It is stated that some twenty Labour M.P.'s are to
visit Spain during the present Parliamentary recess. So are a number of other individuals of varying degrees of eminence, including a party of those persons who like—or more probably dislike—to be called intellectuals. Is such energy and enterprise to be welcomed ? I cannot help wondering. Many of the visitors go at the invitation, and the cost, of the Spanish Government. They see one side of the tragic Spanish picture and are bound in decency to do what they can to back the cause of their hosts when they get home. Visitors to General Franco's side of the fighting-line, no doubt, are in precisely the same position. Not one in twenty visits both camps. Whether either party in Spain gains anything on balance from the visits seems highly doubtful ; and as in most cases the British visitors to Madrid are of one political colour, and the British visitors to Salamanca of another, all that comes of it is an undesirable identification of British party politics with Spanish. My own sympathies in the Spanish conflict are quite definite, but I feel no call to strengthen them by visits to either front.
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