THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, September 7, 1942. THE SPANISH DILEMMA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25014, 7 September 1942, Page 2

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, September 7, 1942. THE SPANISH DILEMMA

While Spain remains perilously poised upon the fringe of the world conflict, the first preoccupation of the Spanish people may well be not with international politics but with internal rehabilitation. Spain had her war—and the most cruel of wars, a civil war—while the Great Powers were still uneasily at peace. General Franco once declared, in a mood of grandeur, that the battle of the " New Order" had first been fought in Spain, and he further defined that battle as the one which Germany was fighting, in the interests of Christianity and for the salvation of Europe. But the people of Spain presumably do not desire to engage in any battles to-day, after their long and wasting conflict, and probably are more concerned about such materialistic things as food, of which they have been short, than about European " New Orders." With Senor Serrano Suner, General Franco's brother-in-law, it has been different. He is a politician and an intriguer, who allied himself squarely with Naziism while the dictator was merely making favourable and perhaps placatory gestures towards Berlin, and he has declared forthrightly his hope for, and belief in, an Axis victory. As Foreign Minister and working head of the Falange, Spain's only political party, he had long exerted his influence in the direction of friendship with Germany, and was commonly supposed to be restrained only by his brother-in-law from identifying Spain irrevocably with the Axis in its war against the democratic nations. In the circumstances the sudden removal of Suner from his position of eminence may be interpreted as a gesture by no means encouraging to Herr Hitler and his satellites. This change in control, and others which have been introduced by General Franco in a reallocation of important portfolios, indicate broadly that the long, intense struggle between the Falange and the Army for'the predominant place in Spanish life has been resolved, temporarily at least, in the ascendancy of the Army. It leaves General Franco, if the news of Suner's rather precipitate departure from Madrid is correct, firmly in command of his country's policies, and surrounded by the military companions of his victorious if- inglorious war against the Spanish Left. There must, however, be caution in accepting these interesting developments as betokening a swing in Spanish sympathies towards the democratic Powers. Franco has himself shown no great liking for Great Britain and the United States, which failed to support his crusade against the Left. He is unreservedly antagonistic towards Soviet Russia, which intervened against him in the civil war. But he has every reason to realise that any present threat to Spanish neutrality in the world war would come from the Axis. Herr Hitler has still to receive material reward for assisting General Franco in that conflict, and Spain could provide the Axis with an approach to Gibraltar, as well as useful African bases. The evidence of increasing Latin-American solidarity with the Allies brings the Atlantic islands in Spanish possession increasingly into importance as a strategic prize. Franco's latest move may be dictated by a desire to establish closer relations with Great Britain and the United States, towards whom he is reported to have shown himself better disposed of recent months. It may be intended solely, as a Daily Telegraph correspondent surmises, as a " Keep out" sign to the Axis, indicative of Franco's natural desire to preserve Spanish neutrality and the integrity of Spanish soil. If this is the case, there is a possibility that German pressure for the passage of troops through Spanish territory has recently been increased. ' Though he has had the strength to depose Suner, it cannot be assumed, in view of Spain's exhausted state, that Franco would be prepared to resist Hitler if such a demand was couched in the imperative.