Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, MAR. 29, 1939. PEACE IN SPAIN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 101, 29 March 1939, Page 8

Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, MAR. 29, 1939. PEACE IN SPAIN.

Tub last act in the Spanish drama is being stag'ed. Early this month the .Nationalist forces commenced to move towards Madrid, but the order to strike was delayed to enable peace talks to proceed. These failed and the Nationalist forces started the last desperate battle which in every way favoured the attackers of the Spanish capital. General Franco’s message to the Republicans adhering to offers of pardon for the defenders, but allowing the Courts liberty to deal with the “crimes committed during the Red domination,” was brutally frank if correctly precise. Patriotism, he told the army of Madrid, made surrender honourable, and it was criminal to spill blood for the safety of a few. The defenders, however, with characteristic Spanish bravery, sought at first to preserve those whom the Nationalists would destroy and the talks ended in failure. General Franco, it seems, too, was impatient. He -wanted unconditional surrender, and even the promised surrender by the Republicans of their air fleet dul not satisfy the manner of his demands. The defence of Madrid was in the hands of the Defence Council, but the interval between the rise and fall of the curtain has not been long, surrender having come immediately, with the departure of General Miaja and the Defence Council to Valencia. The Republicans have little left of Spanish soil; Catalonia lias been lost and with it their industrial nerve centre; General Franco commands the sea and no help is available from this quarter; while the Republican fleet is interned in a French port in North Africa. Surrender in such circumstances was without honour, for the population of Madrid and the troops which were defending the city and southern sectors have suffered sharp privations. Were success even possible for them for a time it could only have meant in the end the infliction of greater hardships. In view of the fact that Barcelona was always more willing than Burgos to negotiate peace, in the same spirit that the Republican Government refused to enter into the wholesale bombing of Spanish towns —an excellent

example which General Franco and his hired airmen from Germany and Italy chose to disregard—it seems surprising, with the end in sight, that the Republicans should have at first preferred to sacrifice their troops rather than surrender. If the reports of the first advance on the Cordoba front are correct the defenders’ morale is poor for battalions have surrendered rather than continue the unequal struggle. The difference between the two sides in the peace negotiations has been one of method. When Dr. Negrin was over-thrown and the Defence Council established, a number of Republicans unhesitatingly desired to end the war. “There must be an honourable peace, based on justice and humanity,” one of them declared, while the author of the coup, Colonel Casado, in a broadcast to the Spaniards in the Nationalist zone, told them that in their hands lay the peace which Spam badly needed. J3ut General Franco has remained intransigent. “It is needless,” he told the Republicans before commencing his offensive, “to await general terms of surrender which would be difficult to obtain.” The struggle now continues in the sectors remaining in Republican hands, but the end, which will mean peace to a harassed people, is now happily at hand.