THE CONFLICT IN SPAIN
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
(Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is- that of one of our " News of the Week " paragraphs. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing:a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential. —Ed. Tim SPECTATOR.) .
[To the Editor of Tai SPECTATOR.] Sin,—Your correspondent, Mr. J. W. Poynter; now as ever, trots out the old familiar bogeys of " ecclesiastical oppression " and Inquisition traditions." Might these not be given a rest ? The naive attempt to represent afrits and energumens, such as those who in Barcelona and Madrid have torn corpses of priests and nuns from their coffins and set them up to be scoffed at by the rabble (to name one of the least unmention- able of their outrages)—to represent beings like these as filled with a splendid zeal for revenging the misdeeds of a (secular) Inquisition, centuries_ ago, may be all very well for tub- thumping, but it ." cuts no ice " with educated men.
As regards Mr. Lavalle, who appears to be possessed of a complex about colonels (held, at any rate in our Army, only by the most inveterate " defaulter "), may I ask him—Mr. Poynter can" come in on " this as well—(1) Is there, in ethics, no point at which revolt is justified, even when the revolters are the real defenders and champions of the ideals which the government should hold, but which it has betrayed ? (2) Is it true, or untrue, that the feeble, Red-ridden " Government " of Spain, whose misdeeds forced on the revolution, held office on a minority vote (4,350,000 against 4,570,000 are the figures that have been quoted) ? (3) Is it true, or untrue, that even these figures tell only part of the story, in that it was common knowledge (and a bitter joke) throughout Spain that. the most glaring abuses, always in favour of the parties of the Left, were rife during the elections—impersonation, mis-counting, intimidation, and the destruction of voting-papers ? (4) Was Senor Gil Robles telling the truth, or a lie, when from his Place in the last session of the Cortes at which he could be present he read out a list of 400 churches, which had been burned down by armed ruffians before ever the revolt started ; and was he lying when he recounted how in one case, when the inhabi- tants had occupied their village church to prevent its being shamefully desecrated, the Government police arrested them en bloc, and then stood by while the church was burnt ? (5) Did, or did not, the Spanish Government arm indiscriminately the lowest rabble in Madrid and elsewhere, as soon as the revolt had started, knowing that the arms would inevitably be used against all and sundry (against, as it has been put, all who washed, or wore a tie, or took off their hats to women) ? (6) Was it not common knowledge throughout Spain that Moscow agents in Catalonia had been for many months before the uprising sedulously fostering hatred and discontent, rousing rancour against religion and its ministers, and bribing the poor with Moscow money ? Was it riot, again, a common, bitter joke that the only people who got wages were those paid with Russian roubles ? (7) Are the accounts (in some of the less unprintable cases, authenticated by photographs) of atrocious infamies against nuns who had spent their lives in toiling for the poor, true, or have they been invented ? Note that I keep my question down to nuns.
Mr. Lavalle—with his colonel-complex=has a curious notion of the procedure adopted (at any rate in armies " as is armies ") in regard to firing-lines.- His Colonel Blimps," wherever he may have got them from, are at all events a fiction over here—if not a very polite one !
And, finally, Sir, though the Daily Mail needs no taking up of cudgels in its defence by me, may I say that, in my opinion, far from its deserving the odium which " Janus " (may his doors be shut !) attempts to heap upon it, by its fearless exposure of the maniacal crimes of a degraded rabble it has earned the gratitude of all who revere Religion, and the sanc- tity of their homes ? I trust it needs no apology from a soldier if he stands up, even in these days, for ChivalrY.—Youis Stockbridge.
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