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Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 29, 4 February 1937, Page 13

of women executing women. As for religion, to give one example, at Toledo . only six out of 136 priests hid. Religious pictures in Toledo had been slashed. At Navalcarnero the priest had been burned. Had he been shot first? As for the* Moors, undoubtedly they were at first given to looting. This hereditary failing was, however, brought under control long before Madrid was reached. The Moor is by religion a rigid respecter of another man's wife. One of the most remarkable testimonies to the acceptance of the Moor—there is no colour bar in Spain — is the friendship, obvious everywhere, between the Moorish troops and the small children. Of the utter ruthlcssness on both sides there can be no doubt whatever, and on this score alone, taking into account the complete clash between two modes of living in a country where tho Centre is despised on all sides, I cannot conceive of mediation as a practical possibility. CONCLUSIONS. To conclude. The civil Government in Nationalist Spain is orderly and surprisingly free from open repressions. Work as usual and reconstruction are General Franco's mottoes. In the army there is extraordinary, perhaps unjustified, confidence that thel war will undoubtedly endure many months. The extent and dangers of intervention are daily increasing, and there are at least four countries whose relative guilt cannot, in my opinion, be distinguished. The siege of Madrid will not be decided one way or tho other for a considerable time. The ruthlessness has been appalling, as in a war between incompatible doctrines it must inevitably be, but the atrocities on the Red side outbid those of the Russian Revolution itself. Suspected disloyalty on either side is a cause of death, but on the Nationalist side there is invariably a trial—it may only be a form—while on the Red side the Anarchists recognise neither law nor form of law. I came home hopoig above all else that this civil war would not prove the cause of a European conflagration. And mixed up with this tragic and determined bloodshed I carry away with me memories of the pro--d walls of Avila on its lovely hill, of the loveliest square in Europe in Salamanca, of the serene majesty of the snowclad Sierra de Grodos, and of Burgos Cathedral, with all its strength and grace combined. But above all, I came away thanking Heaven that I happened to be born ill a country where freedom is .possible . j