August 21, 1936
I make no apology for returning to the Spanish scene. The ferocious drama, of which the newspapers give us such lurid accounts, is rolling steadily forward to its climax. It must increasingly grip the attention and emotions of the world. There is no doubt it is being followed with avid interest by the British people. The situation is more clearly defined than it was a fortnight ago. Anyone can see that it is not a revolt, but a civil war, and that the strictest neutrality and impartiality is enjoined-whatever happens-upon Great Britain. The struggle is evenly balanced and may be prolonged. On the whole, at the moment, the advantage seems to be turning against the Government. It is true that they hold Madrid. In almost every war of this kind the side which has held the national Capital has won. London settled the Great Rebellion against Charles I. Again and again Paris has dominated revolts in the French provinces. Washington withstood the onslaught of the confederacy. Moscow proved itself capable of ruling Russia. Many other instances will suggest themselves. Time is on the side of the Government and Madrid. Their Workers' Militia must be gaining in discipline and military knowledge every week. Unless the rebels, anti-reds, patriots or whatever they may be called, according to taste and sympathy, can establish themselves in Madrid in the near future, no one can predict their victory.
On the other hand it seems certain that a majority of Spaniards are on the rebel side. Four and a half millions of them voted only last spring for the various Conservative parties of the Right and Centre against four and a quarter millions who voted for the parties of the Left. One must suppose that those people who were then opposed to constitutional Socialism, are to-day all the more hostile to the Communist, Anarchist and Syndicalist forces which are now openly warring for absolute dominance in Spain. There are large areas of Spain which returned whole blocks of Conservative members to the recent Cortes. Around Burgos and Valladolid, around Cadiz and Seville, dwell communities as solidly Conservative as our Home Counties. In these regions the army leaders find themselves upheld by a friendly population with a wealthy middle class and a daring martial youth. In the Carlist provinces there are other reserves of strength which provide, as long ago in La Vendée, the spectacle of a countryside passionately united in support of Church and Monarchy. Here are strong foundations and bases for the rebel armies. All history shows that armies without civil populations behind them are prone to collapse. No such weakness afflicts the Anti-Red movement.
On the purely military side the insurgents have certainly great advantages. They have trained troops, competent officers and the whole system of an army command. We witnessed at Badajoz their storm of a fortified town and the extermination of defenders who possessed a large supply of modern weapons and outnumbered the attackers by two thousand fighting men. The handiness and discipline of the troops has proved itself in a hundred skirmishes. Foreign opinion has been shocked at the employment of Moorish soldiers in Spain. But the issue is now one of pure, ruthless, lethal force, and questions of sentiment do not count for much between mortal foes in desperation. Bayonets and bullets are the arbiters.
The Anti-Red leaders have in their hands almost all the regular arsenals and munition factories of the Peninsula. They have no doubt received important supplies of munitions and aeroplanes from German and Italian sources. They have the resolute friendship of Portugal, which lies behind them all along their western border. They are now in possession of a naval power in the North certainly equal to the fleet which murdered its officers in the South. Every Spanish colony is enthusiastically on their side. In spite of the military aeroplanes sent by France to the help of Madrid, the Anti-Red Air Force is gaining the ascendancy. The Anti-Reds appear to be steadily closing in upon the Government strongholds, San Sebastian at one end of the country and Malaga at the other. The military cadets and their partisans are still maintaining their epic defence of the Alcazar in Toledo. We must suppose that experienced generals like Franco and Mola, with their professional staffs, have a well-thought-out plan for the capture or reduction by starvation of Madrid, where large numbers of their now terrorised sympathisers await them.
This cold survey of a scene of merciless strife has excluded all emotional consideration. The butcheries of the well-to-do classes and of Conservative politicians in Madrid and Barcelona and of the priests wherever the violent Reds can catch them, continue. The Madrid Government, acting under the dictation of the extremists, still feel themselves strong enough to conduct the formal trials and executions of well-known Rebel generals. On the other side these cruelties are matched by equally bloody and senseless retaliation. In the almost ceaseless wars of mankind the practice of giving quarter did not arise from feelings of humanity. Quarter was given because it paid to give it; because desperate men cost too much life to kill. It is astonishing that General Franco has not realised how great is the advantage to the winning side of offering fair terms of surrender to beaten foes. Such a course would markedly help the winning side.
It looks as if political hatred had blinded military sagacity. Here is the darkest feature in the Spanish civil war. Both sides have the deep conviction that the future of Spain can only be built upon the extermination by thousands, and perhaps by scores of thousands, of their opponents. This sub-human rage manifests itself in every action down to the pettiest village scrimmage. Hatred of the Communists for the existing order of society, hatred of the existing order for the Communists, has effaced all laws, every tie between man and man, every rule of civilised society and even the calculations of common prudence. Two opposite creeds, from both of which Christianity recoils, are at each other's throats. Spain was not bled white by the Great War. It profited from neutrality. The vials of wrath were filled with fermenting poison. We now witness its hideous outpourings. We can only pray that this delirium will subside or that the result will soon declare itself.
Great allowance must be made for the difficulties of M. Blum. It is earnestly to be hoped that even if Germany and Italy, on the one hand, and Soviet Russia, on the other, send help to their respective factions and fence disingenuously with proposals for a collective neutrality, France will none the less adopt the same attitude of detachment as Great Britain. A serious divergence between the two powerful Parliamentary countries of the Western World would be the last disaster. However the Spanish convulsion may end, Great Britain and France will be seriously weakened and the growing ascendancy of Nazism will be proportionately accelerated. It may well be that events are pending in Europe which will relegate the news from Spain to a subordinate position. However hard it may be, there is only one rule for the liberal Parliamentary countries: Send charitable aid under the Red Cross to both sides, and for the rest, Keep out of it and arm.
A dramatic public trial took place in Moscow of the surviving members of Lenin and Trotsky's Bolshevik associates. They pleaded guilty to astonishing acts of treason against the Soviet Republic. Most of them were shot. Thus the Russian, as was said of the French Revolution, 'like Saturn devours its own children.'
