Francophile
Spanish Fury. By James Cleugh. (Harrap, 21s.) THIS time twenty-five years ago, the Spanish Re- publican Army was engaged on the Aragon front in one of those brave but ultimately fruitless offensives which again and again delayed Franco's victory and maintained Republican re- sistance in a war which lasted for three years of intense bitterness, and which has left behind passionately controversial feelings that are still as alive as ever. Mr. Cleugh makes no secret which side he is on. For him Franco is 'a level- headed Conservative,' the stout, dapper, little Galician who has given Spain since 1939 its first stable government for a matter of three hundred years.' His regime embodies 'preference for social duty under a Christian hierarchy' rather than 'an electorally administered social system under the blind force of economic com- petition,' which seems to be Mr. Cleugh's view of the accepted ideology in the West outside Spain. Although Mr. Cleugh says rightly that the issues at stake in the Civil War were com- plex, for him they remain simple: `It was the so-called Fascists who stood for law, order and decency and the Republicans who were robbing society of its only possible permanent basis in the pattern of a State dependent ultimately upon religious feeling.' Although reconsideration of the history of the war has shown some of us whose sympathies
at the time lay with the Republic that we were often simple-minded and nail in our faith in its ideals, it has simply confirmed Mr. Cleugh's undimmed faith in the Caudillo. However, since he is constantly expressing his disapproval of liberal scepticism, it is clearly no good worrying that he might have written a better book if be had some of his opponents' qualities; and in any case he has the last word against reviewers who disagree with him, for he can always accuse them, as he does President Aza6a, of 'that ten- dency to sulking which is the bane of intellec- tuals, who too readily denounce as fanatics those who argue with them.' What is surprising is that the actual narrative in this book is less biased than the strength of the author's prejudices might lead one to ex- pect. He really tries to understand the Republi- can leaders and even shows some sympathy with men like Azafia, Negrin and Prieto—the victims in his view, of a shallow intellectual liberalism which prevented them from understanding what was happening in the world, who therefore in- evitably succumbed to the superior skill and ruthlessness of the Communists. However, Mr. Cleugh fails to say anything adequate about the rank and file of Republican support or to ex- plain how the Republic sustained its military and economic effort for so long. This neglect follows from his conviction that it was Russian arms alone which made the Re- publican defence possible. Yet the creation of the Republican army and air force was not the work of the Russians, and the passionate loyalty, as well as the passionate rivalries, which the Spanish working class showed need more analysis than we find in sentences like 'the Socialists represented all shades of Left political opinirin from cautious liberalism through Fabianist)) t°, seditious obsession with either Trotsky or Stalin. Equally, while it is a relief to find a pro-Franco writer who does not repeat the old stories about the rape of nuns, our understanding of n°1' the situation in the early days of the war is notably increased when we are told: `The Spaniards are among the most highly sexed peoples of Europe. But rape . . . is not a com- mon crime in Spain.' As Don Salvador de Madariaga pointed out in this journal a few weeks ago, the three strongest institutions in Spain were the artily, the Church and organised labour. Any serious account of modern Spain must include a." analysis of these; but perhaps Mr. Cleugh stopped short of this because it might reveal the truth of Professor de Madariaga's judgment on Franco: 'The regime has corrupted the army' compromised the Church and utterly disregarded organised labour. It is just this kind of super- anarchical behaviour that is one of the forces driving the country to CoMmunism.' Mr. Cleugh's book was finished, he tells us with characteristically disarming honesty, Li! 1956. In the meantime Mr. Hugh Thomas PIT lished his Spanish Civil War, which will remain the standard work on the subject for some timeto come. Any serious student of the Civil War will still prefer Mr. Thomas's massive 600 Pages of narrative. Anyone who sympathises with or is prepared to swallow Mr. Cleugh's paraded opinions will find in his book a fair", clear and straightforward account of the aetha ,. course of the war, without much analysis either of its causes or of the structure of Spanish socie which made it possible. This book, althnng11
Y superficial, is less misleading, and certainly less
t; the jacket.
`inflammatory' than the publishers suggest ° JAMES. JOLL
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