VISIT TO MADRID

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 173, 19 April 1937, Page 13

VISIT TO MADRID

Streets Unswept and Shops Closed INTERNATIONAL COLUMN it was a strange time to make my first visit to Madrid, says a woman writer iu a recent issue of the “Christian Science Monitor.” Unswept streets, chairs overturned in the park, shops closed or with windows broken and boarded up, one bends down and creeps surreptitiously under iron shutters half-down over the doors. Clocks have stopped. The hideous and elaborate shell of the Post Office still stands, gutted inside. It is barricaded with mailbags, I wondered sadly if they were stuffed with all the letters never sent or received. A newspaper office is barricaded with unsold newspapers, the barricades decorated at intervals with small evergreen trees in pots such as one sees in front of Parisian restaurants. The half of every day is devoted to military training for the able-bodied, so food shops are open in the morning, when one sees interminable queues, and other shops in the afternoon. Stores Bare of Supplies. Next to a total wreck, perhaps hopefully labelled with a French or some other foreign flag, is a chic shop of imported men’s wear still functioning. /

with its remaining stock, and patronised by officers. Only most useless luxuries are left iu the stores —elegant dinner- services and such like. To meet a different kind of demand, there have Stirling up, I don’t know how or from where, street vendors, some of I hem Chinese, selling the things the soldiers want, clasp-knives, shaving materials, gloves, woollen caps and cheap jewellery, earrings and imitation pearls. They are spread out on the pavement of the Gran Via and on the very verge of the enormous shell hole in the Puerta del Sol—which the creaking trams gingerly round. Everything is scarce, and I saw women pulling up wooden palings and breaking off small boughs to carry home for fuel. In the middle of a boulevard I saw a woman feeding a goat on a strip of ornamental shrubbery. The life of the city is topsyturvy and what were the grandest parts are invaded by beggars and refugees from devastated districts, many of whom are permanently encamped on the platforms df the inetro. The soldiers give to them generously. Babel of Languages. What are still the most expensive, and were tlie smartest and most exclusive cafes, with modeim decorations, arc unbearably crov/led in the late afternoons with soldiqrs on leave dressed in everything from cossack hats and sheepskin coats to all sorts of ragged odds and ends. It is a perfect babel of languages. These are of the international column, the heroes of the populace, who would give them everything free if they had anything to give.

The soldiers are like schoolboys. Plates piled with buns are put before

them which disappear in the twinkling of an eye. They bewail the lack ot chocolate and jam. Only certain cafes even have any food at all. The Ger man soldiers are older-looking than the others and inspire greater confidence. Members of the International Column tell me, "We all look so tough we frighten each other!" On the walls of once elegent cafes are posters. They are startling and have artistic merit. There is Madrid as a crimson tower, serrated and bristling with cannon, which a great green serpent with swastika markings is trying to devour. The censor’s office in the telephone building is very dimly lit and among the desks are cots for the employees to sleep on. The foreign journalists go through the kitchen to a basement dining-room in the Gran Via Hotel and eat at a long table, or retire to the neutral atmosphere of their respective embassies. I ate in a kitchen for the employees of a Spanish newspaper in a cellar. They are all noisy and jolly. They throw the bread at each other. We ate beans and again beans.