A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
IT is curious how little seems to be known even now about General Franco, the leader of the Spanish rebels. He is, of course, a professional soldier, who has hitherto always been regarded as a monarchist (though there seems to be some question about that) ; he has done well as an administrator in Morocco ; and he is the brother of the famous airman who flew the Atlantic—and who is, I learn, among the most ardent supporters of the Government. A Spanish friend who knows the rebel leader, but is at the opposite pole from him politically, gives me a rather surprisingly favourable picture of him as a man. He is a devout Roman Catholic, and the motive weighing with him beyond all others is said to be the defence of the Church—though his recently-published letter addressed to the Minister of War before the outbreak of the rebellion suggests rather that military grievances did more than anything to prompt his action. If, as seems inevitable, Spain can only be preserved by a period of dictatorship after the civil war, however the war ends, it is arguable that Franco would be a better dictator than anyone the Left could produce. * * The news from Spain in the papers day by day awakens many personal memories for most travellers. Take the harrowing stories of the refugees being rowed across the Bidassoa from the Spanish side to Hendaye. Well I remember the peace of the summer day a few years ago when a French boatman took me on the pleasant and leisurely trip to Fuentarrabia (" where Charlemagne and all his peerage fell ") and back, with the international bridge at Irun, prominent in. so many Press photographs in the past week, spanning the river a mile or so higher up. A few days earlier I had been taken in some secrecy by the new Foreign Minister, Alvarez del Vayo, then a journalist like myself, to a democratic lunch in an obscure corner of Madrid to meet some of his Socialist collaborators (including, I think, the new Finance Minister, Dr. Negrin) who in those last days of the Primo de Rivera dictator- ship were laying plans for the realisation of their Socialist ideals. The tide has flowed full their way since then. Del Vayo can claim today to be reaping a harvest he sowed at some personal risk. * * The appearance of " our diplomatic correspondent " in the daily papers is, I think, a post-War phenomenon, and on the whole it is to be welcomed. An intelli- gent journalist, enjoying the confidence of his Foreign Office and various embassies and legations, can do a great deal to inform his readers of what national policies are in a given field and what lies behind them. But I wish they (to speak of them generically) could drop the bad habit of quoting the vaguest of vague authority for the opinions they are reporting. One of them, for example, who does excellent work for a provincial paper, heads his column " London," and states regularly that " it is understOod here," " it is believed here," " the impression prevails here." London is, after all, a sizeable place, and it would be instructive to know in which of its many public and private resorts the opinions cited prevail. That suggestion may be commended to another writer, who recorded, no longer ago than last Monday, that ." more than one observer in London is saying . . ." There must be about eight million observers in Greater London— quite a number of them in Colney Hatch ,—and they say a lot of remarkable things between them. What " more than one observer " was saying in this case was that the British Government was paying the price of past cowardice, an opinion for which the writer apparently preferred not to accept responsibility himself.
I am not a film critic, and when I see a picture that .I particularly like I find it much easier to say that I like it than to say precisely why. That difficulty presents itself in regard to Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, which I feel inclined to describe rather rashly (and making all necessary allowance for a defective memory) as the best film I have ever seen. Though the theme—a rich man's disposal of his riches—is hackneyed enough, the treatment is completely original, the central character is intensely attractive, and Gary Cooper's playing of it is as nearly flawless as can be imagined. But so far as concerns all that, has not Mr. Graham Greene reviewed the film already in The Spectator ? All I really want to say, or am com- petent to say, is that this is a brilliant piece of work which no one who can make an opportunity of getting to the Regal cinema should on any account miss.
* * * * I do not often quote the Morning Post, and when I do, not always with admiration. But I cannot refrain from calling attention to its leading article on Tuesday, devoted to a sincere, instructed and well-desetved eulogy of the French Prime Minister, M. Blum. Politically, M. Blum stands for everything the Morning Post hates, and it hates well. But in his foreign policy he has tendered immense service to Europe in the last six weeks, and the Post is ungrudging in its appreciation of an opponent whom it rightly styles in the heading of its article, " A Good European." Such articles form welcome evidence of the honesty of British journalism—most of it.
* • * * From What Paper?
" Now that the British Association, following the insistent campaign of the Daily Herald,' has turned its attention increasingly to public welfare, and the • effect's of Science on it . . . . "
* * * Food for Reflection dog-fight,. more almost than any other crisis, finds the average human being completely at a loss."—Daily
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