WAR AND CULTURE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 100, 29 April 1937, Page 8

WAR AND CULTURE

A new kind of non-military airbombardment is reported By "The Times" correspondent at Bilbao. Non-military places have been attacked in the past on various pleas —open towns because they were alleged to shelter concealed military forces; hospitals and churches, for the same reason. But, among other places bombed in the Basque provinces, for terroristic effect rather than for military purposes, the correspondent mentions the ancient Basque capital, and says that this vengeance by the Franco-Mola forces- on "the cradle of the Basque race" is "an operation unparalleled in history." Yet it is a logical result of the attempt to govern by means of the legends of a racial and cultural past (called Aryan or Nordic or what not) to the exclusion of other racial and cultural elements. From the expulsion of "non-Aryans" •and the book-burning in German streets, it is but a step to bomb old capitals and monuments and ruins around which an, enemy •culture clings. The outstanding fact about Basque culture is its ancient origin and its persistent 'survival-; what better target for the gospellers of "one culture and only one"? In the Basque provinces are still worn "the

costumes which for many centuries have distinguished the Basques from the other peoples of Spain." According to another authority, "the singular Basque or Euskarian language, spoken on both slopes of the Pyrenees, forms a sort of linguistic island in the great Aryan ocean." Swat that island by any and every means!