SPANISH COMMENTARY
SIR,—With reference to Professor Pastor's letter in your issue dated October 16th, if it is indeed true that Professor Allison Peers has been guilty of a minor error of fact, this circumstance 'is surely less surprising than that he should, after his prolonged campaign in favour of General Franco, now present us with a total volze face in an ardent defence of the democratic cause in Siain! Professor Pastor goes so far as to deny the very existence of such a cause, and writes in a somewhat captious strain (if he will pardon my saying so) of what he alleges is the specifically British habit of passing mistaken and frivolous judgements upon " las cosas de Espana."
Now Spanish judgements upon things British are often equally at fault. To quote one recent example. I happened to be staying with some Spanish friends in England shortly after the retreat from Dunkirk. All, without exception, turned to me and said: "Naturally the British will now ask for an armistice. You have a terrible foe, how terrible you do not seem to realise, and it would be folly to prolong resistance. You will obviously seek the best terms you can get in the circumstances." To the astonishment of my good Spanish friends, I replied that nothing in the world was more unlikely than the course which they (together with all other foreigners the world over, including our cousins in the United States) imagined we should adopt.
Incidentally, the "old-fashioned, uncritical, individualist" (to use the adjectives employed by Professor Pastor in this connexion) democratic cause, is precisely that for which Great Britain, with her Allies, has already shed some of her best blood and for which she is now pre- paring to sacrifice once again, within twenty-five years after the last holocaust to "save the world for democracy," the flower of her youth. The terms of the Atlantic Charter specifically commit her to democratic principles. Provided that they do not violate the standards of ordinary human decency (as do the German "New Order" and its satellites else- where in Europe), the regimes of other nations are surely no concern of ours, and the "common man," for whom, it is alleged, this war is being fought, is not greatly interested in the genealogical trees of claimants, law- ful or otherwise, to European thrones. He feels, rightly or wrongly, that with this ghastly struggle and its almost certain outcome in gigantic social transformations, peaceful or the reverse, "nous croons change tout cela."
Previous page
