THE WAR IN SPAIN

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22419, 4 June 1938, Page 22

THE WAR IN SPAIN

cur, —in reply to your anonymous Communist correspondents, I should like to point out that long before Franco took up arms in July, 1936 the Left Government had permitted more than 400 churches to be attacked, 160 of them to be gutted by fire, and more than 1000 of the clergy and nuns to be assaulted and murdered. Writing last February, after seeing both sides of the war in Spain, Denzil Batchelor, of the “Sydney Morning Herald,” said that there is not a priest or nun to be seen anywhere in Red territory, and there is just one church which is more than a shambles —the cathedral in Barcelona. “Personally,” he says, “I saw no mutilations and massacres of religious in Government Spain for the best of reasons: there were no religious left to be massacred.” Many people take up a pro-Red attitude regarding Spain, partly because they are already unsympathetic towards the Catholic religion and partly because popular prejudice associates Catholicism with Fascism. The daily press has done nothing but feed antiFascist hatred with the cabled halftruths and deliberate lies sent out by the “Red” and "Pink” press agencies. And above all the distortion of news has been outstanding in the case of Spain. Everything favourable to Franco is suppressed. Denzil Batchelor, whom I have already quoted, says this: “I went to Spain knowing little of politics, but I sympathised with the Government side because it was, I believed, constitutionally elected by the people of Spain, and was assailed by the Governments of Italy and Germany. All I knew of the Spanish problem was what any reader of the English papers might gather. Now I have seen both sides of Spain, and declare the truth as I found it, which is very far from what you read in the English daily papers. I left Government Spain convinced that that side of the argument did not have my whole-hearted support. They were, I now knew, ‘very capable assassins.’ There remained Franco’s side, that foreign invasion, to be seen and disapproved of. From the superior peak of British democracy I was determined to declare ‘a plague on both of your houses.’ But the foreign invasion of Spain was just about as authentic as the Russian invasion of England in 1916. So I came back from Spain, that I had first visited expecting to find myself with the Government cause. I sided with it no longer, and I have found myself regarded as an untouchable on that account by almost every Englishman with whom I have discussed the subject. To me that is the greatest mystery of all. Every journalist I met in Spain, whether in Government or Franco territory, whatever the political colour of his paper, knew the truth about the situation; but 1 have yet to read that truth fully and openly published in any daily newspaper.” So writes Denzil Batchelor, who is not a Catholic. But he really explains the mystery when he says that the correspondents in Spain write, not for the newspapers to tell the truth, but for the newspapers’ proprietors, who do not want it. Everyone who is onposed to Communism is dubbed a Fascist. It is a lie. We Catholics are not Fascists, and these outcries against Fascism in Spain or elsewhere are only a blind. To us it is immaterial whether the Government in Spain is going to be called “Fascist” or not. so long as it guarantees freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.—Yours, etc.. P. J. COONEY. Lyttelton,. June 3. 1938. TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS. Sir,—The Rev. P. J. Cooney must find it strange for one of his old pupils to take the part of the Spanish workers. I should like him to know I have a mind and brain of my own, just like himself, but I use it myself, wherc : as Father Cfioney has his influenced "from Rome. I believe in taking my religion from Rome, but not my politics. . . As for the Spanish Government being Communistic, well there was not one Communist in it when the- civil war was started by Franco, the Fascist agent. What does Father Cooney say to justify the wholesale slaughter of innocent women and children by Franco's latest bombing “Granollers.” He ought to be one of,the first to denounce it, as he teaches in our religion, “Thou shalt not kill." As to the Spanish Government stinking in the nostrils of every decent person. I think the boot should be on the other foot. , . , „ About priests being killed. Franco has killed many Basque priests for intervening on the people’s part, and many more he has in concentration camps because they do not believe in his wholesale murders. As to the professional political agitator in trade unions, he is to be admired as he comes out and does it openly, and not under the cloak of religion. It would be far better than to havo non-professional political priests like Father Cooney: so why does he not go on teaching Christianity which he is supposed to teach, and advocate peace instead of wholesale slaughter.— Yours, etc., ’ HENRY MARTIN. Lyttelton, June 2. 1938. TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS. Sir,—ln reply to G. F. Seward, . I must say if the information ( he gets about Spain is as good as the information he asked for about my living in Lyttelton, I do not think much of the source he gets it from. He should have come to Lyttelton himself and just asked anyone if they knew Henry Martin. They would have shown him right where I live. In any case, my reply to Father Cooney will clear up about my not living here, as I went to his school, St. Joseph’s. As to being dishonourable, I always keep to the truth, but if I make a mistake I am always ready to apologise, hoping Mr Seward will do the same as a Catholic. About “Zealandia” being pro-Franco, it is disgusting. Instead of fostering goodwill among people, as it says in cur religion, it is embittering the people against one another. In reply to “Franco and Spain,” I wish to tell him the Communist bogy has been used by the Church too much to hide the truth. If the war in Spain is a Holy War, as “Franco and Spain” calls it, why did General O’Duffy and his band of Catholics leave Spain? Let me tell him why; They went there under the impression that it was a holy war, but when they got there they were disillusioned and found out it was a war between democracy and Fascism. Before they left they started to fight with the Italian and German Fascists. As everyone knows, Irishmen love freedom I must admire “Franco and Spain” for telling other Catholics that there are 100,000 Italians and thousands of Germans fighting the war for Franco, as some of them will not believe me when I try to tell them that. In any case, one would not think this foreign invasion would be necessary when it is claimed by leaders of the Catholic Church that the majority of the people of Spain are fighting for Franco.— Yours, etc,, HENRY MARTIN. Lyttelton, June 3, 1938. TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS. Sir,—As an Englishman, I feel it humiliating to read in your leading article of to-day (June 2) ,that, but for the insistence of the British Government on the retention of the right to drop bombs on the heads of recalci-

trant tribes on the north-west Indian frontier, the use of bombing aircraft might have been outlawed as long ago as 1933. It is a thought-provoking circumstance that, on that occasion, the representative who voiced the British demand for lull liberty to drop bombs from aeroplanes, should have been that Dove of Peace, Mr Anthony Eden. With your general thesis that air bombardment—particularly when involving slaughter of non-combatants — should be excluded from the war arms of civilised nations, I cordially agree in principle. But when you proceed to illustrate that thesis by quoting—not as an exploded myth—but as sober fact, as does your cablegrammer, the legend of Guernica, I feel that a protest is due. The “Legend” affirms that this city was destroyed by aerial bombing -carried out by foreign aeroplanes in the service of Franco. The fact is that Guernica was razed by the retreating Reds by means of dynamite and incendiarism, with deliberate sacrifice of life. The proof of this fact can be found —in a form sufficiently cogent for anyone who is in search of the truth, and not in search of partisan anti-Nationalist propaganda, in the 50page brochure “Guernica,” with 24 lull-page photographs, published by Messrs Eyre and Spottiswoode. This is an English translation of the report of the commission appointed by the Burgos Government to investigate the cause of the town’s destruction. There is a foreword by Sir Arnold Wilson, M.P., the depositions on oath of more than 20 inhabitants, and a list of those killed. ’ A few of the points established in this report are;— The distinctive craters caused by aerial bombing were found on the outskirts of the town, but none in the town itself; there were nine cases of signs of heavy underground explosions, in every instance close to a manhole giving access to the town sewerage system; while the town was ablaze fire-engines came from Bilbao but were not allowed to operate by reason of the contrary orders of officials of the Red Government; during the whole night and for two days the fires raged unchecked; when the people tried to reach the burning houses to extinguish them they were held back by guards, militiamen, and Government police; a refuge for civilians during air attacks was blown up and the 45 people it contained were killed; the commission gives clear proofs that the explosion could not have possibly been caused from the air, but must have resulted from dynamite exploded underground. “A conflagration caused from the air always begins from the top downwards, and there are none such in Guernica. Reference need only be made to the photograph of the Teredos of the Church of San Juan, and to the other photographs of the same brochure, in which the fire and smoke are shown issuing from below, and in which traces of the appear on the lintels of the doors and windows of the lower storeys and not in those of the upper.”—Yours, etc., (Rev.) FRANK B. SEWARD Lincoln, June 2. 1938. ISubject to the right of reply of “E.W.R.,” this correspondence is now closed.—Ed., "The Press.”]