When Franco Falls . . ?

...There is a natural tendency to interpret' the politics of other peoples as though they were tournaments between rival personalities rather than as democratic movements...

...During the war and postwar periods, strong governments capable of keeping order are desired...

...For many, democracy is a synonym for disorder, governmental impotency and anarchy, whenever countries other than their own are under consideration...

...The' house of cards built by Negrin and the Communists has collapsed with a bang...

...No one now believes that Franco's government can last...

...Even the roost conservative opinion is already speculating on ite successor., The London Times said recently: "Outside the party the conviction is strong that by no miracle can the Falange...

...The last point is correct...

...Deat baa attacked the "traditionalist" revolution ef France, which, baaed met...

...In great political catastrophies it ia a common human failing to blame others for mistakes and defeats...

...BUTTING aside both Don Juan and Negrin as pos-sible successors to Franco, we must examine a third possibility which seems to bo the most acceptable to the Timee and those it represents...

...The monarchist solution has very few supporters in influential circles, due mainly to the stupidity of the candidate who at the beginning of the war in Spain was willing to fight against the people that he wanted to govern...

...Throughout I'etain's rale in France...

...formed in Mexico last November appeared at tha most opportune moment...

...You democratic republicans can never get together...

...In spite of this, Negrin has been left completely alone among the Spaniards in England...

...As the Miaister of Labor, be is beginning to act up a Council of National Solidarity to apread propaganda a beat the •"social conception ef Fascism...

...Those who had collaborated with him through thick and thin for seven long years now lamented that Negrin was unwilling to use "all posspblemeans" in support of a new ultra-collaborationist policy that happens to be to their immediate advantage...

...Nothing could be clearer...

...Who is to know, if in the midst of so much international horse-trading, we are not yet to see Russia and Franco's Spain recognizing each other, now that Russia has recognize*] Badoglio in Italy...

...There is also a lack of confidence in democratic organization in general...

...Vat's Social ta iota...

...Many would give the chief credit for its survival thus far to German divisions on the Pyrenees, and look for major developments in Spam the moment these divisions begin to melt away...

...A call for uaity bad beea made to everyone excepting the Falangists, aad including the very monarchists and Catholics who had iarited and financed Franco's armed revolt...

...A republican group that also hung out at the "Spanish Home" was overcome by shame at the Communist hob-nobbing with the monarchist and Catholic bankers who financed the murder of the Spanish Republic and broke sharply with its mentors of other days in a "Reply to the manifesto of the Supreme Committee of National (?) Union...

...The weaknesses of the Second Republic should be a lesson, especially the weak policy that was followed toward the enemies of the Republic...

...The "Spanish Heme," a club founded by the friends of Negrin and by the Communists and wherein the sacred Ire of a fictitious uaity was maintained, published this same miserable, lying manifeata of the equally crooked Supreme Committee of National Union...

...Vichy Fails, Nazis Try "Social Revolution" d^NE of the most isipor tant indications whict way the Earopeaa wind ii blowing are the recent attempts by European Fascists to promote "social revolutions" inside Europe in order to win the allegiance of the European working class...

...Aad although the French employers vigorously oppose the Corporative Charter and Ita set of state controls, the underground French anions are iu«t as vigorously sppsssd to the Charter...

...I wrote to the Times that since the organization of the Spanish Committee of Liberation its lamentations over the disunity of the republicans lacked validity...

...The soul of Salvador de Madariaga, counsellor for the Pretender in Kugland, yearns a bit for hih prince...

...If it had been formed earlier it might have been premature...

...Such is the state of British public opinion regarding the future political regime in Spain...

...In Great Britain .and in the United States there is both liberty and older, and so can there lie In the Third Spanish Republic...

...After swearing allegiance to the Republic, the army destroyed by armed force the constitutional order and caused "the holocaust in which a million of the flower of Spain perished...

...They also have much to learn...

...La Frame* sciolist,, admitted that the Charter had been re-iected by the Socialist aad Christian aniens...

...The disunity of the Spanish republicans is a useful "out" to justify the most unpopular and arbitrary solutions to the problem...

...Ashamed to see his name associated with such a stupid proposition, Negrin himself circulated a letter disclaiming responsibility and revealing its communist origin...

...Bat Deats schemes can only lead to failure The ruthless demands being made by the Nasi economy oa France preclude any real effort to raise wages...

...There are few in England who support a monarchist restoration in Spain...

...I also hope that he will finally support the Spanish Committee of Liberation...

...It may prolong its precarious life by making concessions to the Allies...

...In the article previously cited we find this alarming statement: "The Spanish army may be at present associated with the Falange,-but it is not of it...

...Internal politics are subordinated to the state interests cif the conquerors...

...The Communists answered Negrin's letter with a filthy attack, turning against him as they did against l*rgo Caballero In 1937...

...Local Spanish Communists announced that a Supreme Committee of National Union had beea formed ia Spain aad that aa important manifesto issued by it had been received ia London...

...While many take us advent for granted, the prospect would be . brighter were there more signs of agreement among the republicans themselves...

...to,take th« place of the dictatorship of the sword, the Times generously offers us —another sword...

...Thus, even the Times and the powerful group it represents, realize that a dazed chap who offered to serve under the oitlera of traitorous generals is not the ideal candidate for tha throne of a people who stood up and fought for their rights...

...Franco, watching events in Italy, Argentina and other countries, may hope to save his political skin in the general confusion...

...I hope that Negrin himself, who has net lost all sense of reality aad who must blush for those who proclaim themselves his staunehest partisans, may present us with another latter repudiating the New Statesman as be did the moe> atrocity of the commuiustMponsored "Supreme Commit, tee...

...Machiavelli was an innocent babe compared with hia present-day disciples...

...Inside Italy, the puppet Mussolini regime proclaimed itaclf as a "Socialist Republic" and, on paper, proclaimed immediate measures of socialisation...

...IN Great Britain there are now few who believe in a prolonged survival of the Franco regime...

...The Spanish Committee of Liberation is still little known, and for some of those who are aware of its existence, means little more than the triumph of Martinez Barrio and Indalecio f'rielo over Negrin...

...However, many states, both belligerent and neutral, are today virtually or in fact in a state of crisis...

...The average Englishman thinka that all peoples are by nature monarchists, but he sees that with the exception of Britain and the Scandinavian countries, which are really crowned republic*, the world's monarchies have been failures...

...Significant I v. Ooebbels' recent propaganda line stresses the "proletarian" aspect of Nasisas and assails "plutocratic Capitalism of the West" aad "Judeo-Bolshevik State Capitalism" hi Russia...

...Since the beginning of the nineteenth century the Army has been the strongest and the most constant agent of disorder in Spain After this long historical experience it is striking to find British democrats who pin their faith to a perpetually insurgent army...

...Now the Nazis have given Deat bis chance...

...Against him tthe Pretender Don Juan) It is not forgotten that duriug the Civil War his services were twice placed at General Franco's disposal...

...In the political and economic strategy of the war the Iberian peninsula occupies a key position, a vital position for Hitler and he will accept almost any concession before taking a chance of losing it altogether...

...Perhaps the most extensive and desperate attempt to use' the technique of "social revolution" is that of Marcel Deaf inside France...

...To have postponed longer the re-grouping of the Spanish Republican forces would have been equally Wrongv Of course, in the...

...hut the lawyer enjoys as little credit as his client...

...Recently a Dcatiat paper in northern France...

...This has occurred with the Spanish emigration and also, I feel sure, with those whom misfortune held in Spain...

...enri'al Franco's regime is condemned to suffer the consequences of its spurious origin and its rotten ideology- Once the Nazi-fascist powers that destroyed the Spanish Republic have been defeated, the Falangist Stale will have no national or international reason for continuing to exist...

...final analysis it must be the Spanish people in full exercise of their sovereignty who ShoOre the future government of Spain and designate the parties and individuals to constitute it, as they did with exemplary democracy in 1931—the only time in history that a natiop has changed its form of government bloodlessly through elections...

...When we protested against those who so amiably offered us a king, a perennial Negrin "government," or a theocratic republic like that of n Oliviera Salazar, they shut us up with the reproach of disunity in a Pilate-like waahing of hands: "Why, there ia no alternative...

...We must recognize this reality, and this is one of the reasons that the Spanish Committee of Liberation has come into being...

...It would not surprise me if Hitler were to go so far as to accept a formal rupture of diplomatic relations by Franco, if the Allies were to force the latter to that point, without declaring war, as has happened with Portugal, if Germany is allowed to continue to import Spanish and Portuguese wolfrsin and other war materials, and if Hitler can continue to enjoy the .servile collaboration of the Falangist agents to conspire in Spanish America...

...and while the army has never yet provided a lasting solution to the political problems of Spain it must always be a factor to be reckoned with...

...Aayoae could see through the i-lamay commanist trick, and everyoae did except the innocent liberal daily Xrws Chronicle, which devoted a long and enthusiastic article to the subject...

...My letter was not published...

...And there is no other candidate...

...we all have much to learn, including the Times Itself...

...tea seems aistanis Is h ¦ fiasco—bat what ia more important la that the Waste, gauging the temper ef the Enrspsaa »orking class, are tawed to resort to thaao tactics to their attempt to wh» aoase following...

...hope to survive an Axis defeat...

...In the solution of this crisis, at least temporarily, not only must the respective peoples Intervene, but also—and possibly as a first stage—the victorious United Nations must do so...

...If there were such an army in this civil and exemplary land, they would hurry to bring it under civil authority, as we Spaniaids tried in vain to do against a Fascist international coalition...

...Deat promises that the industrial wagea af the French »«rking claaa will be raised, aad that a Corporative Labor Charter will be introduced...

...Deat has accused the retain administration of serving the iateresta of French Big Business, and he has predicted that the efforts of Petain to win the population would fail...

...Catholic considerations, sought to stresa Order and the Family...

...Less encouraging is the opinion of the Times regarding Franco's successors: "Of a third democratic republic, little can profitably be said at present...

...But even these acrobatic and paradoxical as well as disconcerting possibilities cannot prevent Franco from ultimately sinking amid the general collapse that awaits fascism at the end of the present war, unless we democrats are the victims of a ghastly hoax regarding the war's aims...

...Deat was part ef a group including French' Socialists and Communists who in 19M hailed Nazism as a wave ef the fatare which would "unify" the European continent, tearing down tbe old capitalist walls...

...Only the |«ssage of time eradicates this presumption in those who have fought and lost, and reawakens the instinct of solidarity making further struggle possible, in spite of personal and party differences...

...But the weekly New Statesman and Nation, which seems to have no sense of the ridiculous, recently went so far as to call for the recognition of the phantom Negrin "government...

...DECENTLY the monarchist cause was reinforced from a most unexpected direction—by the Communists...

...The political events of the Spanish civil war were too recent and the moral and physical wounds that every defeat leaves in the spirit of the vanquished, as yet insufficiently healed...

...Of all the inept and Utopian proposals for the future government of European Nations—and these have been numerous and colossal— this demand by the Fabian-Liberal weekly seems to me the most picturesque and unrealistic...