ANARCHISTS IN ARMS

Evening Star, Issue 22504, 24 November 1936, Page 14

ANARCHISTS IN ARMS

ON THE CATALAN FRONT (From ‘ The Times.’) The writer has just returned from an almost forbidden zone in Government territory, the first lino of fire on the ridges that close like a crescent around Teruel, inland from Valencia, where a a commanderless army of Anarchists, famous as the Iron Column, is bent upon pushing the insurgents out of Teruel and all the mountainous land to the north. The Anarchists are suspicious of war correspondents and informed the writer that he was the first ever allowed to penetrate there. Teruel is a provincial capital, sursounded by “ sierras,” about 70 miles north of Valencia and 90 miles south of Saragossa, with which it is connected by a railway and a main road, both of which have branches to Calatayud, about 75 miles from Teruel and lying on the main railroad between Saragossa and Madrid. The Teruel insurgents thus maintain direct contact with their forces in - those ttvo places. The Government Militia, by the occupation of Alfambra, Orrios. and other towns as far north of Villalba Alta, 21 miles to the north of Teruel, have cut , one of the main insurgent lines of communication in that direction. The Militias have a twofold strategy—first to destroy a dangerous wedge which is directed toward the Mediterranean, menacing Valencia, and next to protect the left flank of the Government forces at the gates of Saragossa. A WOMAN OF ACTION. I reached the Teruel front in the company of five war delegates, of whom one was a woman. The Anarchists recognise no such titles as captains, colonels, or generals. Everyone is a delegate. We visited the first line of. trenches and dugouts, making an occasional venture into no man’s land and into wooded terrain which, might 'be called anybody’s land. The enemy apparently had wind of our presence, for one morning they sent seven shells towards the • farmhouse where our motor car was parked, and about ourselves as we were crossing an open space on a mountain. “Spies!” exclaimed the chief delegate, _ among other things. There were no hits. . Our driver was a bluff and indepen-dent-minded Militiaman who might be called the sergeant-major of the delegation. _ His. sub-machine gun, was the admiration of all who saw it. In the trenches he would give advice to the Militiamen and let them fire his gun. The woman of the party was “la oomarada Maria,’’, a middle-aged, selfstyled “Rationalist,” and a woman of action._ She had led an assault on’a Valencia orphan asylum, turned out the nuns, and taken charge. The professional staff procured her - removal from the scene as directress on _ the ground that she •_ had no professional teacher’s certificate. We had left Valencia under the hot Levante- sun and first' reached Segorbe, seat of the bishopric of the province of Castellon; but the bishop had departed, the churches were burned. At Jerica the bells, as the bells of other church towers in this land, were silent, arid so were the peals of the organs. Many of the bells have now been melted for armaments, and the broken and twisted organ pipes have been piled high in boxes, ready for shipment to the maker of bullets. To the destroyers this wrecking of churches and their .altars and statues is the symbolic effaoenient of an institution which they feel cam be obliterated only by the obliteration of its material signs. On the walls of a number of towns in the Catalan-Valencia area orders were posted by the local revolutionary committees to deliver up for destruction all_ “ statues, pictures, and other religions objects, symbols of idolatry and of oppression in the name of religion.” Exceptions had been made in favour of those of artistic value, which were tb be kept in the local museums. DEGREES OF COMMUNISM. Sarrion, farther on, was once in insurgent territory and now had the distinction of being a “ Communist town.” The inhabitants have abolished money and attempt to carry on completely along Communistic lines. ; Each town apparently decides for itself whe-' ther it shall be wholly Communist, half-Communist, or shall 1 continue in the old bourgeois way. This self-deter-mination on the part of municipalities with their local revolutionary committees is palrt of the doctrine of ‘ Comunismo libertariq ” preached by the Anarcho-Syndicalists, who hold that Communism must be imposed from below, by the people, and not from above. The last village toward Teruel on this central line •of advance _ is La Puebla de Valverde. Valverde is principally a hospital and food supply base, the usual peasant village of cobbled houses and streets. The streets were lined with lorries laden with food and supplies and hospital vans. In one van fitted out. as a printing shop is turned out the daily newspaper of the “ Iron Column,” called ‘ Linea de FuegOj’ or ‘ Lino of Fire.’ The massive. fortress-like church in the centre of the little village was no more than a burned-out shell. It was the most completely destroyed church I had yet seen. The answer to questions, what lay behind the hatred that had caused these peasants to wreak such havoc, was but the repetition of a much-heard story—“ caciquismo,” or political bossing by their priests. Puebla de Valverde is the place where 65 Militiamen and their leaders, including a Socialist Deputy, were massacred by the Civil Guard and the insurgents acting in a treacherous obmpact. I heard the story first-hand and saw the blood-soaked ground and the graves. A mile beyond Valverde was the cookery, where the food is prepared for the front lines. The chief cook was a Spaniard returned from France to fight. There is a surprising number of men who have left jobs in France for their convictions. Soon the main highway became no man’s land, running through a hotly disputed defile known as the Puerto de Escandonj) which is daily bombed from the air. We turned off on a newly-made road, which ran among the mountain tops, through rubble and rocks, until it could go no farther. Along the crests ran the dugouts and , trenches in long, wavy lines facing, across gullies and canyons, the insurgents entrenched on the opposite ridges. Beyond, partly hidden behind a low sloping mountain, was Teruel. The dugouts were crude, and more shelter must be provided unless the Militiamen get to Teruel before the cold comes. In a dugout we discussed the_ war, Spanish and world politics, social revolution, and they told me the ribald songs and jests which, to the accompaniment of guitar and gramophone music, they fling at the enemy. They could not quite remember whether ‘ The Teemess ’ was bourgeois or proletarian, Riffht of Left, I explained that ‘ Tlie Times ’ is primarily a newspaper devoted to the reporting of facts, letting them suggest to the reader who is right and in what degree. They seemed satisfied. The. Militias have abolished the cusi ternary military units. They are formed

in groups of 10, each group electing its delegate, whose functions are somewhat akin to those of a corporal. Ten groups constitute a “ centuria,” which also has its delegate. The “ centurias ” are formed into columns; there may be 10 or 20 in a column, or even more. The “ centurias ” are numbered, but the groups have names—the Sea Wolves, the Terror, the Lions, the Invincibles. the Dracula Group, the Group without a Flag, the Black Group, the Swedish Group, the Bakounin Group (named after the father of Anarchy),