MORE SPANISH PRIMERS - 7S. 6cL) DURING the past eighteen
months in England alone fifty-three books of all sizes have been published to show the causes and issues of the Spanish Civil War : of these only seven have attempted a truly impartial or even merely casual survey of the subject, whereas twenty-eight have championed the " legally constituted People's Government of the Seeond Spanish Republic "—to coin a fairly comprehensive title for the Left, from the Anarchists to Azaila—and eighteen. have
supported the armed Nationalist reaction led by General Franco.
This proportion of 28 anti-Fascist to z8 anti-Marxist books probably reflect& public sentiment, in England more accurately than the somewhat arbitrary alignment of 149 opinions rallied
in Authors Take Sides, a pamphlet that - was--mote - like t4 report of a press-gang than the result of a referendum (11, " FOR the Government," 16 " neutral," i—George Bernard Shaw's—unclassified, and 5 " AGAINST " Republican Spain). But of all the Civil War commentaries in general, barely a dozen have been free from inaccuracy, exaggeration, and falsehood ; and it is natural that, though they can be classed as respectively Left, Right and Centre, the three best and most trustworthy should be the three most dispassionate and unbiased : The Spanish Cockpit, by Franz Borkenau, 77re Epic of the Alcazar, by Geoffrey McNeill-Moss, and The Spanish Tragedy, by Allison Peers. Each of these works is valuable : the first, by a sociologist, in that it vivisects the organism of Red-Republican Spain ; the second, by a soldier, as an insight into the exalted counter-revolutionary mentality_ of the rebels ; the third, by a historian, because it records in detail the parliamentary symptoms of the disease that led inevitably to the outbreak of war.
Two of the latest textbooks, Mr. Lunn's Spanish Rehearsal (Right) and Mr. Koestler's Spanish Testament (Left), follow an accepted formula, differing from several forerunners only in so far as their personal experiences were, in Mr. Lunn's case, of less interest than usual and, in Mr. Koestler's, of considerably more. They differ as a pair, for each author is the stronger where the other is the weaker. Mr. Lunn gives a chatty account of an unproductive trip to Spain, followed by a quite well-documented attack on Red propaganda and its menace to peace and the truth, while Mr. Koestler describes intelli- gently and impressively his harrowing experiences in two of Franco's gaols, prefacing this sensitive " Dialogue with Death" by an historical retrospect which we have encountered several times before. Surely members of the Left Book Club (this is its December choice) must know it now by heart. Others, if they are familiar with both cams belli in Spain, will be able to skip the first 178 pp. of Spanish Testament ; but Mr. Koest- lei's vivid account of the fall of Malaga makes.dramatic reading, and the diary of his three months and three daYs in condemned cells, his irrefutable testimony of ghastly beatings and execu- tions, should be pondered by all British partisans of Franco.
Mr. Elliot Paul, an American, is also sensitive, and a conscious
literary artist. He describes very beautifully,- and-a tiifle-senti - mentally, the simple idyllic life of Santa Eulalia, a fishing- vlllage on the Balearic island of Ibiza which was for five years his ad6pted home. He observed his neighbours as a writer and loved them as a brother: Several were staunch Republicani like himself. Others when rebellion broke out on the mainland sided with the movimiento. Then Catalan militia invaded the island, shooting or imprisoning the Whites, and leaving it to be recaptured from Majorca (55 victims of an air-raid, 239, Prisoners butchered in reprisal). The author, who was co- founder of transition, left Ibiza broken-hearted : " enormity of sadness sifted down from star-curdled dark and fell lava- flakes from volcano of eternal woe." Most of the writing in this bcibk is fine and 'poetic, but some of it is atrocious.
Capt. McCullagh writes with fervour but without pretension he is an Irish journalist, the veteran reporter of several cam- , paigns, taken prisoner in three, a lover of liberty and by tem-. perament a stalwart " anti-Red." His book is pleasantly readable, sincerely biased for Franco—whose cause he accepts as a disciplined Catholic crusade—but free from the pettiness and venom of most propaganda. He notes that his treatment by successive captors " gradually got worse with the growing deterioration of warfare " in the last forty years. At the age of sixty-three he has decided to call it a clay, but not _before energetically criticising the Nationalists' lamentable mishand- ling of the Press. One realised—it is obvious—that those responsible for the news service from Franco's territory are, by comparison with Valencia's able propagandists, surly and narrow-minded censors with an amazing 'talent for obstruction, Such men as Bustamente and Bolin are the bugbears both of their partisan, Capt. McCullagh, and their enemy, Mr. Koest ler, as they were of the late Sir Percival Phillips, whose anger at ' " Busty's " methods is reported in one of the best chapters of this breezy Right-minded book.
Now that Franco's Spain extends over some portion of all her ancient kingdoms except three, and the rebellious city of Barcelona has become the Spanish capital, Professor Peers' book makes a timely appearance, reminding us of the past great vicissitudes of Catalan history. He carefully plots its graph from early independence to imperial power, through a long period of enforced decadence under Castilian domination, to a cultural renascence in the 'sixties and 'seventies, the fulfilment of separatist ambitions under the Republic, her President's crazy attempt at revolution, her fierce resistance to the military rising, and her hitherto half=hearted participation in the Civil War. In telling the story of Catalonia—which always amounts to retailing her grievances—the historian's hardest task is to be fair to C..astille, and here, I think, Prof. Peers has acquitted himself well, though my own prejudices run counter to some of his conclusions. We might add that Britain has twice intervened in this endless struggle, once for each side, on both occasions abandoning her ally.
Even more apposite now is the first publication in this country of a selection of essays written by Spain's foremost living philosopher at various times from 1915 to' 1930, for they , analyse, with admirable clarity and penettatiOn, aspects of Spanish national psychology that had deceived foreign observers and Spaniards. The translation of these essays, by Mildred Adams, is worthy of the lucid and lively Original, which seemed in 1921 so controversial but now can be recognised as prophetic. It is a relief to turn from the tragic spectacle of squabbling ideologists to the profound, if pessimistic, wisdom of these -
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