GUERNICA AND BADAJOS [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—My
attention has been called to an editorial note in your issue of June ,8th, regarding the reports of the two The Times correspondents on Guernica.
My article in The Tablet, of course, made full reference to both The Times correspondents. The important difference between the two reports is this. The Times correspondent at Bilbao was in Guernica while the town was burning, and vividly describes the flames and the heat. Under the con- ditions prevailing, it was obviously impossible for him to make a full examination. He had been told in Bilbao that a great air-raid had taken place, and he arrived some hours afterwards, and found the town in flames, and since Guernica had been bombed from time to time in the course of earlier operations, there was no reason for him to doubt the authen- ticity of the story.
After the capture of Guernica, when the fighting was over and the flames had died down, it was possible for all the correspondents accompanying the Nationalist forces to make a real examination of the town. The results of this examina- tion, however startling and surprising, are none the less con- clusive, since they reveal an absence of all traces of bombs, whether explosive or incendiary, in the streets and gardens of the town, and also the absence of all damage to grass or flowers, where either exist, in the neighbourhood of burnt-out houses. Both these facts are plainly and totally inconsistent with the destruction of the town either by explosive or incen- diary bombs. A third equally plain inconsistency is the survival unbroken of some of the street • lamps within a few yards of houses which were alleged to have been destroyed by bombs. In short, the destruction of Guernica by air- bombardment is a story as well vouched for as the passage of Russians through this country in 1914, supported, as that story was, by the testimony of many witnesses, but com- pletely devoid of foundation in fact. It is one of the strangest examples of war hysteria, but not, as the Russian story proves, an example without parallel, even among our own phlegmatic population.—Yours faithfully,
11 Bream's Buildings, London, E.C. 4.
DOUGLAS JERROLD.
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