closed.

Eureka!

    I could now have started eating again, for my goal had been attained independently of my efforts. But out of caution I decided to wait until the letter to the Consul had been safely dispatched.

Monday, April 12th (at night) .

A moment ago -- 10 p.m. -- the jefe de servicio was here. A jefe that I have never seen before, an elderly man with grizzled hair. He said that the office had received instructions from the military authorities that from to-morrow on I was to be allowed in the patio with the other prisoners, that is to say, the whole day long.

Better still!  
 	

Tuesday, April 13th.

I was up by six and I waited in a fever of impatience for the moment when I should at last emerge from my hole. The prisoners appeared in the courtyard at 8 o'clock as usual -- but my cell door was not opened. I drummed on the door -- in vain. At last, at breakfast, the warder explained that a different jefe was on duty to-day -- "Scarface" of the leaking cistern incident -- and that he said he had received no instructions with regard to me. I asked for pen and ink -- this too was refused, "since the jefe had no instructions". I asked to speak to the jefe. He sent a message to say he was too busy.

I was about to fly into a towering rage.

    . . . But I reflected that fortunately I had not broken my fast; that to-day was the ninth day; that my pulse -- at last -varied between sixty and a hundred-and-five, and that it could be only a few more days at the most before they would have to transfer me to a hospital.

Tuesday evening.

At 12 o'clock Angelito suddenly came in with a message from the jefe to say that the military authorities had phoned through confirming that I was definitely to be allowed out in the patio between one and three . . . he had received no instructions, however, to let me have pen and ink.

A fresh period of feverish waiting until one. At last the whistle sounds, the prisoners in the patio line up four abreast and are led indoors. The patio is empty. In ten minutes' time, at the most, Byron, the consumptive Carlos and the newcomer must appear; and then at last my cell door will be opened.

A quarter past one comes, half-past one, a quarter to two, nothing stirs. The others do not appear in the patio either.

I cannot contain myself any longer and I start beating 
 out a positive tattoo on the door -- hammer with my tin bowl on the steel and kick it till my feet are sore. It makes a hell of a din. After two minutes of this the door opens and Angelito, the jefe and "Captain Bligh" appear. They storm at me in chorus; Angelito loudest of all. (He has not had a tip for the last few days and knows that I have only twenty pesetas left.) I explain why I have been drumming on the door. "Captain Bligh" thunders that he will let me out when it suits him, and if it doesn't suit him he won't let me out at all, and if I behave like this again he will stamp on me, trample on me, crush me like a worm.

All this takes place in the open doorway. Byron, the consumptive and the newcomer, who have obviously just been let out of their cells, stand listening in the corridor. Then we are all four allowed out into the courtyard.

I feel the hot sun on my face, inhale a mouthful of air -- and then everything suddenly turns grey, green, black before my eyes, and I find myself sitting on the ground. The other three set me on my legs again. Byron and the newcomer grasp me under the armpits; and after a few steps I am all right again.

We stand about together in a group, opposite Cell 36. At first I can do nothing but breathe in the air. Real air again for the first time -- instead of the dense gaseous mixture, compounded of the odour of the stuffy bed, the smell of stale food and the stench of the lavatory on which I have existed for the past two months. Then we start talking.

My first question is of course, what sentences they have been given.

"La muerte," says Byron, and grins.

"La muerte," says the consumptive. He is a well-known Republican politician, and Byron was formerly his secretary; they have both been waiting for three months to be shot.

"La muerte," says the third man. He is a little Andalusian peasant, a Militiaman, taken prisoner on the Almerìa front.

Carlos was not there; presumably he is ill. 
 	

Carlos is an Italian, a lieutenant in the Italian contingent fighting under Franco's leadership. His arrest seems to be somehow connected with his German friend.

The Militiaman is called Nicolás. He was taken prisoner ten days ago and sentenced three days ago. He was charged, as are all prisoners of war, with "rebelidn militar" (armed rebellion). Nicolás told us, as we paced up and down the patio, of his trial by the Seville court-martial. It had lasted three minutes. The President had read out the prisoner's name, birthplace and name of the place where he was captured. The Prosecutor had demanded the death penalty, and had added: "I only regret that I cannot send this rojecillo (miserable little Red) in a cage to Geneva before he is shot, in order to show the League of Nations what pitiable objects are these so-called fighters for justice and democracy."

Nicolás had somehow managed to get hold of a stalk of lettuce; he nibbled away at it as he told us his story, and offered us each a leaf. I refused -- thinking of my heart; the two others accepted with alacrity. "When do you think they'll shoot me?" asked Nicolás. "Paciencia, my boy," said the Republicans with all the contempt of old inmates for the greenhorn. "One must not expect too much. We've been waiting three months now."

But then we all three began to comfort him. He was far more afraid, even, than we were, for the ink was scarcely dry on his death sentence. We told him stories about how death sentences were only passed as a joke, to frighten people, and actually no one was ever shot; we three, who had been in prison an aggregate of eight months, and were not dead yet, were living proofs of this. He was only too glad to believe it, and in the end we believed it ourselves. We became quite gay, and Byron suggested that a notice should be hung in the patio between one and three: "No admittance except to those showing death sentences." 
 I offered to lend Nicolás a book, but he said that he could not read. He stroked the cover of the Tolstoy lovingly with his horny peasant's paws, and his eyes took on a stupid, sad look. He said he had hoped, once the war was won, to have had an opportunity of learning to read.

To-morrow is the anniversary of the proclamation of the Spanish Republic. The consumptive and his secretary are racking their brains wondering what sort of flags the foreign consulates in Seville and Burgos will fly. From the tone of their discussion I gather that this argument has been going on for weeks. They share a cell. Little Nicolás enquired despondently if they had nothing better to worry about, whereupon Byron drew himself up like a Spanish hidalgo and flashed at him: "No, Sefior."

The air smelt glorious; it smelt of spring and the sea.

We were not taken back to our cells until half past three.

At seven o'clock Angelito arrived with pen and ink. I had given him a five-peseta voucher to change for me, but he forgot to return me the three pesetas change.

Wrote my letter to the British Consul in Seville, but hear that it cannot be posted till to-morrow morning. To-morrow, when the letter has gone off, I rather think my heart will improve.

To-morrow the tenth day of my illness.

Wednesday, April 14th.

Gave letter to warder at breakfast-time, but he brought it back from the prison censor's office, saying that it must be written in Spanish. The merchant from Gibraltar who interpreted for me before was called in to help me to write it in correct Spanish. Afterwards he told me that he had come to Seville some weeks agowith a Spaniard on business  	

in connection with the delivery of war material -- whereupon they were both arrested. There are three of them in No. 33; the third is the representative of a big American automobile firm, and he is also there for currency smuggling. They obtain food, wine and even coffee from the hotel, and in addition Angelito buys from forty to fifty pesetas' worth of goods for them every day in the canteen. They are the aristocrats of the prison; I hate them. The fellow promised to have some coffee and a chicken sent to my cell -- am convinced he will not keep his promise. (P.S. I was right.)

He went on to say that he and his friends "hoped shortly to move into No. 39", just as though he were talking of rooms in a hotel. He said, further, that Angelito was a "bloody bastard" who would murder his own brother for a tip.

At midday my letter at last went off -- I saw Don Antonio post it in the box in the corridor, after it had been censored. He says that the Consul is certain to come to-morrow.

A nauseating set-to with Angelito over the three pesetas. He said I could do what I liked with my beastly money, but again did not return it.

Then, shortly after one, pretty punctually this time, I was let out into the patio again. The two Republicans were there, and Carlos.

But Nicolás was missing.

I was about to ask the warder what had become of him, but the other two urgently advised me not to. Carlos kept at a distance from us; he had cut a swastika out of paper and stuck it in his buttonhole, and he stumped up and down alone by the outer wall.

Finally I did ask the warder after all. He shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.

Requiescat in pace, Nicolás. Let us hope it was all over swiftly and that they did not make you suffer too much. They Chose a solemn day for your execution. I wonder what flags the Consulates fiew? 
 Little you were, a little Andalusian peasant, with soft, slightly prominent eyes, one of the poor and humble. This book is dedicated to you. What good does it do you? You could not read it even if you were still alive. That is why they shot you, because you had the impudence to wish to learn to read. You and a few million like you, who seized your old firearms to defend the new order which might perhaps some day have taught you to read.

They call it armed rebellion, Nicolás. They call it the hand of Moscow; Nicolás. They call it the instinct of the rabble, Nicolás.

That a man should want to learn to read.

My God, they should really have sent you to Genevaa in a cage, with the inscription: "Ecce Homo, Anno Domini 1937."
VIII

HAD INTENDED to stop my hunger strike as soon as my letter to the Consul had been sent off.

The letter had gone off just before I was allowed out into the patio. Then I learned of Nicolás's execution, and was so shattered by it that I postponed the celebration of my first meal until the next day.

This was Thursday, April 15th.

I breakfasted on coffee with extra condensed milk and cake from the canteen; it was exactly ten days since I had touched any food. But my pleasure was spoilt. At every bite I was reminded of the lettuce which Nicolás had offered me.

I could scarcely bear to wait till one o'clock to be let out into the courtyard. Carlos was there, complete with swastika.

The two others were not there.

We walked up and down, Carlos and I, avoiding each other and, both of us very pale, keeping an eye on the door from which they should have appeared.

At last Carlos came up to me -- hitherto we had not exchanged a single word -- introduced himself formally as Lieutenant Carlos T -- and said that early that morning  through his spy-hole he had seen the two of them being marched down the corridor.

But a few seconds later the door opened and the two Republicans appeared, washed and shaved.

We were so overjoyed that we rushed up to them, and then we all shook hands and patted each other on the back. The two others explained that they had been taken to have a shower that morning. We said not a word to them of what we had feared; but they guessed it.

As a result of all this Carlos and I had suddenly become friends. We spoke German to each other, and he told me his story.

Carlos was a lieutenant in the Italian force. He had been present at the entry of the rebel forces into Malaga, and remembered marching past Sir Peter's house and noticing the Union Jack. He even fancied that he had seen me standing on the balcony. Later he had been sent to the Madrid front.

In the meantime he had made friends at Seville headquarters with a German transport driver. The German, who was called Johnnie, was the blonde young man I had seen in the courtyard. Johnnie, it turned out later, was a bit of a rotter; had on several occasions got himself into trouble with the German police, and had finally volunteered for the German expeditionary corps in Spain, because he had heard that lots of money was to be made there. In the middle of March, at the request of the German authorities, Johnnie had been arrested in Seville, and Carlos had been recalled to Seville from the Madrid front to give evidence with regard to his friend. He had been summoned to appear at police headquarters. Arrived there, he had been so discourteously treated by the Civil Guards in the course of his examination that, feeling a slur had been cast on his honour as an officer, he had punched the Chief of Police in the nose. Whereupon they had handcuffed him -- and here he was now in prison.

The most curious thing in the whole of this curious story  was that Carlos should have been put with us condemned prisoners. Probably because the authorities did not want to put him with Johnnie. Moreover, they did not dare to herd him, as an Italian officer, with the criminals in the "beautiful patio"; so here he was with us.

This was what we surmised. But Carlos confessed to me that he found our company extremely disquieting. He was very much afraid that they would come for him one night and shoot him out of hand. I told him that was nonsense and that his case was bound to be cleared up in a few days.

He said that if I had any idea of what went on between the Spaniards and Italians I would not talk so optimistically. The fact that an Italian officer could be marched off in handcuffs spoke volumes for the idyllic relations existing between them. He had come to Spain out of sheer enthusiasm (incidentally his pay was four thousand lire a month, plus forty pesetas a day expenses allowance) and now they'd gone and put him into jug like a common criminal, and taken away his money and papers. He had nothing to smoke, no comb, no soap, nothing to read. . . .

I said that he needn't bother to go on with the catalogue, I knew all about it. I found the young man distinctly charming, but was unable to suppress a certain feeling of malicious pleasure at his discomfiture.

He was twenty-two years old, a naturalised Italian of Austrian origin, and a student in Milan. He was studying to become a Latin teacher in a secondary school.

He was wearing the swastika because the fasces were too difficult to cut out of paper.

He said he had been convinced that those fighting on the side of the Reds were mostly Russians, and had been amazed to find so many Spaniards on the other side.

He said he had been convinced that all Reds were barbarians and that he was surprised to find what nice people the two Republicans and I were.

Carlos's character was a touching mixture of naïveté,  narrow-mindedness and good-natured ambition to get on in this complicated world. But this, apparently, be was not finding so easy.

I had spent the first two months in the Seville prison in complete isolation. Only now, when I came into contact with the other prisoners, did I learn what was going on around me.

I learned that in the week after my transfer to the prison thirty-seven men from the big patio had been executed.

In the last week of February no executions had taken place, in March forty-five -- almost all the victims prisoners of war from the various fronts. In every case the procedure had been exactly the same as in that of Nicolás. True, not a single man had been shot without trial. But these trials were far more disgraceful than the unceremonious slaughter of prisoners in the front lines immediately after a battle.

In the case of every single prisoner of war, without exception, the charge was one of "rebelión militar". Those who were defending the legal Government against open rebellion, were condemned for taking part in a rebellion -- by an authority that claimed to be a court of law and to pronounce judgment in the name of justice.

The course taken by this grim comedy was always the same. The proceedings lasted two or three minutes. The so-called Prosecutor demanded the death sentence; always and without exception. The so-called Defending Officer -- always and without exception -- asked for a life sentence in view of mitigating circumstances. Then the prisoner was marched off. He was never informed of his sentence. Sentence was passed the moment he was out of the door; it was one of death; always and without exception.

The record of the sentence was passed on to the Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Forces, General Queipo de Llano. The sentences were carried out by Queipo in  	

the order listed. Twenty to twenty-five per cent of the prisoners -- according to Queipo's mood or the situation at the front -- were reprieved. The rest were shot.

From the moment he left the court martial the accused was left in uncertainty as to his fate. Were his sentence commuted to thirty years' imprisonment he was informed by letter -- a week or a month or six months later. Were the death sentence confirmed, lie learned of it only at the moment of execution.

In the interval he was left to play football and leapfrog in the patio, and count his buttons every morning to see whether he was going to be shot that night.

There were men in the patio who had been waiting for four months to be shot. The record was held by a Captain of the Militia -- four and a half months. He was executed a few days before my release.

Nicolás had been lucky; he had had to wait only four days.

During March forty-five men were shot.

During the first thirteen days of April there were no executions.

During the night of April 13th to 14th seventeen men were shot, in celebration of the anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic. Nicolás was among them.

Two nights later, the night of Thursday, eight were shot. This was the first time I heard anything.

The proceedings were very subdued; perhaps that explains why I hadn't heard them before. But now I was on the watch.

I knew that the critical time was between midnight and two o'clock in the morning. For some days I stood from midnight until two o'clock with my car pressed to the door of my cell.

During the first night of my vigil, the night of Wednesday, nothing happened.

During the second night... 
 	

A feeling of nausea still comes over me when I remember that night.

I had gone to sleep, and I woke up shortly before midnight.

In the black silence of the prison, charged with the nightmarish dreams of thirteen hundred sleeping men, I heard the murmured prayer of the priest and the ringing of the sanctus bell.

Then a cell door, the third to the left of mine, was opened, and a name was called out. "Qué?" (What?) asked a sleepy voice, and the priest's voice grew clearer and the bell rang louder.

And now the drowsy man in his cell understood. At first he only groaned; then in a dull voice, he moaned for help: "Socorro, socorro."

"Hombre, there's no help for you," said the warder who accompanied the priest.

He said this neither in a hostile nor in a friendly tone, but simply as though stating a fact. For a moment the man who was about to die was silent; the warder's quiet, sober manner puzzled him. And then he began to laugh.

It was not the loud, shrill laughter of an actor feigning madness; the man kept patting his knees with his hands, and his laughter was, rather, quiet and subdued, full of little gasps and hiccoughs.

"You are only pretending," he said to the priest. "I knew at once that you were only pretending."

"Hombre, this is no pretence," said the warder in the same dry tone as before.

They marched him off.

I heard him shouting outside. But the sound of the shots came only a few minutes later.

In the meantime the priest and the warder had opened the door of the next cell; it was No. 42, the second to my left. Again, "Qué?" And again the prayer and the bell. 
 	

This one sobbed and whimpered like a child. Then he cried out for his mother: "Madre, madre!"

And again: "Madre, madre!"

And again: "Madre, madre!"

"Hombre, why didn't you think of her before?" said the warder.

They went on to the next cell. When my neighbour was called, he said nothing. Most probably he was already awake, and, like me, prepared. But when the priest had ended his prayer, he asked, as if of himself: "Why must I die?" The priest answered in five words, uttered in a solemn voice but rather hurriedly:

"Faith, man. Death means release."

They marched him off.

They came to my cell and the priest fumbled at the bolt. I could see him through the key-hole. He was a little, black, greasy man.

"No, not this one," said the warder.

They went on to the next cell. He, too, was prepared. He asked no questions. While the priest prayed, he began in a low voice to sing the "Marscillaise". But after a few bars his voice broke, and he too sobbed.

They marched him off. . . .

And now I realized why the merchant from Gibraltar had said that he and his friends would shortly be moving in to No. 39.

I frequently awoke during this night feeling my bed shaking, as though in an earthquake. Then I realized that it was my own body that was trembling from head to foot. The moment I awoke my body grew still; the moment I fell asleep the nervous trembling began again. I thought at first that it was a permanent affliction like shell shock: but I only had two further attacks in the next few days; then it passed off.  	

Carlos was in a far worse plight. He had heard all that I had heard. During the night of Friday, nine were shot; during Saturday night, thirteen. We heard everything, four nights running. On Monday morning I was called to Carlos's cell; he was lying on the ground by the door, foam on his lips, both legs stiff and paralysed.

In the space of five days they had shot forty-seven men. Even for this prison it was a record. The faces in the patio were grey; during a game of football two men had a set to and pulled each other's hair out in handfuls. In the morning the warders who had been on night duty crept along the corridors, pale, scared, and troubled. Even Angelito, who had to open the doors of the condemned cells night after night, arrived one morning red-eyed. "If this goes on," he said, "they'll finish us all off."

Our two Republicans in the siesta patio carried it off best. Once, on Sunday, when we looked up at the window of one of the mass cells, from which one of their friends used to wave through the iron bars at three each afternoon, his cell companions signalled back that his turn had come the night before. Whereupon Byron had to vomit; then he lit a cigarette and uttered an obscenity.

When we were marched back to our cells, we did not dare, out of superstition, to say "hasta mañana" (until to-morrow). We murmured "hasta... and were ashamed of being so superstitious.

One evening Don Antonio came back into my cell after serving out the food. "Why are you eating so little?" he asked. I said I had no appetite. "Are you afraid?" he asked. I reflected for a while and then said "Yes". He did not reply, but shrugging his shoulders, offered me a cigarette and pulled the door carefully to, without slamming it.

Carlos told me that two had been taken from Johnnie's cell the night before. Johnnie had told him that they had both wept and he had cracked jokes about the cowardice of the Reds. Carlos had asked Johnnie whether he himself  was not afraid. Johnnie said that he wasn't a lousy Red. One of the executed Reds had lent him two pesetas the day before; at least he wouldn't have to return the money now.

I asked Carlos whether he proposed to go on being friends with Johnnie. He said he: would like to strangle him with his bare hands.

We had become very free with such expressions. Death stalked the prison; we felt the beating of his wings, he buzzed round our faces like a tiresome fly. Wherever we went, whenever we stood, we could not get rid of that buzzing.

During the night of Saturday I again heard laughter -- like that that had come from No. 43.

It was pretty infectious, and I wonder things went off so smoothly.

On Sunday, while I was in the patio, a head was poked out of a window of one of the mass cells on the second floor -- these windows had no bars in front of them. The owner of the face had a black cap perched on an ugly little head, and looked like a jockey. He shouted down to us, asking whether any of us knew Hungarian.

I am of Hungarian origin; the fact must have got round in the prison.

The man called out to me in Hungarian that he had got a letter the day before telling him that he would be shot within the next two days. If ever I got back to Hungary, would I let his family know?

I said it was nonsense; no one was ever told before being shot.

While talking to the Hungarian, I did not dare to look upwards; we stood opposite each other, Byron and I, and gesticulated silently so that the head warder, when looking out of the window, might think we were talking to one another.

The Hungarian replied that, not knowing Spanish, he had been unable to read the letter, but his cell companions 
 had told him that it contained the information that he was to be shot. Then he went on to say that thirty-five had been taken out of the adjoining mass cell during the past month.

I asked him where.

"Don't ask such a stupid question," he said. "Where all Spaniards are taken -- to the butcher's block."

The Hungarian was still there the next day. He threw me down a letter for his wife. I did not dare to look up at him; I had been warned that there were men in the barber's shop, the windows of which also looked on to the patio, who blabbed everything they saw to the head warder.

During the next few days notes were frequently thrown out to me from cell windows, warning me of spies. Some of them warned me of Carlos, whose swastika had attracted everyone's notice. "Take care, foreigner," one of the notes ran. "There are spies here who are anxious to save their own lives by handing others over to the executioner."

The notes were either rolled up into little balls or else tied up with a bit of string. When we saw a note fall at the other end of the courtyard, two of us strolled over, came to a halt, went on talking, and finally let a cigarette or a book fall to the ground so to be able to pick up the note without being detected. Then we unfolded the note in our trousers' pockets and put it away in the book. Finally Byron or I sat down with our backs to the wall and read -- apparently the book, in reality the note.

The next day the Hungarian was still there. He threw me down a fresh letter of farewell to his wife.

For five days running his head appeared at the window on the stroke of two and a fresh letter of farewell was dropped into the courtyard. On the sixth day one of his cell companions appeared behind him, pulled a face and tapped his forehead. Something began to dawn on us.

In the end we learned the solution of the riddle through Carlos, who had got it from Johnnie. The Hungarian was  	

a volunteer in Franco's Foreign Legion and was in prison because of some fraud or other. His cell contained five Republican Militiamen who were condemned to death. It wasn't exactly an elevating experience for them to have to share a cell with an enemy. Particularly the most detested kind of enemy, a foreign mercenary; and to have to be marched off to death before his eyes. The Hungarian didn't know any Spanish. One day, when he received an official communication, they tricked him into believing that he was going to be shot. They wanted to have the satisfaction of knowing that he also should feel what death tasted like. After a week the two survivors out of the five were fed up with his moaning and gave away their "little joke". Shortly afterwards he was released.

Should any moralist feel a need to comment on the matter, I should like to say that I regard the conduct of the Militiamen as completely reprehensible and that in their place I should have behaved in exactly the same way.

On the night of Tuesday seventeen were shot.

On Thursday night eight.

On Friday night nine.

On Saturday night thirteen.

I tore strips off my shirt and stuffed my ears with them so as not to hear anything during the night. It was no good. I cut my gums with a splinter of glass, and said they were bleeding, so as to obtain some iodised cotton wool. I stuffed the cotton wool in my ears. This was no good, either.

Our hearing became preternaturally sharp. We heard everything. On the nights of the executions we heard the telephone ring at ten o'clock. We heard the warder on duty answer it. We heard him repeating at short intervals: "ditto . . . ditto . . . ditto. . ." We knew it was someone at military headquarters reading out the 
 list of those to be shot during the night. We knew that the warder wrote down a name before every "ditto". But we did not know what names they were and we did not know whether ours was among them.

The telephone always rang at ten. Then until midnight or one o'clock there was time to lie on one's bed and wait. Each night we weighed our lives in the balance and each night found them wanting.

Then at twelve or one we heard the shrill sound of the night bell. It was the priest and the firing squad. They always arrived together.

Then began the opening of doors, the ringing of the sanctus bell, the praying of the priest, the cries for help and the shouts of "Mother".

The steps came nearer down the corridor, receded, came nearer, receded. Now they were at the next cell; now they were in the other wing; now they were coming back. Clearest of all was always the priest's voice. "Lord, have mercy on this man, Lord, forgive him his sins, Amen." We lay on our beds and our teeth chattered

On Tuesday night seventeen were shot. On Thursday night eight were shot. On Friday night nine were shot. On Saturday night thirteen were shot.

Six days shalt thou labour, saith the Lord, and on the seventh day, the Sabbath, thou shalt do no manner of work. On Sunday night three were shot.

Monday, April 19th.

Hitherto I have always been shaved in my cell; yesterday they took me to the barber's shop. Saw myself in a mirror for the first time for two and a half months. Was astonished to find myself so unchanged. A man is really as elastic as  	

a football; you get a kick which you imagine will knock you to pieces; but the outer case springs back into shape and the only trace left is at the most a spattering of mud. If our consciousness were the aggregate of our experiences we should all be grey at twenty-five.

The water-pipe that runs through my cell sometimes acts like a speaking-tube. If I lay my ear to it, I can hear confused noises: now a few bars of wireless music coming from the Governor's room, now a jumble of noises from several cells. Sometimes I even think I can hear women's voices -- the wing on the other side is the women's prison. For the last three days all these sounds from distant spheres have been drowned by the voice of one man who keeps sobbing and crying for his mother. He must be in one of the cells near mine. Whenever I put my ear to the pipe I can hear him. I asked Angel who it was that was continually crying. He said it was a Militiaman who had formerly shared the cell with his brother, but who since Friday night had been alone.

This morning, after they had taken breakfast round, the warder and Angel came back into my cell. "Come quickly," said the warder. "Your friend has gone off his head." We went to Cell 37. On the floor, parallel with the iron bedstead, lay Carlos, stretched out at full length, the swastika still in his buttonhole. The sweat was pouring down his face, and little bubbles of foam had formed on his lips. His eyes were wide open. I looked at him, and did not know what to think.

The warder dug me in the ribs. "Go on, say something to him," he said. "Talk German to him." ( Carlos spoke only a few broken words of Spanish, and I had already interpreted for him several times.) 
 	

I asked Carlos what the devil was the matter with him; I shook him, I pinched his arm -- he did not show the slightest reaction and did not seem to know me. Angel and I fetched a bucket of water and poured it over his head. Then we pulled his ears. After this lie gradually came to, and began to whimper and wave his hands about. We held him down and I talked to him until at last he recognized me and began inconsequentially to complain that his back hurt him and that he could not move his legs. We felt his legs; they were as stiff as pokers and the knees would not bend. When we tried to bend them by force, he roared with pain.

Finally we laid him on the bed, and the doctor's assistant -- one of the prisoners, a medical student -- came along. We diagnosed the case as one of hysterical conversion. Then the jefe de servicio arrived and said that it was nothing more or less than malingering, and that if we took no notice of Carlos he would soon pull himself together.

At last they all went out of the cell and left me alone with Carlos. I did not turn my head, but I was certain that the jefe was peeping through the spy-hole. I said to Carlos that if he were malingering he might safely tell me; I certainly wouldn't peach on him. But he did not understand me and all that I could get out of him was that he had been hearing the same sounds as I myself at night, that the priest with the sanctus bell had approached his cell; he had heard the tinkle of the bell growing louder and louder and had known no more. . . .

After a few minutes they came for me and locked me in my own cell again. The jefe said that if Carlos was not better by midday he would be put in a punishment cell, and that would certainly cure him.

Poor Carlos. His legs were cleverer than his head; when he thought he was about to go to his death they stiffened and refused to carry him.

If he is left a cripple, they will pin no medal on his breast.  	

Only three of us in the patio this afternoon. I told Byron and the consumptive the whole story; they shrugged their shoulders and did not seem to be particularly moved. But afterwards they gave Angel some cigarettes to take to Carlos in his cell.

At the evening meal I asked the warder how Carlos was. He merely tapped his forehead and said, "Your amigo is balmy."

Wrote a fresh letter to the Consul. The first was sent off five days ago. Since when I have been daily and hourly expecting a visit from him, or at least an answer. Am convinced that the first letter must have gone astray; otherwise inexplicable that he should not have responded within twenty-four hours to my S O S.

It is a dreadful disappointment. For two and a half months I fought for permission to write the letter -- for ten days I have had "heart attacks" -- and now there's no answer, nothing.

Tuesday, April 20th.

Nothing from Consul. But the first quiet night for days. No telephone in the evening. No night-bell. I feel like a convalescent., The whole prison seems to breathe again.

In the morning I was called to Carlos once more. Yesterday evening he had been a little better, had eaten something and tried to hobble round the room on his stiff legs. Now he is unconscious again. While I was in his cell a representative came from the Italian Consulate to take a record of the whole case. But Carlos could not be made to come to. This is the clearest possible proof that he is not putting it on-he too has waited long enough to get into touch with his Consulate.  Wednesday, April 21st.

Yesterday, when the warder brought my evening meal, he said with marked kindliness that I must eat up, and ordered me a second helping. It seemed to me that Angel and the other orderly looked at me very peculiarly when the warder said this. Then the wine arrived, and, against the rules, I was given a second beakerful without my asking for it. The orderly who brought the wine also looked at me rather peculiarly, I thought.

I was convinced that my turn had come.

I did not go to sleep, but paced up and down, waiting for the telephone to ring, and was amazed at my own indifference. It occurred to me that I found it harder to part from Byron and the consumptive and Angel than from all my friends and relatives.

At ten o'clock sharp the telephone rang. Seven times I heard "Ditto -- ditto -- ditto".

I paced up and down until eleven; then I suddenly felt very tired. Surely, I thought, I may as well lie down for another hour. When I woke up, they were bringing my breakfast.

I really do not understand how I managed it. I am more and more puzzled at the working of the wheels within my brain -- I wonder, indeed, that they still work at all. I am absolutely convinced that Carlos has more physical courage than I -- in Malaga he got a bayonet-wound in the arm in a hand-to-hand fight, and I had been very much impressed by the way in which he had related the story. And now he lies there in the grip of a hysterical attack, and the roles are reversed.

It's quite different for the two Spaniards. There are two of them at night. This makes an enormous, an absolutely enormous difference. . . .

But if the warder and Angelito offer me a second helping again, I shall bash their faces in.

Or was it, after all, not imagination, and had they  	

perhaps known of an order which was only cancelled at the last moment.

I shall never know.

But after all we're not dead yet.

No news again from the Consul.

Thursday, April 22nd.

Late last evening letter from Consul arrived. Dated 20th. Writes that he has received my letters of the 14th and 19th and has requested to be allowed to visit me.

Once more granite rocks have turned out to be airballoons.

Was at first mad with delight -- then overcome by unspeakable nausea at finding myself for the moment indifferent to the fate of the others, now that I felt comparatively safe. This feeling of nausea was so intense that I could not sleep, although to-night all was still. Strange how all objectively favourable happenings -- the letter from home -the money -- the letter from the Consul -- all turn back on one. The urge to bear the burden of the others acts on me like a categorical imperative; and it is, after all, merely a question of taste that I say "burden" instead of "cross". But from the same source comes the equally ardent desire to slay the greasy little black priest who rings the sanctus bell at nights.

Carlos was better to-day; he stumped about with us in the courtyard. His legs are still somewhat stiff, but that will probably soon pass off.

The Spaniards, on the other hand, were in a great state. They came into the courtyard, oddly agitated, and fell upon me, both at once, demanding to know which was the better newspaper, "The Times" or the "Daily Herald". I realized that they must have had a bitter quarrel on the subject and so I tried to frame my answer in a manner worthy of Solomon. This was the worst thing I could have done, for then each maintained that he was right and they lost their heads completely and screamed at  	

each other. It would not have taken much for them to have gone for one another's throats.

Our patio more and more resembles a panopticon -Carlos with his paralysed legs, the other two with their nervous irritability and quarrelsomeness, and I with my insane qualms of conscience and mental purification rites after the Dominican model.

. . . . . Is this to be taken cure grano salis? I myself no longer know.

Friday, April 23rd.

At three o'clock, when we were led back from the patio, I was given permission to go to the canteen myself to spend my last few pesetas on cigarettes. Johnnie was standing in the canteen drinking coffee. He looked as though he were going to speak to me, but I turned my back on him.

Then came Henri, the librarian. He was in radiant mood and told me that to-morrow at last he was being sent back to France. Promised me to go and see my wife in London or write to her.

(P.S. He did neither, of course.)

The comparative freedom of movement that I now enjoy makes the periods of being alone almost harder to bear. When, at three o'clock, the cell door falls to behind me, the waiting for the next afternoon begins.

The Consul has not been yet. What if they refuse to allow him to come at all?

Saturday, April 24th.

Yesterday evening young Caballero came into my cell, accompanied by a warder. He is a nice boy of twenty-five or twenty-six, perhaps even younger, dressed in brown overalls. He is guarded specially strictly, and has been "incomunicado" without intermission for nearly a year; may speak to no one, is not allowed out in the patio, but only to march up and down the corridor for two hours  daily, accompanied by a warder. I have often seen him through the spy-hole; he is always clean, tidy, and wellgroomed, and apparently in good spirits. And yet he has had the same nightly experiences: as I -- and what he must have been through during the first few months, when a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, were marched off to execution every night, at that time without a trial or any kind of formality. . . .

Either the boy has a simple, childlike nature or else he is marvellously tough; I can't decide which.

He is very popular with the warders. When he appeared in my cell yesterday the warder explained that we might not talk to one another, and that they had merely come because Caballerito had nothing to read and had heard that I had the first volume of "War and Peace". Had I perhaps finished it, or in any case would I lend it to Caballerito for one night?

I gave him the book and asked if I might be allowed to shake Caballerito by the hand. We smiled at each other and as we shook hands I saw that the boy's eyes were moist. Then they both marched off with the Tolstoy.

Early to-day the new librarian came. A political prisoner this time, a man of about thirty, a former Socialist town councillor from Galicia. He brought the second volume of Tolstoy and wanted the first returned. I said it was with Caballero. Whereupon he flared up and said we had no right to exchange books without his permission -- he had sixteen hundred books to look after, where would he be, etc. etc. I said that a night without anything to read was worse than hell; that he as a political prisoner ought to know that perfectly  better; the last three nights have been undisturbed and everyone hopes that a quieter period is coming again.

I still stuff cotton wool into my ears every evening, but I have worked out a new system for the night. I sleep only five and a half hours, from nine to half-past two, force myself to get up at three, and remain awake the whole day so as to be certain of being able to sleep during the critical hours. The hours till the morning are long -- I have to pace up and down or read standing up so as not to fall asleep -- but the method has proved efficacious and the mere consciousness that I can thus get the better of the nightmares gives me satisfaction and relative peace.

Sunday, April 25th.

Consul still not come. Carlos still not released. Byron has begun to write poetry and put Basque folk-tales into verse. He admires the Basques and despises the Andalusians. He loves talking in aphorisms and said to-day, twirling his little moustache: "Andalusia, my friend, is the scrotum of Africa, while the Basque country is the heart of Spain." I said it was a fine definition.

His chief, on the other hand, gives way increasingly to melancholia. Hitherto they have both had money, and been able to have enormous meals every day; hors d'oeuvres varids, beefsteak with fried egg and salad, fruit, black coffee, a bottle of wine per head, and chicken three times a week. Angelito used to take them all this every day in a basket and had done very well out of it. They refused to save, and every day Byron would say that the only thing he was afraid. of was that they might be shot before they had devoured their money's worth., Now their money has given out; I too have no more, Carlos never had any. We have jointly borrowed twenty pesetas from Angel on condition we return him thirty when we get some. Then I have borrowed another ten from the other orderly. So at least we all have cigarettes. well; that the situation of all of us was not, God knew, one for bureaucratic formalities and that the exchange had been made with the warder's approval.

Whereupon he said that he didn't wish to argue with me and if I were undisciplined he would not bring me any books at all.  To which I replied he could go to blazes, adding a few more unprintable remarks. If the warder had not placed himself between us, we should have come to blows.

The librarian loped off. I felt as relieved after the row as after a purifying storm. But in half an hour's time he came back and mutely placed two books on the bed; a biography of Cervantes and a novel by Pío Baroja.

He made a formal apology and we shook hands, with emotion. Odd fish.

In the patio Carlos told me he had been taken in the morning to the Italian consulate under escort of two Civil Guards. The Consul had merely shaken his head resignedly at his story and told him he guaranteed that he would be released in the next few days. Carlos said he had the impression that the Consul had to deal with a dozen such cases every day. At the prison gates he had met the Governor, who had said in astonishment: "I thought, Teniente, you were free already."

Of course he is terribly happy. He has existed the whole time on the money he has borrowed from us; now he promises us mountains of gold when he's free. He means to write Mussolini a letter saying that we three ought to be released. He has even read out a draft of the letter to us. It begins with an account of his student years, his career in the Fascio, his military rank and his warlike deeds in Spain. Then it goes on to say that he has become convinced that the Reds are not all criminals, but many of then misguided idealists; then follows a heart-rending description of us three and finally the hope is politely but emphatically expressed that the Duce will, as proof of his nobility of spirit, restore us to the arms of our loved ones.

I had to translate it all into Spanish, and we were tactful enough to keep deadly serious faces.

Carlos then told us that there had been a group of pretty girls standing at the prison gates, flirting with the sentries.

The general atmosphere of the prison is considerably 


 
 better; the last three nights have been undisturbed and everyone hopes that a quieter period is coming again.

I still stuff cotton wool into my ears every evening, but I have worked out a new system for the night. I sleep only five and a half hours, from nine to half-past two, force myself to get up at three, and remain awake the whole day so as to be certain of being able to sleep during the critical hours. The hours till the morning are long -- I have to pace up and down or read standing up so as not to fall asleep -- but the method has proved efficacious and the mere consciousness that I can thus get the better of the nightmares gives me satisfaction and relative peace.

Sunday, April 25th.

Consul still not come. Carlos still not released. Byron has begun to write poetry and put Basque folk-tales into verse. He admires the Basques and despises the Andalusians. He loves talking in aphorisms and said to-day, twirling his little moustache: "Andalusia, my friend, is the scrotum of Africa, while the Basque country is the heart of Spain." I said it was a fine definition.

His chief, on the other hand, gives way increasingly to melancholia. Hitherto they have both had money, and been able to have enormous meals every day; hors d'oeuvres varids, beefsteak with fried egg and salad, fruit, black coffee, a bottle of wine per head, and chicken three times a week. Angelito used to take them all this every day in a basket and had done very well out of it. They refused to save, and every day Byron would say that the only thing he was afraid. of was that they might be shot before they had devoured their money's worth., Now their money has given out; I too have no more, Carlos never had any. We have jointly borrowed twenty pesetas from Angel on condition we return him thirty when we get some. Then I have borrowed another ten from the other orderly. So at least we all have cigarettes.  	

Monday, April 26th.

Fainted during night. Another heart attack. This time it's either bend or break. . . .
IX

THE FOLLOWING THING happened:

On Sunday a new prisoner was taken to my former cell, No 41. I saw them bring him in. He was quite young, about fifteen or sixteen.

Captain Bligh was on duty that afternoon. It was Angel's day off, and the second orderly, Manuel, was taking his place. Manuel is a little degenerate cripple, with pronounced signs of water on the brain. Rumour has it that he was in prison for a life term for some sexual misdemeanour that had a fatal outcome. We all feel a certain physical aversion to him.

Towards evening Manuel got drunk. The orderlies often do. When he brought round the evening meal he could scarcely stand upright on his rickety legs, and the whole cell reeked of liquor.

At nine I heard Captain Bligh walking down the corridor with Manuel. They came to a halt outside No. 41, that is, almost outside my cell.

"They'll send for him to-night," said Captain Bligh.

Manuel answered in his high-pitched, tipsy, grotesque squeak.

"Funny he should have to die. The whole day he has been asking to be let out into the patio. Funny. . . ."

Whereupon the warder: "Rojo, rojo."

I think he, too, was drunk. He boomed forth the "rojo, rojo" in his deep oily bass so that it sounded as though he were snoring.

At this moment the lad in No. 41 began to beat on the  door with his fists; he must have heard it all. "I don't want to die," he shouted. "Mother, mother help, I don't want to die. Help, help. . . ." And so on. . . .

The whole corridor echoed with the noise. The prison grew restive. From all the cells came confused, indistinct noises.

The lad went on bellowing.

Captain Bligh and Manuel fetched him from his cell and carried him off somewhere to a special isolation cell. On the way the drunken orderly stumbled and fell with a clatter to the ground. Other warders came up and helped to take the lad off.

A little later -- it was not yet ten -- the priest walked down the corridor, probably to confess the lad. Then a warder called out in peeved tones for brandy.

At ten the telephone rang. Three times I heard "lo mismo" -- ditto.

Shortly after ten Don Ramón came to my cell and said that if there was a row later on I must not get worriedone of the prisoners was ill and they were going to move him to hospital in the night.

Obviously they were afraid the lad would kick up a shindy when they took him off. As a rule everything had gone off very quietly during the execution nights; the warders had obviously worked out a technique for preventing scenes.

At half-past ten I heard subdued whispering, tittering, and very odd snuffling and smacking noises in the corridor.

I looked through the spy-hole.

In the empty, lighted corridor a strange scene was being enacted; the little Manuel and Captain Bligh were playing at "horses". Manuel was the horse, and had a string tied round him; Captain Bligh was holding the reins. They paraded like this up and down the whole length of the corridor; I could see them whenever they passed the line of vision of my spy-hole. The warder was holding a whip, he called out, "Gee up!" at every step and laid on with it.  	

Manuel tittered and whimpered with pain by turns. After having traversed the corridor three times, horse and driver went out into the empty, dark patio. I could hear the crack of the whip and Manuel's whimpers. Then they came back.

This was about eleven. I waited for the executions to begin and once again it so happened that I fell asleep before they began.

Next day I heard that three prisoners had actually been executed. But the lad had not screamed. Perhaps they had made him drunk on the brandy.

As a consequence of this scene I decided afresh not to touch any food, and also to try not to drink any water. I was convinced that this time the effects of starvation would be bound to make themselves felt sooner -- it was ten days since I had begun to take food again, and before that I had fasted for exactly ten days; then there was the fact that I had cut down my hours of sleep and was smoking heavily. I was determined to hold out now until, one way or another, I got out of this slaughter-house.

I drank nothing for seven days and ate nothing for fifteen, from April 25th to May 9th. But fate had obviously ordained that all my efforts should be made ridiculous; the second hunger strike proved in the event as superfluous as the first. The "happy ending" came quite undramatically and independently of any action on my part; all my desperate efforts proved to have been mere tilting against wind-mills. I felt with the unfortunate youth in Petronius "Satyricon" -- "This world is not a pleasant place; you jump and scamper and torment yourself like a mouse in a chamber-pot."

Or something like that. . . .

Monday, April 26th. 1

Hungry the whole day. This time much worse than the first time. Was summoned to the office this evening. Two
____________________
1 	In the meantime I had so perfected my code that I no longer needed to write "heart" for "stomach" and could write down practically everything I wanted.



 well-fed gentlemen from the Press Department in Salamanca greeted me very courteously, and gave me another letter from my wife.

The contents are a little more revealing than those of the first letter. She writes that she "was astonished to find how many friends we have", and that she "not only hopes, but has a definite feeling that I shall not have to wait very long now for my release".

This last no doubt is only a pious wish, but the first indicates that a campaign of protest has been got going.

The letter had been forwarded to Salamanca through the mediation of the Archbishop of Westminster.

But it is evident from the letter that my wife, despite all efforts, has not succeeded in discovering where I am. What object can the Franco authorities have in concealing my whereabouts? One more reason for holding out now. In a fortnight at the most I shall be a wreck and they will have to take me to hospital.

The two gentlemen from the Press Department said I might write an answer to the letter, and discreetly suggested that I should write to say how well I was being treated. I had the impression that they would not forward the letter and were merely trying to get a statement out of me. I wrote: "Up till now I have been treated properly in prison and have nothing to complain of."

They took the letter away with them, promising that it would be in my wife's hands within a week.

(It never arrived, of course)

Tuesday, April 27th.

Endless rainy day. Carlos still here. Both Spaniards in a very bad humour ever since our money gave out. Quarrel the whole time. As a result of fasting I, too, have become very irritable, but take care to keep a hold on myself.  Wednesday, April 28th.

The Consul came to-day. He said the British Government were taking a friendly interest in my case and he had received instructions to do what he could for me. Questions had been put in the House of Commons. My wife had moved heaven and earth to obtain my release. The Foreign Office had enquired of Franco what charge had been preferred against me, but Franco had refused to answer on the ground that my case was still sub judice.

Sub judice is good. First they declare to me and the world that I have been sentenced to death by court martial. Then all of a sudden my case is sub judice, and they haven't once brought me up for examination, not once.

I don't know what to make of it all; the Consul also doesn't seem to know. I asked him whether Franco had given a formal assurance that I should not be shot. He said that to his knowledge no such assurance had been given so far. I don't even know whether this new turn of events with regard to my case being sub judice is favourable or not. Probably Franco finds the stir the case has caused disagreeable, and his people want to stage a formal trial to condemn me "correctly". They'll work up the material that I published with regard to the German pilots so that it will be sufficient to procure a sentence by court martial.

In short, I'm no wiser than I was before.

What I fear most is lest Queipo should turn the whole thing into a question of prestige, possibly even in relation to Franco. Salamanca seems to have protected me against Queipo up till now; but I'm in Seville and not in Salamanca.

The Consul promised to come every week and to let me know the moment he had any news from the Foreign Office. I asked him for various little things: money, a chessboard, books -- he promised to bring them next time. We talked for nearly an hour.  Afterwards the warder showed me the visitors' room.

It is a big hall with a kind of iron cage in the middle. The prisoners who are receiving visitors crouch on the ground in the cage. Round the cage is an empty space of about five paces deep; the' other side of this the wives of the prisoners squat on the ground and shout across at them. There are at least a hundred people in the room at a time. I couldn't understand how the couples ever managed to make each other hear amid the general hullabaloo. The visits last ten minutes. Each prisoner may be visited once a week.

Thursday, April 29th.

Racked my brains the whole day over what the Consul told me. Postulated all kinds of theories, but came to no conclusion.

While we were out in the patio we heard an explosion from the direction of the town. All the windows rattled and we saw, some miles away, an enormous column of smoke slowly rising upwards.

Later we heard from the warder that a shoe factory had blown up from some unexplained cause. All the hands, two hundred of them, dead.

It was the Phalangist with pince-nez who told us the story. He added the wise commentary: "You see, there were two hundred of 'em -- and here you all make a devil of a fuss if we pot off five or six of you."

Then he added that the day after next was May 1st and would no doubt be "solemnly celebrated".

Friday, April 30th.

Pangs of hunger the whole time; thirst even worse. Feel ill and very wretched; my heart beats like a drum. Torrential rain. Carlos, who has learned that Johnnie has been released, is livid with rage. Yesterday he declared a hunger strike, but started eating again to-day -- he said the  	

smell of coffee so titillated his nostrils that he could not hold out.

The last few nights have been quiet. But we all dread May 1st.

Saturday, May 1st.

Thank God, the night was quiet.

This afternoon, while the four of us were walking about in the patio, three Requetes officers appeared in the doorway. Captain Bligh was conducting them; he pointed a finger at us, and was obviously explaining who we were. We felt like animals in a zoo. The officers riveted their gaze on us, postured like elegant dandies, and struck their riding boots with their whips. It was far the most humiliating experience I have hitherto been through, more humiliating even than being photographed in the street in Malaga.

Sunday, May 2nd.

This night, too, quiet.

I am considerably weaker. Felt too ill to go out into the patio; lay on my bed the whole day. Have grown terribly thin -- arms and legs only skin and bone now, like those of a mummy. This evening couldn't stand the thirst any longer -- had drunk nothing for a week -- and drank a whole litre of wine which I had saved up. Result what might have been expected. In addition smoked thirty-two cigarettes to-day. If I can keep this up much longer, I shall be able to earn my living in future as a "fasting man" at a fair.

Monday, May 3rd.

The whole day in bed, except for one hour in the late afternoon. In the evening Angelito brought me a second blanket and a kind of pillow. Unable to read.

I think I'll soon be bad enough now to get myself taken before the doctor.  	

Tuesday, May 4th.

Last night they shot another eight.

I didn't hear anything of it myself; learned of it to-day through other channels.

Lie all day long on my bed, dozing.

Three days now since I was in the patio.

Wednesday, May 5th.

Late last night Carlos was transferred to my cell. A new batch of prisoners; the prison is overcrowded.

We were tremendously pleased and talked the whole night. I had to let Carlos into the secret of my hunger strike, since he can see me getting rid of my food. From now on he will eat up my rations.

This morning we were both transferred to Cell 17.

It is situated on the other side of the corridor; the window looks out on to the "beautiful patio". When we looked out of the window for the first time this morning and caught sight of flower-beds and green trees, it all seemed like a fairy tale. The flowers and trees of course are not exactly impressive -- the "beautiful patio" looks rather like one of the wretched parks in a working-class district. But the main thing is that the trees and flowers have colours. I became suddenly aware that we are all of us here living in a world made up of the two shades, black and grey, like the world of the film. To continue the analogy: the "beautiful patio" had the same effect on me as a coloured film, the sight of which only later on makes one aware of the monotony of the black and grey technique.

I made a little test to see whether it was only I who reacted so violently to these things, or whether my reaction was typical of prison existence. I said not a word to Carlos about my delight, but he began of himself to say how marvellous the flowers and trees were and almost clapped his hands for joy like a child.  The move had taken so much out of me that I lay down on my bed again after it and could scarcely breathe. Today is the eleventh day of fasting. My appearance has reached an almost theatrical degree of emaciation; Carlos will bear me out. The jefe -- Scarface -- made an inspection of the cell after breakfast and the sight of me at last had the desired effect. He had me taken before the doctor.

The doctor -- a military doctor with the rank of Colonel and obviously a specialist at detecting malingering -- asked me what was the matter with me. I said something or other about angina pectoris and two attacks. He listened to my heart; prescribed no smoking and milk instead of coffee -- that was all.

Carlos was very disappointed at the meagre result. He said it wasn't worth fasting twenty-one days for that. Just wait, I said, we're not dead yet. We were both somewhat horror-struck at this ominous phrase.

Lucky that the two of us are here together. No one can find out whether I smoke or not. As a matter of fact am now smoking a little less, twenty a day. After each cigarette the cardiac muscle beats out a tattoo.

The criminals in the patio are a curious bunch. Three murderers, five or six burglars, a real Sierra bandit -- the rest swindlers and petty delinquents. They don't play football and don't dash about like the politicos; they are a sedate, serious lot. They despise the politicos and talk with no hint of pity of the executions. They live an ordered life, secure, unmenaced -- an idyllic existence. We were able to talk to them through the window with perfect ease, there's no taboo line here. They all cursed the war -- since it has begun things have become so uncomfortable in prison. They're quite nice to me; they don't care for Carlos because he's an officer.

"Serves you right," one of them said, "if you had stayed at home and lived a nice sober existence, you wouldn't have been in jug." 
 Thursday, May 6th.

Yesterday they took away the electric bulbs from our cell. There is a shortage of electric bulbs in the prison and in the whole of Seville. The warder explained to us that he needed the bulbs for the cells of the "incomunicados" and "ojos"."You," he said, "are well-behaved chaps; there's no need to keep an eye on you any longer."

We felt highly flattered. We now belong to the patrician class of the prison, the warders talk to us in intimate, familiar tones about their duties, we are members of the family. That is the way to get on.

What luck that there are two of us now that there's no light. Carlos was furious at first when I woke him up at three in the morning and announced that we would now converse until breakfast-time. But ever since he has been able, like me, to sleep through the critical hours, he blesses my dodge.

Carlos still goes out into the patio from one to three o'clock; he is my liaison with the outer world. I hear from him that our two friends are in a very bad humour and are constantly at loggerheads. For months they have been stuck together like Siamese twins; in sleep, in waking, in the performance of the most intimate functions.

But there have been no executions for the last three nights.

Friday, May 7th.

Was taken to the doctor this morning for the second time. He shook his head as he looked at me and was furious, because my symptoms do not fit in with any of the forms of malingering known to him. Was chiefly irritated at my answering, each time he asked me how I felt in myself, that I felt perfectly well, that it was not at my request that I had been brought before him and that he could not help me, since there was no drug that could cure angina pectoris. I thought that, in view of the unmistakable symptoms of my condition, the man would. at least feel some alarm  at the thought of his responsibility and put me in hospital. I really look quite fantastic -- like a walking skeleton out of a Walt Disney cartoon. When I was taken across the corridor to visit the doctor, all eyes were turned on me in horror.

But I was out of luck. After long reflection the doctor told me to show him my tongue. It was as white as though I had dipped it in flour. This gave him a sudden inspiration.

"I knew it," he roared jubilantly to his assistants. "The man is taking ether."

I enquired with a grin where he imagined I could get hold of ether.

He said that doubtless the criminals smuggled it in to me through the window.

I fancy he had sent for my record and had come upon the part about the hypodermic syringe. And perhaps, too, the "women's stockings".

But the affair had very unpleasant consequences. Carlos and I were moved to Cell 30, which looks out on the big patio. Our mattresses and clothes were slashed about to see if any ether could be discovered. Conscious of my innocence, I began to protest more and more loudly, and Carlos backed me up. Finally I staged a real fit of fury which, owing to the ragged state of my nerves, was only half put on. Half a dozen warders came running up and "Scarface" was literally green with rage; but none of them dared to touch us. I fancy this was due to the effect of Carlos's presence; the spirit of Mussolini no doubt hovers invisibly in the cell with arms spread out protectively.

Since they found nothing, they confined themselves to boarding up the window to prevent ether being smuggled in. Now we sit all day in the dark and sing "Gaudeamus igitur" and Austrian student songs -- we both studied for a term or two at Vienna University.

I apologised to Carlos for involving him in this mess, but he said that the affair was just beginning to amuse him.

Besides, he gets double rations.  While he cats I wrap my head in the blanket so as not to hear or see anything of it. To-day is the thirteenth day.

Carlos is a boon. I do not know how I should have borne the last few days without him.

He has cut out a fresh swastika from cigarette-paper and the rebel flag from a match-box cover and wears them both together in his button-hole.

Saturday, May 8th.

I was brought up for examination for the first time.

At one o'clock, when Carlos had gone out into the patio, I dozed off with weakness. This was in contravention of my iron rule as regards sleep, but I am now so weak that I fall asleep without realizing it as I sit, sometimes even in the midst of talking.

At half-past one I was awakened by the opening of the cell door. The " Venga" -- come -- rang out in more cold, official tones than I had heard for a long time.

They took me to the office. In the office were an officer and a uniformed shorthand typist. My greeting was ignored and I was not offered a seat.

I knew at once that this was the military examiner. I had visualized this scene for long enough beforehand.

I said that I was ill and must sit down; that I would refuse to answer any questions until they brought me a chair. The officer shrugged his shoulders and had a chair brought in.

He had a thick file of documents before him; while he was opening it I managed to read the inscription on the cover; my name, and, in brackets, the offence with which I was charged.

"Auxilio de rebelión militar," it read.

For "affording aid to armed rebellion" there was, I knew, only one possible sentence before Franco's courts martial: death. Nevertheless I felt relieved. The fact that they had on their own initiative dropped the charge of spying seemed to me a very favourable omen.

The examination lasted some two hours. Almost half an  hour of this was taken up by the examiner in trying to get me to admit that the "News Chronicle" was a Communist paper. The man's ignorance was astounding. He was convinced that a paper which took up a loyal attitude to the legal Spanish Government was bound to be Communist. The examination developed into an argument. Then, when he realized that he was giving himself away, he turned nasty.

The remaining questions related to my first visit to Seville, my journey to Malaga, etc. I had no desire to go into the personal psychological reasons that had moved me to stay in Malaga. I said that Miss Helena had already taken a note of all that.

In everything I said I kept to the truth, except on one point: to the question as to where I had obtained the material for my first book on Spain, I alleged that the "League for the Rights of Man" and other liberal organisations friendly to the Government had placed the material at my disposal; I had then put my signature to this data, trusting in the good faith of those organisations. All this was a lie; had I told the truth it might have cost several people in rebel territory their heads.

He asked me what sort of people the "secret wire-pullers of the Red Propaganda" in England were.

I named a list of twenty-five to thirty names that appear on appeals and notices of public meetings, all university professors and titled people, from knights upwards. When I came to "Her Grace the Duchess of Atholl" he had had enough.

At the conclusion of the examination he said:

"When you were in National territory the first time, you weren't arrested?

"No," I said.

"Extraordinary," he said.

And so it ended.

I came away from the examination very satisfied. At the beginning I had been very much afraid; the stupidity of the examiner had restored my self-confidence.  	

I related the whole story to Carlos with great gusto. He was a bad audience and grew more jumpy every minute. At last he said that he couldn't understand how I could be so cheerful after having discovered that I was to be charged with "aiding the military rebellion"; and that it was "absolutely ghastly."

This, of course, was sufficient to damp my spirits thoroughly, and I sat down to write a hurried S O S to the Consul.

When the Consul had first come to see me we had settled on a danger signal; if I underlined the date it would mean "S O S".

I wrote a letter containing nothing of importance, and underlined the date.

Sunday, May 9th.

Carlos has fairly got the wind up me. He paces about the cell and I realize that he already looks upon me as a dead man. He treats me with an exaggerated respect and consideration that gets on my nerves. I have always preferred a harsh nurse to a sympathetic one. Pity is the echo of one's own misery and increases that misery fourfold.

Monday, May 10th.

The Consul came. He, too, appeared to be somewhat disquieted by the fact that I had been brought up for examination. It had still been impossible to obtain from Franco an assurance that he would not have me shot. He said, it is true, that he did not think my death was of such importance to Franco that he would risk offending the Foreign Office, but this was somewhat vague comfort. I asked if there were no possibility of my being exchanged with a prisoner of the Valencia Government, but he said that at the present stage he did not think it likely.

During our conversation I noticed that at short intervals I kept feeling dizzy and was unable to remember what had  	

just been said. After fifteen days of fasting this was probably not to be wondered at. But I must have made an odd impression on him, and it seemed to me that he looked at me several times in astonishment and some irritation.

As a result I have decided to start eating again. The main thing now is to keep a clear head at my trial.

And if this proves of no use, at least to cut a good figure.

Tuesday, May 11th.

Astonishing how quickly one picks up strength by eating again.

Was in the patio to-day for the first time for a week. Horrified at the appearance of the two Spaniards. They had heard from Carlos yesterday that my trial was approaching and they hailed me with simulated heartiness. They said that it would be just the same with me as with them -- I. should be sentenced but not shot. Besides, they said, I had already been sentenced by court martial and not shot, and that made me immune from a second sentence; it was like being inoculated against cholera.

All the time they were speaking I could not help thinking of how we had talked to Nicolás the day before he was executed.

I realize with surprise how comparatively safe I have been feeling all these last weeks. Now the button-counting will begin all over again, and the obsessive dance on the flagstones: if I tread in the middle, all will be well, but if I tread on the lines. . . .

There is nothing in the tenets of even the gloomiest monastic order which condemns a man to endure purgatory, and then, when it is all over, sends him back to hell.

Wednesday, May 12th.

Ten minutes ago I was told to pack my things, for I was going to be released.

I have put my toothbrush in my pocket.

Carlos is out in the patio. . . . 
 X

THIS IS A story without a climax.

For days on end we waited for the fall of Malaga as for the last act of a tragedy -- and when Malaga fell we were not aware of it.

During the two months of my solitary confinement in Seville, I watched the football players in the courtyardand did not know that at night they were shot.

Twice, for a total period of twenty-six days, I tormented myself with hunger and thirst; the object I wished to attain was each time rendered pointless by a strange freak of circumstance, and those against whom I waged this silent battle were not aware of it.

Death tripped down the corridor, changing step, struck out here and there, danced pirouettes; often I felt his breath on my face when he was miles away; often I fell asleep and dreamed while he stood leaning over my bed.

This is a confused story without a definite thread, without climax or anti-climax. The corpses are not, as is fitting, piled up at the end of the act; they lie about, evenly distributed, here, there and everywhere.

When there seemed to be only two possibilities, life-long imprisonment or death, the door suddenly opened and I stumbled into freedom like a blind man into the light.

Often I wake at nights and think I am still in No. 41 and that it is not the Thames, at Shepperton, Middlesex, that runs past my window but the white taboo line in the great, dark patio.

Still more often I dream that I must return to No. 41 because I have left something behind there. Something or other, I don't know what.

What was it, what have I forgotten? I must go back once again and take a last look round before the steel door falls to; this time not before, but behind, me.  The notes of the last post in the courtyard still ring in myears.

Soon it will be night and evening has scarcely begun. In this country darkness falls the moment the sun has gone; there is no such word as "evening" in the Spanish language. The short span of twilight which replaces evening is not a gentle dying away of the day, but the beginning of night.

In this brief span, while the shadows swiftly glide along the walls and fill the patio with darkness, the last post is sounded.

Whilst the bugler sounds it, all is still in the courtyard. The prisoners stand to attention in a square. The sharp lines which suffering has seared into their faces are softened by the twilight. They listen to the bugler's notes, many of them open-mouthed; it is the only music they ever hear.

The bugler's last note goes on vibrating for a while. Until it has completely died away, the line of men stands to attention. The warder listens with head thrust forward to hear whether the last thin lingering note has ceased; then he blows his whistle.

The square turns right about, and at a second whistle closes up and forms fours. Five minutes later the patio is dark and deserted.

Sometimes cats howl. When it is wet, the stars are reflected in the puddles. At full-moon walls and gravel are a chalky white and the cell windows yawn like black holes, emitting snores and groans.

There is a curious mechanism at work within us which romanticises the past; the film of past experiences is coloured by the memory. It is a very primitive process, and the colours run into one another; maybe that is why they are so fairy-like.

In a word, even though he may not admit it, every prisoner is homesick for his cell.

And what is even stranger: he has a feeling of having never been so free as there. 
 This is a really remarkable thing, and one difficult to explain. But there is a very vivid and real feeling behind it: the feeling of irresponsibility.

Our life was, of course, an unusual one compared with normal prison life; the constant nearness of death weighed down and at the same time lightened our existence.

Most of us were not afraid of death, only of the act of dying; and there were even moments in which we overcame even this fear. At such moments we were free -- men without shadows, dismissed from the ranks of the mortal; it was the most complete realization of freedom that can be granted a man.

These moments do not return, and when one is back on the treadmill again it is they that inspire one with the feeling that one has forgotten something in cell No. 41.

Those Militiamen in the great patio were really amateurs in the art of warfare. They had themselves been at the front, and yet they believed in miracles. Every day fresh news of victory went the rounds; to-day Toledo had been won back, next day Córdoba or Vitoria.

I was never able to discover the source of these rumours. They made the rounds of the prison, they were dropped in notes out of windows, they were whispered in the corridors. Was there someone in the building who purposely invented these stories of victory? Did those who passed them on believe in them, or did they only behave as if they believed?

Children sometimes stand before a mirror and make faces to frighten themselves. These prisoners did exactly the opposite. They were niggardly of their feelings for each other, were without sentimentality, sometimes without pity. But they fed each other's hopes because they could not bear to die without hope and in a lost cause. To-day Toledo fell, the next day Burgos and Seville; they lied themselves to death as children cry themselves to sleep.

Only on one point was their information exact. Each  of the thirteen hundred men in the prison knew how many had been shot the night before.

The criminals in the "beautiful patio" were nearly all of them bad cases. They resembled one another to an astonishing degree, although their heads were not all shaven and although they wore no uniform. They resembled each other just as old married couples resemble each other and old butlers resemble their masters.

I was only a quarter of a year in prison, but this period sufficed to give me some idea of the force of this process of protective coloration. From the very first day I felt that my new situation demanded of me a quite definite attitude, just as barrack-life demands a quite definite attitude, and life in the colonies demands a quite definite attitude. The first time the warder put the broom into my hands, I assumed automatically and without conscious reflection on my part an air of distinguished incompetence, although during long years of bachelordom I had acquired a considerable degree of skill in the handling of a broom. The rôle I had to play in this building -- the rôle of an innocent abroad -- came to me automatically, and gradually, during the following weeks and months, became a mask, which did not require any consciously histrionic attitude on my part. This automatic transformation astonished me more than anyone. I was able to observe in a living example what direct biological force this process of protective coloration exerts.

Guilty or innocent, the prisoner changes form and colour, and assumes the mould that most easily enables him to secure a maximum of those minimal advantages possible within the framework of the prison system. In the world outside, now faded to a dream, the struggle is waged for position, prestige, power, women. For the prisoner those are the heroic battles of Olympian demi-gods. Here inside the prison walls the struggle is waged for a cigarette, for  	

permission to exercise in the courtyard, for the possession of a pencil, for a bath or a shave. It is a struggle for minimal and unworthy objects, but a struggle for existence like any other. With this difference, that the prisoner has only one weapon left to him: cunning and hypocrisy developed to the point of reflex action. Of all other means he has been deprived. The hearing and sense of touch of a man who has been blinded are intensified; there is only one direction in which the prisoner can evolve -- that of increasing artfulness. In the hot-house atmosphere of his social environment he cannot escape this fateful transformation of his character. He feels his claws growing, a furtive and dejected, an impudent and servile, look creeps into his eyes; his lips become thin, sharp, Jesuitical, his nose pinched and sharp, his nostrils dilated and bloodless, as in the death-mask of the poet who wrote the Inferno. His knees sag, his arms grow long, and dangle gorilla-like. Those who uphold the theory of "race" and deny the influence of environment on the development of the human being should spend a year in prison and observe themselves daily in a mirror.

The usual idea of prison life can be expressed in the form of an equation:

Prison life is equal to normal life minus freedom.

This equation is all wrong. Stated correctly, it should be: normal life bears the same relation to prison life as life on the earth to life on the moon. Incomparable magnitudes are involved; earthly concepts lose all their meaning.

For example, the concept of monotony. Monotony, so it is said, is the distinguishing feature of prison life. While all the time life in a cell is one long chain of excitements.

What excitement the opening of the cell door always arouses afresh. The closing and opening of the door are the most momentous sounds for the prisoner: point and counterpoint of his existence. 
 The first thing he hears is the rattle of the bunch of keys outside; he reacts to this invariably with a quickened pulse. If the rattle comes at the regular feeding times, one of the three high-points of the day is reached; should it occur at an unwonted hour, it can mean anything, and the most marvellous and most terrible possibilities flash through the imprisoned mind. A letter? A visit? A reprieve? If the King in person were to be waiting outside in a golden coach to set him free, it would seem to the prisoner, in that interval between the rattling of the keys and the opening of the door, perfectly natural.

For the outside world has long since become as unreal and inconceivable to him as the life of a prisoner in an isolation cell is inconceivable to the man outside.

Long before I got to know Spain, I used to think of Death as a Spaniard. As one of those noble Sefiors painted by Velasquez, with black knee-breeches, Spanish tuff, and cool, courteously indifferent gaze. He must have been pretty disgusted when they shot the unshaven Nicolás. Indignant, he covered the little Militiaman's face with that mask of rigid dignity which is proper to the etiquette of his court.

There were thirteen hundred of us, his courtiers, in the Seville house of death. No liveried lackeys announced the approach of the noble Sefior; the office of herald was performed by a greasy little priest and the introduction of novices was carried out in a subdued whisper.

I came face to face with him once or twice. He only offered me his finger-tips. "How do you do?" he murmured. "See you later," and passed on, followed by the priest, waving the sanctus bell.

He forgot his promise and did not come back; but I could not forget it and I thought of it the whole timeit is always thus when one associates with the great.

There were thirteen hundred of us courtiers of the great  	

Señor. We behaved boorishly. The simple peasants, in particular, those pobresy humildes with their uncouth manners, did not cut a good figure in the thin, tenuous air of the court. They appeared with full stomachs before the Sefior, they stuffed themselves beforehand with beans; when they stood before his cool, bored countenance, they screamed with terror and called for help and for their mothers. Their behaviour was an infringement of court etiquette; they asked foolish questions as to the why and the wherefore, they even forgot themselves so far as to call the black, greasy fellow with his bell a clown. Some of them sang the songs of the people; sang them out of tune, in hoarse voices, and since they wept betweenwhiles, it sounded like belching. Even when the audience was over and the conventional rigid masks had been fitted on their faces, they did not make a good impression.

Nor did the atmosphere suit the others. The court librarian assumed the most grotesque bureaucratic manners; the officer evinced a most irregular sentimentality towards the Red mob; the man of facts became a moralist; the two friends who had been waiting together for months for their audience picked a quarrel in the very ante-chamber of the Sefior. All averted their heads when someone else was writhing in agony; the fool they contemned and the dying they shunned.

The man with the sanctus bell, unworthy descendant of great ancestors, prattled of an ordeal that lay before all of us. We all failed in this ordeal, but it was not our fault.

We all asked ourselves, whilst we waited, trembling, for the audience, to whose advantage and renown it was that we should be kept thus on the rack; what palpable or secret meaning there was behind it all? The peasants asked themselves in their way, the officer in his way, the man of facts in his. We plagued our brains with this question until the grey substance became inflamed and sweated forth blood and tears. Not one of us knew the answer, least of all the man who rang the bell, the Señor's greasy majordomo.  	

Often I awake in the night with a feeling that I must return to Cell 41, because I have forgotten' something there.

It is the answer that I have forgotten; sometimes it seems to me as though I knew it at that time, as though a faint breath of knowledge had brushed by me; but it has vanished irrevocably.
XI

BETWEEN THE SIESTA and the evening meal the cell door flew open and freedom was hurled at me like a club, I was stunned, and stumbled back into life just as, had things taken another course, I should have stumbled into death.

As I stood in the corridor I shook from head to foot, overpowered by the same nervous trembling as on that night when someone outside my cell had called for help.

All that happened in the next few moments is dim in my memory, the contours blurred as though seen through a dense fog.

On the Governor's desk burns a naked electric bulb. All round it quivers an aura of light, like that through which one sees a street lamp flickering in a fog. In the Governor's chair sits a stranger. He is wearing a black shirt, without a tie. He bows with exaggerated formality.

"Señor," the man in the black shirt says, "I am taking you away from here." Again I have to hold on to the table; I feel dizzy and feverish; eating heartily after the long period of fasting has thoroughly upset my system.

"Señor," says the man in the black shirt, "I cannot tell you where I am taking you, but don't be afraid, we are caballeros."

We go along the lighted corridor, I don't know what is being done with me, I walk in my sleep. We go back to my cell, I shake Carlos by the hand, he is as thunderstruck as I, the door falls to between us before we can say a word to each other. Again we walk along the corridor; the loose leaves of my diary drop out of my pocket. The man in the  black shirt helps me to pick them up. "What have you got there, Señor?" On the top is my wife's letter stamped by the censor. "Private letters," I murmur. "You can keep them, Señor, we are caballeros." We go on down the corridor, open another cell door, I shake Byron and the consumptive by the hand. They are both horrified. "Where are they taking you?" "I don't know," I say. "God bless you," and the door falls to. We go on down the corridor and I shake handswith Angel, Manuel the cripple, Don Ramón, Don Antonio.

Then we are back in the office.

"Señor," says the man in the black shirt, "we are now going to another town, and if you are prepared to promise certain things I may then be able to take certain steps to procure your release."

And he reaches out for pen and ink. When I see pen and ink, I wake up at once.

"My dear Sir," I say. "All this is so strange and so sudden. Who are you? What is this town you are taking me to? And what are these promises I am to make?"

"I would rather, Señor, not tell you my name. But we are caballeros; you can rely on us. We merely want you to promise that you will no longer meddle in the internal affairs of Spain. If you promise this, I may then be able to take certain steps to procure your release. But we are not going to force you, we are caballeros."

"I have never meddled in the internal affairs of Spain."

"You have engaged in a perfidious campaign against National Spain, Señor."

"I wrote what I saw and what I thought about it. I have never meddled in the internal affairs of Spain."

"I do not wish to argue with you, Señor. If you sign an undertaking that you will not meddle in the internal affairs of Spain I may then be able to take certain steps to procure your release." 
 I signed a declaration to the effect that I had no intention of meddling in the internal affairs of Spain. I wrote further that I had been treated correctly in the prison of Seville.

I learned later that my release was neither an act of mercy nor a political gesture on the part of Franco. I was being exchanged with a prisoner of the Valencia Government.

I learnt further details. The prisoner with whom I was exchanged was a certain Señora Haya, who was being held as a hostage in Valencia. The caballero in the black shirt was her husband, and one of Franco's most famous war pilots. 1

Again we walked along the corridor, the man in the black shirt and I. A grille was pushed back, a key turned in the lock, a catch sprang back.

Outside was the street.

Cars and donkey-carts were driving along the street. The people on the pavement walked here, there and everywhere in disorder, and not four abreast. A man leaned against the wall reading a newspaper. A child sat in the dust eating grapes.

In the garden outside the prison gate the guards stood about flirting with young girls. Girls with black hair; with roses stuck behind their cars, just as in Carmen. They wore skirts. They were quite wonderful girls.

"Sefior," said the man in the black shirt. "If you have no objection, we will get into this car."

We got into the car. At the back sat two discreet detectives.
____________________
1 	The caballero had been lying when he had said he "might be able to take steps to procure my release." The agreement with regard to the exchange had been signed twenty-four hours before, through the mediation of the British authorities. The declaration which I signed was obtained by blackmail. I have, nevertheless, kept my word. I have not returned as a newspaper man to Spanish territory, and I have refused invitations to speak about my experiences at political meetings.

These blackmailing tactics have developed into a regular system with the Spanish caballeros. Sir Peter, before his release, had to give his word of honour to say nothing of what he had seen and experienced after the rebel entry into Malaga.

I was luckier. The declaration put before me merely alluded to "meddling in Spanish internal affairs." To maintain silence with regard to my experiences was not part of my undertakin  	

One plunged his hand into his pocket; I thought he was going to bring out handcuffs, but it was a silver cigarette case.

We drove across the Guadalquivir; on the Guadalquivir there were ships. They trailed smoke behind them like loosened pigtails. They flew many-coloured flags. One blew its siren.

"Where an we going?" I asked.

"To another town," answered the man in the black shirt.

On the café terraces sat people reading newspapers and drinking coloured drinks. There was a deafening noise in the streets. We almost ran into a tram. Then we drove along an avenue and the town was left behind. We drew up in an empty field and alighted. The caballero and the two detectives stood about irresolutely. For one last time the thought went through my mind: now they're going to draw their revolvers and shoot me down; then I heard the humming of an engine and a small open monoplane appeared from behind the bushes and came rolling along towards us.

A mechanic jumped out and saluted. The man in the black shirt climbed into the pilot's seat; the mechanic helped me to get in beside him; the detectives each took a wing and pushed.

We rolled along right across the field; behind the bushes lay the aerodrome. A whole herd of steels aurians was grazing there with outspread wings.

The caballero took the joy-stick and the earth tipped over obliquely and sank into the depths at our feet.

We were in an improbably small machine, an open Baby Douglas, as fragile as a child's toy. We rose higher and higher, the horizon expanded, the city of Seville shrank. The caballero in the black shirt pursed his lips -- I heard nothing, but could tell that he was whistling a tune to himself.

"Where are we going, Señor?" I yelled.

"To another town, Sefior," he yelled back.

We rose higher and higher. A mountain loomed towards us. White shreds of mist floated round us on all sides. The caballero in the black shirt pointed to the abyss below.  	

"All this is National Spain, Sefior," he yelled. "Here everyone is happy now."

"What?" I yelled. ". . . happy," he yelled, "happy and free."

"What?" I yelled.

"Free."

We were silent, and only the engine thundered. The shreds of mist below us fused into a white plateau; the earth was no longer to be seen. The caballero sat with legs apart, the joy-stick between his knees, and gesticulated with his hands.

"On your side the poor fight against the rich. We have a new system. We do not ask whether a man is rich or poor, but whether he is good or bad. The good poor and the good rich are on one side. The bad poor and the bad rich on the other. That is the truth about Spain, Sefior."

"How do you distinguish them?" I asked.

"What?" he yelled.

"How do you distinguish them?"

We soared again; by now we must have reached the other side of the mountain. The engine roared. For a while I could hear nothing.

"In their hearts all Spaniards are on our side," screamed the caballero in the black shirt. "When the Reds shoot our people, their last cry is our cry of 'Viva España'. I have seen Reds being shot, and they too cried at the end 'Viva España'. In the hour of death men speak the truth. You will see from this that I am right, Sefior."

"Did you look?" I yelled.

"What?" he yelled back.

"I asked whether you looked?"

We hovered above the white plateau; we saw nothing but the white plateau below us and felt as though we were  	

hovering over one spot. The caballero sat with his legs apart and gesticulated with his hands; the engine worked by itself. We had no need to do anything, we simply sat there on a hovering raft above the clouds and looked down.

"When one sits here like this," yelled the man in the black shirt, "one thinks a good deal about life and death. The Reds are all cowards; they don't even know how to die. Can you imagine what it is like to be dead?"

"Before we were born, we were all dead," I yelled.

"What?" he yelled.

"I say before we were born we were all dead."

"That is true," he yelled. "But why, then, is one afraid of death?"

"I have never been afraid of death, but only afraid of dying," I yelled.

"With me it's exactly the opposite," yelled the man in the black shirt.

Rifts appeared in the white plateau below us. A gust of wind struck us, the 'plane trembled and began to gambol like a colt. The caballero's hands were once more occupied, and he was silent.

I felt feverish again. If the caballero were to make a false movement now, the earth would rush up at us and strike us dead. That would be a fine end, I thought, with a positively mythological touch about it. Death has no terrors, only dying -- must that not be the same with everyone? But the caballero maintains that with him it is exactly the opposite. The caballero is a damned clever pilot; presumably he is also a damned fine bomb-thrower. Carlos too is an officer, and he too is not afraid of dying. But the thought of death paralysed his legs and left him as helpless as a child that has not yet learned to walk.

Carlos and the caballero both know how to die; they are officers; dying is their métier. It has been drilled into them, it is in their bones to die with an air.  	

Little Nicolás certainly did not die with an air. He was a civilian. The Militiamen in the patio were civilians too. They had no experience of dying. They were terribly afraid of dying. Up above the clouds circled the caballero and hurled bombs down on them with an air; they threw themselves on their stomachs and grovelled in the mud and were afraid. Often, when the machine-guns began to bark, they did the natural thing and ran away; before they were shot they called for help and for their mothers. They liked playing football, nibbling lettuce and dreaming of the time when they would be no more than three in a room, and be able to have meat twice a week, and buy themselves a Sunday suit and a watch, for when the war was over, life would really begin.

They died unredeemed, with the unredeemed pledge of life in their pockets; they refused to give life absolution. They believed that it was necessary to live, and even to fight in order to live, and even to die so that others might live. They believed in all this, and because they believed truly in it, because their lives depended on this belief, they were not afraid of death. But they were terribly afraid of dying. For they were civilians, soldiers of the people, soldiers of life and not of death.

I was there when they died. They died in tears, crying vainly for help, and in great weakness, as men must die. For dying is a confoundedly serious thing, one shouldn't make a melodrama of it. Pilate did not say "Ecce heros"; he said "Ecce homo".

We were hovering again. The caballero in the black shirt waved his arms afresh and yelled out metaphysical catchwords that were as insubstantial as the mist below us and caused as much palpable mischief as the bombs that he hurls below. I would gladly have thrown him out of the 'plane, but he was at the controls, and he was stronger than I.


 EPILOGUE

THE TOWN TO which the caballero in the 'black shirt had brought me was La Linea, the Spanish frontier town adjoining Gibraltar.

I had to wait forty-eight hours in the La Linea prison. On May 14th I trod British soil as a free man.

What became of Byron and the consumptive I do not know; I have reasons for not publishing their names. From private sources I heard some time ago that they were shot. Whether this is true I do not know.

Carlos should be free by now.

Twenty-four hours after his arrest, Sir Peter, thanks to the intervention of the officers of a British warship, was set at liberty. While still on board he telegraphed the news of my arrest to England. I have him to thank for the fact that my sentence by the Malaga court martial was not put into effect.

For my eventual release I have to thank those "kind friends" whom my wife found and of whom she wrote me in her letters. The majority of them I did not know and they did not even know me by name. They were individuals and organizations who bombarded Franco with telegrams and letters of protest; among them were fiftyeight English Members of Parliament, twenty-two of them Conservatives.

Many of them may not have cared for the things I wrote, in so far as they had read them; nevertheless they interceded for me.

From this the objective, impersonal significance of the whole affair became clear to me. I realized that the efforts that were made on my behalf were not in any way concerned with my personal merits, but were a trial of strength  between democratic public opinion, which has no material means of bringing pressure to bear, and Franco's dictatorial machine.

I had believed that I owed my life to Randolph Hearst and a set of dirty postcards; the fact that there are nevertheless other forces in this century which will come forward in the defence of justice is both objectively and subjectively consoling.

THE END