SPANISH COCKPIT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 140, 15 June 1937, Page 10

SPANISH COCKPIT.

NEW REBEL TACTICS.

LOYALIST VICTORY FORECAST

WAR MAY LAST TWO MORE TEARS.

(By ERNEST HEMINGWAY.)

MADRID, May 1

After IS days of the heaviest possible artillery bombardment of the civilian population of Madrid, which, according to official figures which, were handed exclusively to me to-dav, lost 312 killed, including 183 children and over 3poo woundedj the city is as quiet as the central fronts have been for the last 10 days except for desultory shelling.

It is possible that General Franco's artillery is saving its shells for a May Day bombardment, but, taking advantage of the opportunity of considering the situation, without the slightly upsetting effect of too many and too personal incoming shells, it is of interest at this moment for a military observer to sum up impartially General Franco's tactics and the possibility of their success or failure. The Fascists are now attacking Bilbao on a major offensive. If Franco is successful in taking Bilbao it will give the Fascists an important port in the rich mining region and will release aviation, artillery and possibly 20,000 other troops for a renewed attack upon Madrid. It will also restore the badly needed prestige of the international troops fighting with Franco, who have been under a cloud since the battle of Brihuega, and will, incidentally, eliminate the embarrassment of the self-styled "Red destroying'' General which he suffers when he bombs and kills Basque Catholic Nationalists. The Fate of Bilbao. Bilbao lies in a cup of hills, and if Franco's troops reach those hills they can ohell the city to destruction, but neither the destruction nor the capture of Bilbao can win this war for Franco. Bilbao has been powerless to aid Madrid, and --ice versa, since last August. It must be remembered that Bilbao is at one end of an isolated front of 100 miles stretching along the Cantabrnm Sea. Madrid is unable to send any reinforcements other than aeroplanes. Consequently the Basques must fight it out for themselves, and Madrid can only help by attacking on the central front,! as it did at the Casa del Campo three j weeks ago to draw off troops from the north.

Madrid is the key position on a front 800 miles long. A front of this length, much, of it loosely held, was all fought over during the Peninsula War at the beginning of the last century, and it-; military possibilities are known and appreciated. It gives a great opportunity for a war of movement once the new Government divisions have been sufficiently trained to make this type of war possible. The training of these newtroops, which are stiffened by highlyexperienced fighting units, is proceeding daily, and an army is being formed which will make Spain definitely a military power in Europe. Men of the highest military intelligence; however, know that the army is not yet ready for an offensive on this scale. In some weeks' time, such an offensive is possible, in some months' time certain. Sparring For Advantage. Tn the meantime, General Franco is trying, by shelling Madrid's civil population, to force the Government to attack what have been proved the almost | impregnable positions at Garaditas and I thus to sustain the losses which would inevitably ensue if the troops made frontal assaults in the old world war style against positions defended by machine guns which later be turned or pinched off in a war of movement. All defending forces have a huge advantage in the possession of carefully fortified positions, and around Madrid the situation can be compared to two boxers, each one a deadly counterpuncher trying to get his opponent to open up and lead. Anyone sitting at the ringside has heard what one boxer will say to the other to get him to lead, and Franco's shelling of Madrid is, bi the deadlines* of war. a parallel to the insults one fighter will offer another in an effort to anger him into exposing himself in attack.

In order to relieve the pressure on Bilbao, the Government may be forced to attack before it is ready for a big offensive, but it may also be a possible tactical decision, if the worst comes to the worst, to allow Bilbao to fall and await the Fascist attack on the Castilian Plateau where war will eventually be decided. Belief in Government Win. This correspondent believes that if the Fascists take Bilbao the war will last two years with the Government winning in the end. If Franco should fail to take Bilbao, the Government should win the war by next spring. I have spent a hard ten days visiting the four central fronts, including all the high positions. I have spent hours on horseback and'l have climbed to important points 4800 ft up in the Guadarrama Mountains, where, the snows now having melted, conditions may be studied more easily. Both the Fascist and the Government positions on this key mountain sector are ijow real fortresses, and remind one stronglv of the deadlocked portions of the old Dolomite in Italy. I have found that the Spanish mountain troops, trained by old regular army officers, are the best disciplined and smartest I have yet In order to reach one sector from a brigade headquarters, I had to ride along a road under machine-gun fire on the trip up. But the pinging, riveting noise these bursts made on the outside of the noisy, clanking, dark car were very unimpressive after the 32 shells which fell within 200 yds of my hotel before I left the town at 6 o'clock in the morning. On coming home late at night, with the air still full of the heavy granite dust and high explosive smoke, with the sidewalks scattered with new round jagged holes and blood trails leading into half the doorways, you passed from the front, which seemed indeed a pleasant place in comparison, and you felt that even the Moors besieged in the University City were taking less punishment than the non-combatant population of Madrid.— N.A.N .A.