RELATIONS WITH SPAIN
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Sia,—Mr. Loveday has always taken the rosiest view of Falangist Spain. Neither Franco's declaration that he hoped Germany would win the war nor the vicious attacks of the Spanish radio on this country ever affected it. Myself, I prefer to believe the statements of the late British and United States Ambassadors, Lord Templewood and Mr. Carleton Hayes. They can scarcely be accused of having Communist leanings , or of not knowing what they are talking about.
What Mr. Hayes has to say is best seen in last December's number of Harper's Magazine. Here there is an article op United States diplomacy in Spain based on official sources. Among other documents published for the first time is a long letter from Mr. Carleton Hayes to the Spanish ministro de estado, dated June 15th, 1943, in which he gives twenty-one different reasons for regarding Spain as a Fascist State in the strict sense of that word. It is, he says, a State closely modelled on Nazi Germany, intimately linked to Nazi Germany, whole-heartedly supporting us cause and that of pagan japan, brutal and arbitrary, lacking the most elementary sense of justice. . . . Such a letter, as the authors of this article remark, can rarely before have been sent by an Ambassador to the Government of the State to which he was accredited. That it was written at all shows the violence of Mr. Hayes's reaction to what was going on round him. And Mr. Hayes is a Roman Catholic.
I suggest, then, that we cannot crown our victory over Nazi Germany by inviting a State of this character into the new society of nations that we mean to set up. If the Spaniards want to come in, let them qualify for admittance. Even Mr. Loveday agrees that the Falangists are opposed by the great majority of the country. And if the question of 'freedom to choose one's own form of government" be taised, well, then, there are such things as elections. Franco, of course, has never held any.
My proposal, however, was simply that, as Lord Templewood has suggested, we should have our rules about, admittance to the new League and leave the Spaniards to settle their own affairs. Fear of isolation will
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