FRANCO’S PROPAGANDA

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22435, 23 June 1938, Page 8

FRANCO’S PROPAGANDA

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS. Sir, —I should be grateful if in the interests of truth and justice you would publish the following statement in an-

swer to Mr Seward’s statement against the Spanish People’s Front about the destruction of Guernica. This statement is made by an eye-witness, and a prominent member of the Catholic Church, Canon of Valladolid Cathedral, whose word may be taken as authoritative. “I went to Bilbao at the end of last week, when I, heard that the Basque Government had decided to evacuate Guernica. As I have relatives in the town I decided to go there. I arrived in Guernica on April 26 at 4.50 in the afternoon. It was a clear day, contrary to all that has been stated. I had hardly left my motor-car when the air raid started. The first bomb destroyed a three-storeyed building and shattered the panes of all the buildings in the town. As this was market day, there were many peasants from the surrounding villages in Guernica. When the bombing started these people flee terrified into the fields, leaving their cattle behind. “I noticed the aeroplanes came in relays. First only one appeared; after it came three more, then seven, and finally six triple-motored aeroplanes. “The bombing of the town went on until 7.45. During all this time the assissins were constantly flying over the town. The system of attack was always the same. First, they would machine-gun the people; then they dropped explosives, and, finally, incendiary bombs. “The aeroplanes flew very low: their machine-guns rattled furiously, machine-gunning woods, fields, and roadside ditches full of praying women, children, and aged people. “Towards dusk one could not distinguish beyond 500 metres because of dense black smoke, the results of fire and bombing covered the entire town, “One could not hear a sigh or complaint; people were paralysed by fear; some prayed; others stretched their arms in cross as if to implore mercy from heaven. One of the aeroplanes swooped down to 200 metres from my car and rained machine-gun fire on it. I, too. had to take refuge in a small oak wood and later joined some militiamen. At 7 o’clock Guernica was in flames. “The firemen from Bilbao, who arrived immediately, busily started to work on some of the buildings which had not been totally burnt. One could see the glow of the fire from Lequeitio, 22 kilometres away. Not even the people who went into the refuges were saved, nor the sick and wounded in the hospitals. Guernica had no antiaircraft guns or batteries of any sort, nor even were, there machine-guns.

“During the first hours of the night it was a ghastly spectacle—men, women. and children wandering through the woods looking for their dear ones, to find in the majority of cases but bullet-riddled bodies. “As a Catholic priest I must say that the greatest outrage to religion would be the singing of a “Te Deum” to the glory of Franco and Moca, who represent utter barbarism, in the church at Santa Maria of Guernica, which was saved, from fire by the heroic efforts of the- firemen from Bilbao.”—Yours, etc., S. H. BECK. Rangiora, June 20, 1938. [Subject to the right of reply of G. F. Seward, this, correspondence is now closed.—Ed., “The Press.”]