~

NORTH

;
_

the skies dark-
n i Junkers

3 midts are men
teday , moving in the country-
id pes or they

ide among the gra

1 tending the looms

son sash bh arourid his w
Franc name,
Twenty

since the ner

to uphold the

Spain betrayed his

co is the

EO rnment
ekosen by Spain’s m

the wo

ploded on

through

way
ever did.

Twenty years later, the mo-
ment can best be recat lled if
you had liv ed through that
time, by remember ing your
ewn mind shen, your own
ean for millions felt as you
did; us believed
the two de-

eades later, w that we
wrong. Republican

the

yardstick to

story
1931. I
p hotogr Tr aph
Times of the
streets of Madrid

~~ 2
a tall, dour Bourbon,
fled his country in his Hispano-
Suiz after his people chose a
republic, five years before
Franco’s treason

can S ill recall :
in the New York
in the

Ing

jubil ition

when

A lfonso,

The fortunes of the new de-
mocracy bed and rose in th

and

intervening five ye

many of us reme mber the for-

mation of the Frente Popular,
after the are Fror

in France when de la Rocque’s
aia heir bid for

nv 9s d’Elysee

we Scat e studied and emu-
by the democrats below
The negotiations
Popular Front

latea
the Pyrenees.
for a S} mish

succeedec united in a
loose all those who
opposed n. So inevit-
ably the Socialists, Commun-
ists, the trade unions of the
UGT, led by Marxists, those
of the CNT. by anarchists, and
the midd capi italist strata
voted together in the Febru-
ary, 1936 elections that set the

ists back.

f

*

Franco, backed by the dirty
gold of men like Juan March,
the smuggler who became the
rian millionaire,
sonspired for years with
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mus-
solini. The bargain was com-
pleted, the plans concluded,
the promise of airplanes and
cannon ercenaries
the treasonous als mov-
ed into action twenty years
ago. Twenty years!

1
Then came the

Oo
;
ana me

gene

resistance

andy

that electrified and inspired
a world. I own a treasured
of Mundo Obrero, the
c 1 of the Spanish Commun-
ist party, dated November 4,
1926, a few days before Franco
tried to storm Madrid aftér he
had boasted that his’ troops
would drink cognac in the
cates of the Puerto del Sol No-
vember 7. The front page ex-
horted all Spaniards to resist,
and offered, in detail, sugges-
tions of the ways to impede
the tanks, street by, street,
sheuld. they break through.

The fascists were on the
side of the Manzanares
River, “four columns led by
Frerco’s chief generals, and
Quiepo de Llano, the Falange
Gc

}

otner

Zt

yoebbels, radioed to the world
that a fifth column was biding
its time in Madrid, impatiently
vreiting to open the

*

And on the inside pages of
this hallowed paper you read
the advertisements of their
cinema that said the Marx
Brothers were playing at this
movie, Charlie Chaplin’s Gold
Rush at that, and I was aston-
ished that life could persist
under the bombs that fell daily,
relentlessly, on the streets and
kromes of Madrid.

The Republic woefully lack-
ed an air force or anti-aircraft

gates.

cuns, or tanks, or sufficient
aaterial to meet the enemy.
Madrilenos' went into the

streets, women as well as men,
and you will remember, if you
ere anywhere near my age
the PROLSET ADS of the lovely,
( -eyed women in the
monos, the overalls that pass-
ed for "uniforms, bearing rifles
as the menfolk did.

not cross the
nor for al-
the time it
the resistance

Franco did
Manzanares then,
most three years,
took to crush

Shells burst in Barcelona, August 1936.

Spain today

of an unarmed people who
would not be cowed by the
assembled might of industrial
Germany, Italy, or the cold,
brutal “neutrality” of. the
Western Power. For neither the
Us. government, nor the Brit-
ish, nor the French, would sell
the Republic arms even though
it was willing to lay gold on
the line. Only Mexico and the
USSR helped, but they were
teo far off to make the differ-
ence.

Nonetheless the republicans
of Spain withstood the power
of fascism those years because
they achieved some measure
of unity; and since it is the
renowned fashion in the capi-
talist newspapers these days
to malign the Communists of
the world as well as the Popu-
Tar Fronts — it is imperative
to recall some facts that will
riot be tarnished by time.

I arrived in Spain sometime
late in July, 1937 and I talked
with hundreds of representa-
tive Spaniards in Madrid, at
Caso de Campo, in the trenches
cf University City, every-
where.

From their lips, I learned,
and they were men of various
parties, how on July 18 and
19, they had fought in civilian
clothes, with no knowledge of
military art, and how; later
they knocked together the
semblance of battalions, drill-
ing awkwardly in the streets.
At first they disdained the
disciplines of: military require-
ment, as they streamed to the
nearby fronts. The Popular
F'ront government had no cen-
tralized military command.

The Spanish Communists be-
came the first protagonists. of
a unified army command res-
ronsible to the Popular Front
government, and to it alone.
And to those who pooh-pooh
that fact, who contend that

Communists wanted to “cap-
ture” power, it. must be re-
membered that the first Pop-
ular Front governments had
not a solitary Communist in
the Cabinet.

The party offered its fam-
ous Fifth Regiment that had
grown from 2,000 to 70,000 in
seven weeks of fighting, at-
trected volunteers because: its
heroism in the front-line be-
came legendary even in that
pink of time. So many flock-
ed to its standards that it had
to be divided into a number
o? regiments, but the recruits
insisted that each be called
the Fifth.

La Passionaria, the daughter
ef Asturias miners, had arous-
¢d thousands with her cry:
“It is better to die on your
feet than live on your knees.”

When her party offered all
its soldiers to the Popular
Front government, proposing
a single, unified army under
a single unified command, be-
holden to the government
alone, the other parties fol-
lowed its.example. And _ it
was similiar in the country-
Side.

Spain, primarily agrarian, is
a country of many~ churches,
Roman Catholic, of course.
When the anarchists shut them
down the Communists regard-
ea that as a dangerous act of
division that menaced the
unity resistance required. And
so you had the irony of this
party, dubbed “the godless
cnes” by its enemies, sending

a delegation to a Catholic mem-

ber of the Cabinet to petition
that the churches reopen. The
cfficial refused at first, fear-
ing the wrath of the anarch-
ists who were strong among
many industrial workers and
on the countryside. 5
Much of this I saw in
year and a half in

my
loyalist

Spain. I saw the™
and the various
trade unions beco.
ingly unified
the
such remarkable vit
did when they
Ebro January 27,
remains, even after
World War, a notabs
achievement.

which”
embattled de not

I knew the progl@

Popular Front gove
enunciated to the
all who would listen:
ly sought to bring »
the Twentieth Cent
it a direction that 7%
proximated the US
rothing more. It

a socialist solution
archist solution.
poses were malign®
cf the Western pres>

It was my privi
scmething of the
al Brigades.

These young men!
victory for fascis!
Second World wat
consequent menace
homeland. So thé
“Madrid shall be
fascism,” as I hear
they marched on

But history was
The American,
British governmen
lift the embarg?
pincers of fascism
Spain. The fall °
preceded the fall 0
a short run of bi
surrender of Chant
Neladier at Muni¢
comitant of the Te
feat.

And so fifty mill
the Second World »
yet no just war 4
lost. Two precio
more helped the P
themselves agains
the Axis powers:
less Spaniards a?
from other lands ®
in vain.

y

Now, twenty ve
read only a few i
the people of § pail
more astir. We
waves of strikes
sparked by the
University City. “4
this is significanh
dustrial strikes
s‘ronghold of Fram
trusted region,
How well I remem
arrese, some Of “4%
terviewed, whe®
captured by thé
during battle.
Curate and loya
Fl Caudillo, the
They were fane
fighting men ™“™
what Quiepo
them, and I thin
day, twenty ,Y&™
they sit in their n
the bacalo and
fish and hard T
rather than living:

And so I amy
victory, though %
on laggard feet, ©

The day wi
when Spain will?
ored place amoe
cratic nations °
contemporary it
hose who went
streets, unarme™
twenty years gor
And pall
the 2B alle
side.

<

ov

enemies.
from all
at their

August 17, 1956 — PACIFIC TRIBU

ie i Ag ie a re

_—