Page 3, 1st July 1955

1st July 1955

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Page 3, 1st July 1955 — 'THAT MAN' FRANCO..
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'THAT MAN' FRANCO..

FRANCO OF SPAIN: The First Full-length Biography, by S. F. A. Coles (Neville Spear. man. 21s.)
T will be fascinating for the future historians to trace how the deep-set legends about the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath gradually died down and were superseded by an objective public opinion in the Western democratic coun. tries.
Only in the United States are they dying down at all, as yet: as evidenced by the commonsense with which Amcrican opinion accepts the U.S.-Spanish treaty of 1953.
The time-lag, during which we in Britain are still passing, is an impressive tribute to the astuteness of Popular Front propaganda in 1936. For it used to be said that it is always the victors who write the history books. But here was a case where the legend, wellgrounded. of a non-Marxist-controlled and indeed democratic Spanish Government, and of a Fascist revolt inspired from outside, is not caught up even yet by the corrections which official revelations in important hooks had begun to make available already Years ago, and which today no scholar fat least) will omit to take into account.
THE DOCUMENTS
M R. COLES'S book on Generalissimo Franco, " the first full-length biography,"
is the latest venture into all these tumultuous matters and to bring the story down to this present year.
It is an intensely personal hook, really revealing of both subject and author.
Mr. Coles cannot be said to have been thrown off his objective balance by the charming interview he had with the Caudillo; for, reading between the lines. it gave him but little meat. But the various issues he leaves the main line in order to discuss, never failing to return soon to the career he is tracing, make him an engaging conversationalist with his readersubject to one exasperating trick of style to which I shall revert.
For the rest, the book is based on all the standard works (except Doussinague) published in Western Europe and America on all sides of the Franco controversy. togethei with the official German and British and Spanish documents now available.
HIS HERO
Pr HE man that emerges from the study-" That Man," as Mr. Coles calls him when projecting himself into the anti-Franco state of mind he is about to trounce-emerges as a hero.
There is no claim to full objectivity in the writing. For most of us it would be an idle claim. Perhaps the only commentator to achieve true objectivity was the late Prof. E. Allison Peers, whom everybody cites and nobody impugns, Mr. Coles had an open mind on Franco when he began, but has ended up his champion on all fronts. Thence springs one weakness of the book : there is far too little on the " seamy side." It will not satisfy the General's critics to be told-for example of the suppression of the revolt in the Asturian mountains in I934--that he " dealt sharply," and have it left virtually at that.
Moreover, those prepared to endorse all that is said of Franco's fundamental religiosity and charity need all the more an equally substantial treatment and defence in directions where the anti-Franco legend is still miles ahead of them.
FOREIGN POLICY
T HERE is, in fact, a decided un-balance in the planning of the book. Not only does the period of Franco's rule as Head of the Spanish State (since 1939) occupy only 47 pages out of the 264, but such part of those 47 pages as is not concerned with the Caudillo himself is almost entirely foreign policy. There is virtually nothing whatevei definitive on the internal running of the country. he: yond a straightforward account of the recent dismissal of Rafael Calvo Serer.
On the Cortes we have one paragraph. of four lines. This is the more a pity since the " totalitarian " charge against Franco in ordinary British minds is the substantial one
still unmet, The others, about 1936, and about Guernica, and about his pro-Axis war-record, are by now outdated.
Mr. Coles's handling of these foreign policy questions is very effective indeed. For here he relies less on persuasion than on hard evidence.
As to the war, we are reminded of Hitler's torrent of rage after the Hertdaye meeting, which he "would rather have four teeth drawn " than ever repeat; and there arc citations from the Ciano Diaries. and from the book by Hitler's interpreter Herr Schmidt.
Most impressive of all, the Spanish-Portuguese treaty and protocol of 1939-41 are shown to have bound Franco unconditionally to neutrality anyhow, to say nothing of his economic plight at the time.
Mr. Coles's analysis of the Gibraltar situation today is far less profound, however, though, it
should certainly serve one indispensable purpose in assuring every
British reader that (as anyone who has been to Spain knows for an axiom) on the Gibraltar question all Spaniards without exception are united, and since as long ago as the annexation itself.
WORDS, WORDS . . .
THE stylistic defect is of this sort: " 1 knew that my friend had met General Franco when he visited London in 1936 as representative of the Spanish Army, of which he was then chief, at the funeral of King George Vwho was Honorary Colonel of the 8th (Zamora) Regiment, deriving from Irish Jacobite mercenarieswhen he marched in the funeral cortege behind the Soviet Marshal Tukhachevsk y-later Liquidated' by Stalin with the cheerful advocacy of Vishinsky, then the Soviet Public Prosecutor (Franco took his meals at the Martinez Spanish restaurant in Swallow Street, off Piccadilly, and chose to visit the Zoological Gardens in Regents Park as children are so amusing with animals: although he had particularly wished to visit Woolwich and Sandhurst), and I asked for impressions." That is stylistic dysentery, and too many pages are showered with it.
If the book is none-the-less gripping to read, that fact says much for Mr. Coles's graphic powers when he is not smothering himself with incidentals.
MAN WHO WAITED
THE main theme of the biography is Francothe-man-who-bided-his-time: not in any sinister or careerist sense, but fortified by the truths of Catholicism and order and tradi tion for which he stood, sure that he understood his fellow-Spaniards and what they both wanted and needed; so sure of the rightness of his policy, indeed, that he held firm against compromise with international Communism during the years of the United Nations' insensate boycott of Spain, until the Powers should realise their mistake and perhaps see some value in associating with the Spain he ruled.
It is a valid thesis, and it will stand the tests.
But Mr. Coles ought now to write another hook on the internal dictatorship. for which we still need a reputable apologia.




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