BLOOD AND TEARS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3842, 4 December 1936, Page 12

BLOOD AND TEARS

SPAIN’S SORRY SITUATION. The story goes that General Narvaez, one of the many Spanish dictators in the nineteenth century, was asked on his death-bed by the priest: “Does your Excellency forgive your enemies?” And the dying man replied in a firm voice: “I have no enemies; I have shot them all.” The anecdote might well serve as motto for much of what is happening in Spain to-day and is full of teaching for the outside world (writes a correspondent of the London Spectator). In fact, Spain since the start of the Peninsular War in 1808 has never known civil peace of the ordinary European type, and its quietest periods have been those in which violence curbed by ruthless dictators had to confine itself to the assassination of leading statesmen. Civil war was the rule, not the exception. The first conclusion to which that reflection points is that mass executions and massacres in the present civil war cannot serve as a ground of discrimination between the contending parties. Personally, I have only visited the Government camp, and there is not the slightest question that an enormous amount of massacring, official and unofficial, is going on there. But the facts concerning the wholesale massacre of prisoners in Badajoz and Merida seem to be well established, too; many English Press correspondents, sympathising with the insurgents, have described the systematic shooting of all active Anarchists and Socialists in the places held by the Nationalists. I was able myself to verify these statements in a few villages which had changed hands, especially in Alcubierre, behind the Saragossa front. Massacring in Spain is not peculiar to any individual party, but a general feature of the civil war as such. Taking all elements together, and basing calculations on the assumption of an equal amount of terrorism in both camps, I think that to assume 0.75 per cent, of the whole population and 3 per cent, of the adult male population of all Spain has been executed is really a very moderate estimate. That points to a total figure of more than 150,800 executions. Perhaps I am too pessimistic, and I admit I have not seen the quietest parts of the Government camp, such as Murcia and Alicante, nor such parts of the rebel areas as Navarre. But I consider an estimate of 100)000 to be an absolute minimum. That, of course, is many times more than the number of those killed in action.

There are, however, redeeming features. One of them, in contrast to what might be inferred from the many sensational newspaper reports, is the prevailing respect for the life of women, unless actually caught with arms in hand or as spies. With very few exceptions, priests are shot, without mercy (not, of course, in the Basque country, but in all the rest of the Government area), but nuns are generally spared. What is perhaps most surprising is the fact that there is generally a good deal of chivalry in the behaviour toward the arrested and condemned. Torture, which has been such a hideous feature of some other political upheavals of our time, is practically non-existent, the one isolated attempt that gained notoriety being met by the immediate execution of everyone responsible. Courtesy and even actual friendliness up to the last moment toward those who are going to meet their death, if not general, is at least very frequent—more so at Miadrid than at Barcelona. And I know of cases where an execution of their nearest relatives is made as easy as possible for the survivors to bear. Both the chivalry and the ruthlessness of old Spain are conspicuously alive in both camps. Spaniards could not even conceive of spai’ing their enemies in such a war of extermination. I once expressed my opinion that the execution of General Goded in Barcelona, quite apart from all humanitarian considerations, was a political mistake,, as this man, through ordering his troops by wireless to submit, had actively collaborated in the extinction of the Barcelona revolt. The answer simply was: “What do you want? This man if we had let him live, would have started another revolt on the next occasion.”