REPORT ON SPAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 113, 9 November 1937, Page 11

REPORT ON SPAIN

A GERMAN OBSERVER

HIS COUNTRY'S MATERIALS

■ Prince Hubertus Lowenstein, who had just returned from a visit to Catalonia and other parts of Republican Spain, told a ''Manchester Guardian" representative recently that he arrived on the Aragon, front just at the time of the great Republican offensive and was present at the bombardment of Belchite, which was captured by the Republicans soon afterwards. In Aragon he saw Catalan troops taking a gallant part in the Republican battle. At Belchite he had as a German found it most unpleasant to stand near a place encircled by. Government troops and see Junker planes dropping tons of bombs. A. few days later he was in Quinto, which- bad just been captured, and found that- the church was full of German-made ammunition, left behind,by the fleeing Fascists. In Osera, a small place, German artillery had fired fifty shells at a -church, but most of the shells did not explode. In the trenches opposite Saragossa he met General Kleber, and asked whether he might mention his name, to which the General replied: "Yes, as the Fascists said I was captured in Malaga, please mention the fact that you met me in Aragon." "While we were talking," the Prince said, "a soldier came up to report that two men had been killed in one of the tanks' which had been struck by a new type of shell. The tank had 'melted like snow,' Perhaps that was the first shot in a new development of trench warfare. It was the first report of a new German invention, specially made shells filled with thermite, which are fired from an anti-tank gun, and which, exploding inside the tank, develop 400deg. c. of heat. There is no protection against them." NOW A REAL ARMY. Prince Hubertus said that the army ; of the Republic which at the. beginning of the war was not a real army had become a real army, w.ell disciplined and brave. In Madrid he was impressed not only -with the courage of the .people, but with the perfect order and the fact that fewer police were needed there than in any other great city he knew. Yet 400 to 500 shells Were falling on the city every-day. It was difficult to-get meat and milk, and sometimes difficult to get bread, but the people still had their harvest and men were working in the fields 500 metres behind the trenches. . There we,re great numbers of Basques on the Madrid front. , Prince Hubertus said- that he had not gone to Spain on a political mission. He went as a German, a Euro--pean, and a Roman Catholic, and one main reason was that as he had been invited by the Carnegie Endowment Fund to lecture at several colleges in the United; States on such subjects as the conflict between Fascism and 'democracy in Europe and the philosophical foundation of the' totalitarian State he must get personal evidence and ma^ terial in. Spain. He:: made many inquiries about the position of ■ the Church in Spain, and was assured by the Basque Catholic Don Manuel Irujo, Minister of Justice in the Valencia Cabinet, that the Government would restore full religious freedom as quickly. •as possible. Though the churches are open, no religious services are being held in them, but he was told that in private houses 2000 Masses are said daily in Barcelona, 1000" in Madrid, and 200 in Valencia. He got the same assurance from the President of the Catalan Government, Senor Comrianys.