RELIGION IN SPAIN
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Mr. Arnold Lunn attempts to refute the report of the English churchmen on the position of religion in Government- controlled Spain by citing " the Communists themselves."
Solidaridad Obrera, from which he quotes at second-hand, is not a Communist paper. It is an organ of an extremist section of the C.N.T. (the Anarcho-Syndicalist Trades Union Federa- tion), and even at the present time carries on a wordy warfare against the Communists and the Spanish Government. The views of this paper are the views of irresponsible revolutionaries, whose disruptive activities are losing their Union scores of members every day to the moderate U.G.T. To ascribe the outlook of Anarchist extremists to all Republican Spaniards is equivalent to saying that every Englishman who is not a member of the Conservative Party shares the views of Mr. Harry Pollitt.
It is unfortunately true that many priests were killed in the uprush of popular indignation that followed the rising of July 18th. But Mr. Lunn will hardly dispute that the Church in Spain was a belligerent from the first. In districts where the rising was successful, the Church, which had openly sided with the insurgents, condoned the execution of thousands of unfortunates who were unable to destroy their Trade Union cards in time.
The statement that churches were used as arsenals is not a " Red lie." When I was in Barcelona a few weeks after the rising, I was informed over and over again that certain churches had been prepared in advance for the event, and were actually used as fortresses from which the troops tried to dominate the city. One of my informants, who were not Spaniards and non-political, was the eye-witness of the machine-gunning of a crowd from the roof of a church by a priest in clerical attire.
It is the chief tragedy of the present situation that organised Christianity in Spain has allied itself, except for the Basque Catholics, with a movement which is essentially reactionary. Even should General Franco win through his superiority in trained foreigners, a victory gained with the aid of Moors and avowedly heathen German S.S. men is hardly likely to redound
ad majorem Dei gloriam.—Yours truly, R. M. KEYES. ro Egerton Road, Manchester 14.
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