Catalonia's Resistance At the moment, General Franco's advance in Aragon
appears to have been held up at Fraga, about ten miles from the key city of Lerida ; his operations in Lerida province threaten to deprive Catalonia's industries of electric power, and every available man has been thrown into the defence. But the Government still retains sufficient resources to attempt a diversion by attacking the flank of General Franco's forces at Teruel. It is certain by now that the creeping barrage which has enabled General Franco to advance with such astonishing rapidity could only have been made possible by large additions from abroad to his armaments ; the large air forces he has employed, and the new types of bombs rained on Barcelona, suggest that he has been reinforced in the air also. It seems indeed that the vexed question of non-intervention must soon be settled by events ; the commission of investigation to be sent out by the Non- intervention Committee, as a preliminary to the withdrawal of " volunteers ", can hardly carry out its work while both sides are engaged in the fiercest, and perhaps the final, struggle of the war. Non-intervention has served its uses, which was to prevent the extension of the Spanish war to the rest of Europe. With Franco, as he himself says, "astride the road to France," and his bombers violating the frontier, it may prove in the near future that " non-inter- vention," as interpreted by Germany and Italy, may be a danger rather than a protection to the peace of Europe.
* * * *
