THE STRUGGLE IN SPAIN [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
Stit,—Your critic, Mr. G. L. Steer, in reviewing a handful of' books about Spain, professes to have noticed in contemporary England a certain " fashionable " boredom on the subject, tempered by the wish that Franco should win quickly, and so get us back to such things as Holy Week in Seville and the punctual running of tourist trains. Personally, I had not particularly remarked this (to very many of us) welcome preference for the triumph of right over wrong. I sincerely hope that it does exist, and that it representi an impulse which is stronger than the boredom. But wheie I join issue most emphatically with Mr. Steer is in his easy assumption that what Franco's well-wishers in this country want is to get back to trivialities (transeat his inclusion in that category of the Holy Week services in Seville).
To those of us (I suppose we qualify as members of what Mr. Arnold Lunn has so wittily called " The Unpopular Front ") who care little about " the fashion," there are weightier things which make us hope; Pray and Strive far General Franco's victory, and which by no stretch of a sound imagination can be classed as trivial : there are such things as teligion, justice, kindliness, decency, the arts, tradition and ordered progress, all of which were in peril when Franco intervened to save them, and all of which would founder, in-Spain and eventually 'else- where, in the terrible catastrophe of his defeat. Those who think it clever to ialpute trivial or ludicrous motives to such as think as we do are welcome to any pettings and applause which they can gather in their mutual admiratiOn circles (" vicious " or otherwise). But they ought not to be allowed, outside those circles, always to " get away With' "
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