NOT RED V. WHITE

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 18, 19 October 1936, Page 9

NOT RED V. WHITE

SPANISH REBELLION

POLITICIANS IN UNIFORM

Whoever escapes from Spain dedicates his first moments at the frontier to a sense of relief, which changes quickly to one of consternation: for every frontier post has become a centre of international journalism, where for the first time the refugee must confront an intimate tragedy with its image in the international mirror, says a writer in the "Manchester Guardian." It is a struggle, then, between Whites and Reds? —a first massive absurdity which is generally sufficient to produce dazed silence. As a concession, it is afterwards sometimes admitted to be a struggle between Fascism and anti-Fascism, and certainly along the lines of this antithesis there is much to be said. But the revolution has two functions, one national, classically Spanish, and another which can be confused with a function of. the modern world at large.

In treating the problem of'" internal and external influences it appears not so much that Spanish politics have at length caught up Europe at large as that Europe has regressed to the normal level of Spanish politics. The great cadres of opinion and party have ijbroken down and personalism triumphs in one country after another. The tragedy of Spain is to have chosen this moment to initiate her first serious effort in the contrary direction. If Fascism won in Spain the saddest" historical aspect of its victory would be that of a return to expedients already tried out, proved by the centuries null —a senseless repetition without novelty or hope when precisely the hope informing the Spanish Republic had been to guard against these interruptions of the national life. THE REBEL GENERALS. With, perhaps, the one exception of General Mola (who, as the last Director General de Seguridad of the Monarchy, was responsible for the repression of Republican students in Madrid), all the new leaders have been the object of disciplinary measures on the part of the various Governments which *they have "starved." They are, in fact, as much as iaDurruti and his confederates in Barcelona, true representatives of Iberian anarchy. AH, to begin with, have served both Monarchy and Republic. General ■ Franco is known as a capable colonial officer, still more so as being in perpetual tension with every succeeding Government. Of General Queipo de Llano it is hard to speak in terms which would carry conviction outside Spain or Mexico. He was deprived of his command in Morocco by. Primo de Rivera, who had a certain sensibility to decorum in zones that fell beneath the eye of the world. Under the Republic he re-emerged as the head of the Military Household of President Alcala Zamora; this high position did not long satisfy him, and he abandoned it with the usual scandal. It is certain that within two months of the implantation of the military regime Queipo would again be in revolt; indeed, he has already declared that he does not recognise the orders of General Cabanellas, President of the socalled National Junta. The "soul" of the movement, the first capitalist in Spain, who is said to have placed his .vast fortune at the disposal of the rebels, is Don Juan March. Little can be told of him that is not gossip—what, is certain is that nearly every crisis in Spanish politics within recent years has been' followed punctually by the announcement that "Don Juan March has crossed the frontier" (as a monk, it was said, when Primo de Rivera made his pronunciamiento)—for this great financier's conscience has many facets, corresponding to all possible political vicissitudes. WAS SENT TO PRISON. A self-made man, land speculator in Andalusia at the first, then lessee of the tobacco monopoly in Morocco, he is supposed to have earned vast sums during the Great War; references to regrettable incidental casualties drove him from the Republican Cortes. A long imprisonment followed, so that it Is not surprising now to hear him men-

tioned as supporting the "National" movement.

These characters, then, can all be interpreted according to a purely national tradition. They are figures from the old Hispanic repertory, familiar from Madrid to Lima. As such no modern State, still less one presided over by Azana, would have had much difficulty in bringing them to account, whatever popular lassitude might have existed in face of Government weaknesses. But of a sudden these disappointed adventurers are discovered to have a new force—and here it is that the argument for a second, or international, interpretation, becomes unanswerable.

Why, indeed, should these professional insurgents, ready to come out into the street at any moment, as their past careers prove, have chosen this moment rather than any other—the aftermath of Abyssinia and the Rhineland? Other occasions, on merely national grounds, would have been far more favourable to them. There can be little doubt that if the promoters of this movement choose to call it National it is for the usual reason that its true Fascist origins are unconfessable. PROVOCATION GREATER? Against this it may be urged that provocation on the part of the Left has increased, and it is true that after the disorganisation, especially of commerce, following-on the Frente Popular's rise to power the military have been able to count with a greater mass of middleclass discontent. The clumsiness of the Frente Popular and the impotence of the Government have been undeniable; the reason for the latter is obvious and confirms once again the theory of a long-prepared Fascist plan. For the Right parties have rejected all invitations (and they have not been lacking, thanks once again to Azana) to transigence: their Parliamentary activity can only be called sabotage, defiant and deliberate; their object was manifestly and confessedly the destruction of the regime and nothing less. The Frente Popular Governments, deprived of all hope even of a minimum of co-opera-tion and loyalty on the part of the Opposition, had no alternative but to tolerate whatever treatment their own extremist allies might care to mete them out. The Right parties, in whose hands is concentrated the wealth of the country, were successful in achieving at any rate the preliminaries to their programme—such a degree of economic chaos as must Suggest the impossibility of a democratic regime in Spain. This situation, of their own creating, the Right parties themselves took as the pretext for proceeding to the second stage of the operation, the resort to arms; and, if the end of democracy js marked by their own suppression rather than that of their opponents the Right parties can blame only the arms they themselves have invoked. THE "NATIONAL" MOVEMENT. It is curious to find that abroad there are people who identify the rule of the military with the rule of order. Apart from the fact that it is only a part of the army which is involved in the rebellion, it can never be too much stressed that soldiers such as the rebel leaders are not so in the normal, European sense, but rather uniformed politicians; the outline of their careers given makes this sufficiently plain. In the north General Mola, who declares himself Republican, is backed by the Carlist requetes (militia) of Navarra; their programme is the restoration of absolute monarchy. General Mola expelled from Pamplona the Infante Don Juan, in whom Alfonso XIII abdicated his rights! In the two Castiles General Cabanellas, the President of the socalled Junta Nacional, counts chiefly on Falange Espanola—the nearest, equivalent to the Italian Fascio. The Monarchists of the Infante Don Juan are, of course, also in the movement, represented by their chiefs, the Conde de Vallellano and Senor Goiecoechea; they can be relied upon to continue an unforgiving propaganda under any regime but their own. In the south General Queipo de Llano relies on the Carlists and the Falangistas and the Alfonsme monarchists; he describes himself _ as Republican (of a Republic, one might add, that would have to be careful to recognise his own peculiar merits), though provisionally, "for the next twenty-five years," he is in favour■of a dictatorship of generals, Of General Franco's political views little is known It may be imagined from this list that the guarantees of order and unanimity offered by the rebels arei not very superior—to put them at their highest-to those offered by the Frente Popular. And it is clear that in the event of a rebel triumph the same foreign influences which precipitates the rebellion would liave to define ana sustain it, once in ; power. For the triumph of this "national" movement requires the exterminatiqn—by traitors, black troops, and foreigners—of more than half the nation.