WHERE PEACE ONCE WAS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sra,—It was so poignant to read my own description of Tossa as it was when I left it in April. What irony ! Here are extracts from two letters I received last week, the first from one who had been resident in Tossa for five years and has just fled to France, the second from a German lady, in Barcelona. As pitiable as the condition of the Spanish people themselves is that of the German refugees who had found a refuge in Spain and had begun to enjoy peace. As Nurse Miller said, speaking last Thursday to the Association of Indian Journalists Abroad, just before she was to leave London to return to her hospital in Granen, "Those who start a war like this have committed the worst atrocity." Peace in Tossa 1
The extracts : - • - •
"You see we left Tossa. It was a real adventure this journey and without money. I cannot tell you about all that happened with us. It came so quick in Tessa. You can imagine how terrible it was the last time there. Airplanes day and night and the Canarias ' of the rebels. We did not sleep any more. ' Every moment we were ready and dressed to run away behind the moun- tains. All the time we were just waiting for the cry of the siren. Once we heard Boom ! Boom ! Boom ! from the sea, and the same moment began the siren and everybody running, shouting and crying. And we took our last money and the passports and some- thing to eat and ran too behind the mountains. There wo.waited a day and ,a night and it was horribly cold. We came back and heard that it was a fighting between the destroyer Canarias ' and airplanes of the Government. In Tema they worked very hard. All the rocks of the seaside are fortifications. They worked day and night. On the lighthouse they have a cannon. All is dark at night. . . . They don't like Germans in France. . ."
From Barcelona :
"You are quite right believing that German ships came to take away all German people. But I didn't go back with them because I shouldn't Him to go back to Germany. I left it because I didn't
like at all to live tinder Hitler. Nor did my husband. We went away two months after Hitler came to power. When the German Government told us to come back, we couldn't do so because there was the danger to be put in a concentration camp for having left Germany in 1933. So we preferred to stay on. A fortnight ago the German Consul too left Spain and this was our last possibility to go back. But we didn't, believing that the Spanish Government may let us stay. My opinion has been. always the following : We had two good years over here. Nobody did make us any difficulty. We got the chance even to make some money and live in a decent way. Why should we go away when the Spanish people must stay and suffer? We had a good time together, so wo have the bad time together too. But now happens something very disagreeable. After the German Government accepted the Junta de Burgos, and after the German Consul left Spain, all friendly relations between Spain and Germany are broken. You understand they have been broken before by the horrible way Germany helped Franco but until the two Governments had some kind of official relations there has not been open fight. But now there is open fight.. And we poor people who stay hem have to pay. In some parts of Spain German people are expelled. In Cataltinya not yet. But I'm afraid that will happen in a few days. And really I don't know where to go. I can't go to France . . ."
London, W .C.1.
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