THE SPANISH TRAGEDY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22963, 19 August 1936, Page 8

THE SPANISH TRAGEDY

The almost stereotyped comment in the cabled messages concerning Spain is that the civil war is raging with undiminished ferocity. From the scraps of information from various sources with reference to the actual fighting it is impossible to arrive at any definite conclusion respecting the fortunes of the contesting parties. The one fact that has already emerged is that Spain is given over to a struggle of a particularly bitter, uncompromising and sickening kind. Both the temperament of the people and the issues at stake seem to be contributing to the fierceness of the impact of the opposing forces, and to the savagery by which, if report be correct, many episodes of the revolt have already been marked. The circumstance that revolution and civil war tend to stir contending passions to their depths has, unfortunately, been only too plainly illustrated in history. While war in any event is terrible and abhorrent, there is something about such a spectacle as that of the Spaniards joined in internecine strife that is very disturbing to civilisation at its present stage of development. Against the background of the history of Spain, her culture and her pride—a picture which has gathered dignity and repose as it has receded—the flare of this present civil war, this deadly clash of political animosities, is strikingly lurid. To have to contemplate such happenings at a distance should be distressing enough to humanity. But to what extent is humanity shocked? The fact that it has been necessary to direct efforts to ensuring that there should be no intervention, with its dangerous possibilities, by foreign Powers in Spain, carries its own suggestions. Not so long ago there did appear to be some ground upon which to base a belief that the world might be be-

coming more humane. But cause for misgivings on that point has continued to present itself. Is the world, then, even growing more callous? An attempt to answer that question might be made from many angles, such as the nature of modern warfare, the instruments of destruction evolved, and even, apart from war, of the toll which mechanism, as developed by science to serve man’s purposes, is permitted to take of human life. The Abyssinian conflict, and the methods of warfare adopted for the subjugation of a people fighting to maintain their independence, constituted a setback to hopes reposed in European plans to eliminate war and its barbarities. It was an unfortunate prelude to the Spanish tragedy. It is from the latter source that an illustration has now been provided of an attitude, not of armed forces in the heat of battle, but of non-combatants, which is particularly calculated to prompt reflections about the general outlook of people or peoples who regard themselves as civilised upon war in our own day. In one despatcn it is told how the safe side of the Franco-Spanish frontier —the foothills of the Pyrenees and the bank of the River Bidassoa—has provided a dress circle for thousands of sightseers and tourists from which they may watch the Spanish loyalists and rebels attacking one another, and being butchered to make a French holiday. That the progress of a battle should be watched with conflicting fears and emotions by a civilian population deeply concerned in the result is nothing new. But the thought of an episode such as the Spanish civil war appealing as a spectacle and an entertainment for the jaded appetites of leisured sensation-mongers is nauseating. It almost outrages credibility. Yet the grisly record runs: “ Thousands of tourists occupied vantage points on the river bank They sat at tables, sipped drinks, and trained field glasses on the Spaniards killing one another. So great was the press of motors on the frontier that the scene resembled Ascot.” And no doubt picnic parties on a large scale were catered for by enterprising charabanc proprietors. Fill in the picture as we may, nothing can soften its cruelty and vulgarity. And the question remains for answer—-What is the present-day standard of humanity, what is the value really attached to human life? Have the feelings of mankind tended to become calloused by modern trends and influences, even such things perchance as attempts to reproduce for popular entertainment something of the pageantry and agony of warfare, the common talk of the danger of the earth being drenched with exterminating poison gas, the precautions of Governments in the ordering of millions of protective masks, the interminable tale of the threat of war itself?