A RELIABLE BOOK ON SPAIN

.11121-111111 llllll 1111011111 by SI Isstsssicimax
A. C. F. BEALE'S
"AS the years went by ", says
the author of this book, speaking of General Franco after 1936, " the effect of an almost absolute power became increasingly evident and he seemed to adopt some of the minor characteristics common to dictators." Furthermore, his regime " became increasingly uopopular, especially in respect of Falange, which became riddled with corruption and used Gestapo methods. . . . Falange began to take on more and more the aspect of State-worship or totalitarianism and became the pro German section of Spain and often the instrument of the Germans." Furthermore, " these 1939 reorganisations of the cabinet and the Falange Party marked an important tendency in General Franco's policy away from the more conservativeminded and monarchist traditionalists, towards the more totalitarian and .leftish Falangists,"
Those words (and there is more to like effect in this book) well deserve
quotation. The average Catholic, with his uncritical adulation of the Caudillo, needs them. The average non-Catholic, with his uncritical detestation of Franco's record, needs them still moreas a reassurance that he can read this book without fear that it displays a partisanship as bigoted as his own. For Mr. Loveday's strong attachment to the new Spain, born of his first-hand acquaintance with the country over many years, and what he saw of both sides in the Civil War of 1936-39, is well known long since, and might therefore lose him antiFranco readers doubtful as to how far their adversaries can be balanced and objective. It must be said, and with congratulation, that apart from one or two glosses, and an occasionally palliating regret at having to censure in a hero actions that can be roundly condemned in others, Mr. Loveday has given us here an objective and temperate study of a volcanic subject on which few men as yet can be totally impartial and fewer still wish to.
Turbulent Days He has had to handle the Spain of Primo de Rivera — of the turbulent early 'thirties--of the Popular Front — of the Civil War — of Spanish neutrality during the World War of 1939—and of the " boycott " by the United Nations since: down to the end of 1948, at which point of time the ostracism of Spain was already becoming (however much one may loathe with the British Government the character of the regime) a farce for the moment and a tragedy for the future.
In so far as the arrangement takes the form of 31 chapters in 250 pages, there is considerable overlap, and much repetition and cross
referencing. The telling fact, for example, that as his army advanced during the Civil War, Franco never had to guard his lines of communication, because his advent was welcomed, has not become more telling by the fourth time one reads it. Nor has the curious blunder, that in September, 1943, there occurred " the occupation of the Vatican by German troops and the virtual imprisonment of the Pope," become less curious by being said twice. Readers will feel that the repetition is obtrusive, that it could have been lessened by more sub-editing, and that the advantages in clarity which the author rightly sought by taking the events since 1940 in parallel chapters year by year (domestic and foreign) could have been secured at less cost as regards presentation.
That said, however, one hastens to welcome the book as a standard history of the kind we have been waiting for : full of information, documented, well-indexed, indispensable for those who like to have by them, in one set of covers, the facts and figures on topics that others will dispute.
We have the evidence, for example, that the Soviet help to the Republicans was. earlier. and the Soviet and French help larger, than that of the Italians and Germans to the Nationalists; that a Soviet Spain was indeed planned long before 1936 (secret documents in Appendix); that in the farce of nonintervention the only government that honestly tried to limit the war was our own: that our trade was, in fact, worse off at the hands of the Republicans than those of the Nationalists; that the Western protests at bombing began not during the first part of the war when it was Republican bombing, but later, when it was Franco bombing; that the Western Press and radio treatment of the Civil War was of such a kind that we have not gained a true perspective yet; that Franco's neutrality in World War II was beyond doubt a matter primarily of keeping Spain out of the war, and that, for the rest (since lie conceived Marxism as the most fearsome of Europe's enemies) he certainly did want the. Axis to win. until he saw that the Axis had lost.
And among the extracts from documents and speeches none will be more useful in the next year or two than the section on Spanish neutrality and its advantages to the Allies from Mr. Churchill's speech in the Commons on May 25, 1944.
The Boycott The summary of United Nations resolutions leading to the boycott of Spain since 1946 comes just at the right time, when those nations individually are about to save what face they can. The high-sounding principles of non-intervention in the internal affairs of independent rates, and the posturing and squabbling of exile Spanish " Governments," changing from month to month and denouncing one another, patently deserve the scornful paragraphs they get at Mr. Loveday's hands. In fact, the less one hitched one's wagon to Franco's star in the years of the Civil War. the more one may justifiably challenge today the bogus righteousness with which the West professes to see in Spain " a danger to peace" but in the Cominform nothing of the sort, and the lack of historical commonsense that conceives of an Atlantic Pact apart from the Peninsula. The great service this book can do—join issue with the author on so many points as each reader no doubt will—is to provide the information on which honest men may argue the Spanish tragedy in an instructed way.
* Spain, 1923-1948: Civil War and World War. by Arthur F. Loveday. (Boswell. 12s. 6d.) Landmarks in the Story of Christianity, by H. A. Guy, B.A., B.D. (Macmillan. 6s.) is a Churchhistory text-book for the middle form of grammar schools. written seemingly from a Nonconformist standpoint. One wishes that some of those who write Catholic schoolhooks could study this one, for its author has that eye for significant detail which gives vividness and interest to an outline.