«lished Ernest Capp’s first ‘Impressions of Spain as he travelled from the Franco- Spanish border to Barcelona. n Spain,” he wrote,” peo- Ple starve while food rots in the sunshine.” Here he con- tinues his story, telling how he contacted leaders of the anti-fascist underground and €ard from them a stirring _ account of the war against Tanco, " i, PARIS. AC 8 O'CLOCK on a Wednesday : Bacent in March, I walked \ ae a small side street of Al- ae I had managed to make a ct with the underground this evening I was to inter- ond One of the leaders of the Madrid district, bey oy T fcund the room where I was _ “0 Wait and at 8:15 an elderly ‘an walked in, shook my hand and said: “Salud.” . f pee ad not give me a name 4 didn’t ask mine. He looked Bf He was shabby and used no aS ures. Instead his hands rest- ie Quietly in his lap. All his en- a 8Y was in his words. He was _ Yery, very tired. ak © smiled at me and said: hae better begin now. TI ,ven’'t too much time and I have to p e have.” careful with what I . T asked first about the location Ree: activities and in the nae €S8s of answering this ques- _"n, he answered many others. ao (centers. of activity,” he eas are in the Asturias, all = Ugh the North, in Toledo, the ae °rial and in the mountains of 4oeR South —wherever there are ~Aountai z rillag, ns, there are also guer eae is difficult to estimate how ae se It changes every day. Say Ree 15 and 20 thousand. ie ea an excellent liaison sys- villa, etween all groups and the : &es in the districts where sees Operate. The country peo- bia sae them with food and what sane Can give to the sick and Pacts. ed. Many soldiers have de- prdoined Franco’s army and ‘have _. _ US with their guns, There _ “"® not many women, igs to: Course we often need doc- S and dentists. The Republi- ade doctors are not able to work tae fou They often go into the Ag Pe and take care of our j ile have had trouble with ban- The ae students who have used eats Pe eenean name and cause Peter; They try to mix with the oH las and many are agents.” .. ° HE laughed suddenly and said, € have a man, so old he is a Vong Suspicion, who is one of gg», Chief liaison officers. He is We : above ” ns He ae “SRE g &quanim ts though : Cannot } considerable dent in the ity of the state and al- we are very strong, we Overthrow the regime.” T asked then what was the __—-*°st important effect that the Bae *trilla movement had. ; am a the most important po- p Cane : Symbol in Spain today. As x as the Spanish people know "at there are ten men and wo- « Reo. are fighting Franco, e wster do not give up hope com- i a .These guerrillas express , Pes and wishes of the Span: eae Through them the © express their hatred and SPger at the Fascists.” DAY, MAY 23, 1947 <= N OUR last issue we pub- continued, “The guerrillas: By ERNEST CAPP I asked him if underground activity in the large cities was on a large scale, “There is a movement but it is not so large nor is it as fully coordinated as that of the moun- _ tains. We are under constant sur- veillance here and there are five times the number of police to watch us.” He described’ the forces against which the underground must op- erate: ‘ “The major part of the budget, 77 percent, goes into the army and the police. They are in- structed in German methods of spying and discipline; they even wear the German uniforms. ’ They are the only ones in Spain that have food and even they don’t have too much except for the top leaders, % “phe Guardia Civil are utterly prutalized as well as half crazy with fear. They used to be country patrols, but now they, — like the carabinieri who used to be customs men, are just part of the army.” _@ | HAD heard that the under- ground kept in constant touch with prisoners in the jails. Large numbers of men and women who were released have joined the guerrillas. I asked him how this was possible. “We have worked out, after many years, an excellent liaison system, It’s the best there is and we are proud of it. We are able to get full information on con- ditions in the jails We know when strikes are threatened. We know immedi- ately if prisoners are released. We are then able to contact them and if they want, we put them in touch with guerrilla forces. “You have heard of the horror of our prisons? Sometimes men are afraid to fight because they are terrified of returning to jail but on most of those released it _ has the opposite effect. Even Orthodox Catholics, war- haters, non-political people, hate so much what Franco has done to Spain, done to human beigs --things they have felt and seen themselves—that they are desper- ate to join the guerrillas.” He told me that his son, re- cently released, had lost his mind as a result of treatment he re- ceived in prison. Both my in- formant and his wife had spent years in prison. “We know what it is like,” he said. “The women who fight with the guerrillas have all spent time. Some had to wait for their ‘trials’ for three years. It is all the same. They are beaten black, starved, exposed to terrible cold, left to die on the grounds, You can imagine what the effect of such things has on an ordinary human being. Franco has made many Communists in Spain.” WONDERED if guerrillas got anye news from the outside world, “We used to get newspapers from England and America but that has become impossible now. We have short wave radio sets but there is so much interference in the Moscow and French broad- casts that we can barely hear. The English broadcasts are very clear. But they are nothing. The Franco government has nothing to fear from England. - “Then of course, we have a : good system of contact with the Republican government in exile. That is absolutely necessary.” He asked me the time. It was 11:30. He rose and handed me the last issue of Mundo Obrero, underground publication of the Communist Party and also a mimeograph sheet put out by In- tellectuals Section of the Socialist Party. “This is the January issue,” he said. “The Fascists smashed the presses after this was pub- lished and killed the men who worked on it but now it is being mimeographed, They haven’t been able to stop it and they won’t.” We shook hands and for a mo- ment, he stood and looked at me. “Please tell them abroad what is happening to us here. We need help so desperately.” Guide to good reading ~ NE can hardly avoid review- ing. Maurice Hindus in at- tempting to review a book he ‘has written. The field he has chosen to write about, the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe, has always imposed on him the need to deal with Communists and the Communist parties of those countries. I think that it can be fairly said that after years of observation and a ser ies of books, some of which were very good, he has not achieved an illuminating grasp or even a working understand- ing of Marxism. | ' Why this is so is not the sub- ject for this review. The fore- going is by way of saying that allowances must be made for this when reading his books. Having said that, his latest one, The Bright Passage, must’ be recognized as a book of the greatest value and significance. © It is‘a book about present day Czechoslovakia and the bright passage is the rapid transition to socialism which is being ef- fected under a government of na- ~ tional unity led by the Commun- ist Party. Hindus, always a sincere and able reporter, describes the far- reaching developments which are “occurring there, the nationaliza- tion of the factories, the Two- Year Plan, the high production goals which are being aimed at. On the reporting level it is a vital document, for Czechoslova- kia is behind the iron curtain Churchill propped up and, ex- cept for a few doctored dis- patches, our press has main- tained a complete blackout of news from there. ; e et aad aed will question many of *“ Hindus’ interpretations of the facts he reports, but one of his points will be readily conced- ed. The process of making so- ‘cialism a fact as well as a theory already begun, and sav- agely interrupted, in Russia is now under way in Czechoslo- vakia. é Its outcome in the next two to five years will have a tre- mendous impact on the whole world. For, as Hindus points out, Czechoslovakia begins from a high level of industry and technical skill comparable in Many respects with our own. The success of socialism there will bear early fruit for the Czechs to enjoy and the world, in the event of a crisis, to envy. : As Hindus says, ‘the old, old question’ of the superiority of socialism may sooner be set- tled there. There is another im- portant aspect to this question. ‘No spokesman for the United States or Britain can find any ground to challenge the demo- cratic forms under which the ‘bright passage’ is being made. e ieee CANADA in many ways, Czechslovakia is a small country, highly industrialized, with a long tradition of democ-— racy. It is unquestionably with- in the sphere of that western cul- | tural heritage the propagandists of capitalism defend so desper- ately against Marxist ideology. It is a Protestant country with a large Catholic majority. — Other parallel features could be explored which should add to af. the interest Canadians evince in Czechoslovakia. The Bright Passage is one of _ those books that a reviewer feels everyone should read in spite of any shortcomings, for it offers a’ grasp of Czecho- slovak history, the people, their _ leaders, their economic re- sources and postwar problems. The political problems faced by ~ a people who have voted for | ie socialism are of vital interest to us.—HAL MILLER. —— RECOMMENDED BOOKS The Bright Passage—by Maurice