BLACKMAIL in Spain
FERNSWORTH, LAWRENCE
BLACKMAIL in Spain by LAWRENCE FERNSWORTH the potent scheme of nature, which contrives first of all to maintain life and make sure of its survival. The sun came up this morning just a bit north...
...operations in Spain might have to be interrupted...
...Correspondent Dick Mow-rer, writing in the Christian Science Monitor April 5, 1955, said that a Spanish official told him: "We have no Communist problem...
...to complain that Spain wasn't getting enough...
...With those who had arrived after the NATO resolution had been "unanimously" passed, there were only 26 of the 435 members present...
...Life that surges in me, and in them, each time the cycle of the year reaches this point in its vast and endless rhythm...
...The editorial lamented that the West seemed unaware of the fact that "Spain is the keystone of the arch in the defense of the West...
...His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Current History, the Fortnightly (London), and the Economist, among others...
...Life that is sweet...
...It was an inspired Page One editorial that said: "The Paris NATO meeting had hardly terminated when Foster Dulles, bearing a special message from President Eisenhower, hastened to Madrid to make his report to Franco concerning what transpired at Paris...
...This is the main import of Dulles' visit to him immediately after the NATO conference in Paris...
...It is there now, ticking away, and I shouldn't be at all surprised if those peepers down the road in the swamp heard it the other evening...
...The sun came up this morning just a bit north of east, and it will be in the sky today just a few minutes longer than it will be out of sight on the other side of the world...
...Dulles' statements to the press in Madrid and his praise of Franco's Spain as one of the ties "that held the Free World together," when he appeared in a broadcast with the President December 23, shocked that part of the free world that lies outside Spain and across the ocean from us...
...The latest of these, published within a matter of days after the ostentatious and, in Spanish eyes, subservient visit of "Foster Dulles," contained a blunt warning which was no less than a threat that NATO faced "utter failure," unless— The "unless" of the matter was that, as to NATO, Franco wanted in, and that Dulles, in failing to open the door, wasn't doing his job...
...Those few Congressmen who had planned to attend early were still walking through the tunnels on the way from their offices...
...In addition to these contributions, it was revealed here in January that the United States and Spain were signing a $69 million economic aid program, that Spain was asking for another $65 million from the Development Loan Fund for power, irrigation, and industrial projects, and $40 to $50 million from the Export-Import Bank...
...Every year we wait for the mythical turn around the corner of the equinox, and we tell ourselves that spring is now at hand...
...The Pentagon and Mr...
...It hurts him that countries less powerful than Spain turned thumbs down on him at Paris...
...As the editorial bluntly suggests, he let Dulles know that Dulles wasn't producing...
...This ambitious scheme, so painstakingly pursued and so long in the making, was known as Mediterran-eanismo...
...that European acceptance of Franco is part of the bases agreements...
...Life that persists...
...Gullible, Spaniards say, because they believe everything...
...Dulles both know that Franco, or any other Spanish regime, merely has to say "no" at the critical moment to render the four air bases, the naval base, and various forms of military assistance useless...
...As soon as the new Congress convened it began voting money to implement them...
...For all Americans know, this may have been given already...
...They were subjected to violent beatings and tortures, such as being forced to hold their hands or feet on red hot electric stoves...
...It is something to think about...
...Franco had kept this Soviet note on ice for a week so he could flaunt it when Dulles arrived...
...Next he became a member of the United Nations as the result of a package deal between the United States and the Soviet Union...
...The latest piece of practically open blackmail appeared in the Spanish press on the heels of Dulles' December visit to Franco—his second...
...His books include "Nothing But Danger," "Dictators and Democrats," and "Spain's Struggle for Freedom," published by Beacon Press, Boston, a few weeks ago, which has aroused wide interest in Latin America and has been condemned by the Franco press as the work of a "reptile Republican...
...These commodities have cost the American taxpayers their market value...
...How is the freedom of the other fellow defended by making a deal to strengthen the hand of his oppressor...
...That, astronomically speaking, is spring...
...I see the proof every year, and I am sure I shall see it recurring as long as I live...
...According to the publication Iber-ica, which has Salvador de Madariaga, the eminent Spanish historian, and Norman Thomas as its honorary chairmen, more than 200 university students and workers were arrested in Madrid alone during January as part of a stepped-up campaign of terrorism...
...Having got the pitch, the Spanish press began chorusing that it was now Spain's turn to get a slice of the American melon, that the melon had better be juicy, that the Americans would best start producing in the grand manner or suffer the consequences...
...Senator Mike Mansfield, Montana Democrat, in a recent report on the subject, stated that we have provided Spain with $350 million in military equipment and $721 million in economic assistance—a total of one billion and 71 million dollars...
...It is me going out to the vegetable garden with a fork, to see about the state of the soil, and watching the first crinkled, red leaves of the rhubarb come up and the fine, green shoots of the chives thrust out of the withered tangle of last year's growth, and hoping there will be no late frost to nip the daffodils already six inches high and in bud...
...Spanish eyes will catch its drift immediately...
...The day before Dulles' visit the Spanish press splashed on its front pages the text of a note which the Soviet government had handed the Spanish delegate to the U.N...
...Its theme was that the United States was not fulfilling its bargain...
...Foreign Operations account...
...In a matter of months after the first funds became available—the first part of 1955—the Spanish press, which publishes nothing political that is not officially inspired, began LAWRENCE FERNSWORTH, now a Washington correspondent and Nieman Fellow, has represented the New York Times and the London Times in Spain and other countries of Europe...
...This became the theme song, rendered with variations from that day to this...
...And these facts assert themselves with increasing insistence in the course of the U.S...
...On top of this are more funds due for appropriation and assignment from other sources in the fiscal year just ahead...
...He said that "to include American agricultural surplus sales in the context of sales is like writing a letter to a ready-made clothing merchant to thank him for 'condescending' to sell you a suit...
...But there it is, ticking off the days and hours, and I do know that...
...Diplomacy which is divorced from morality also divorces the government from the people...
...The club in the hands of the Spanish dictator is a simple clause in the agreement regarding the bases which says that their use in wartime shall be by "mutual agreement...
...They stand for hard facts...
...bases in Spain and all that goes with them, will be a failure, is a way of serving notice on the U.S...
...Money, plenty of it, and deliverance from the stigma of being the outcast of Europe by being admitted to NATO—these are the two great objectives of Franco...
...It was time, said the article, to ask "concretely and clearly, without euphemism or doubletalk . . . that the United States decisively turn into the pathway of fulfilling the pacts...
...Along with the complaints went thinly veiled threats...
...Other angles of the Franco blackmail pattern cannot be set forth in the space of this article, such as evidences of Franco's flirtations with Soviet Russia, his praise of Russian efficiency in a public speech, the praise bestowed on Nasser by the Spanish press at the time he seized the Suez Canal, and so on...
...For instance, there was the evening of May 18, 1956 when the President, at a dinner for President Sukarno of Indonesia, told his guest that "unless we defend the freedom of the other fellow we are endangering our own...
...The U.S...
...I happen to call it April, and the peepers call it mating time, but we are talking about the same fundamental, which is life...
...For example: "There is a school of thought which claims that morality and foreign policy do not mix...
...The clock of the year, and especially of spring, really isn't in the stars at all...
...Additional Spanish demands are now being processed...
...On March 16, 1957, the Monarchist organ, ABC in Madrid, published a scathing criticism by former Commerce Minister Jose Antonio Gi-menez of the "inadequacy" of U.S...
...The last mutual security appropriation gave Spain $40 million, which was more than was given to any other country of Europe, plus another million for technical assistance...
...They are sold to Spain below value—largely a paper transaction...
...Now it is asking for another $30 million immediately on an emergency basis, with the President's secret fund again indicated as the source...
...At the same time the Spanish press was printing more warnings that unless Spain got more American money "to strengthen the Spanish economy" —euphemism for propping up the Franco regime—U.S...
...It is in a radish seed and in an onion bulb and in the root of an asparagus plant...
...Dulles and the President...
...Spain resells them, pockets part of the proceeds, gets a loan for another part which it also pockets, and deposits another part to the credit of the U.S...
...Copyright © 1958 by Hal Borland) Blackmail and double-cross are hard words...
...To win respectability and recover face is more important to Franco than ever, in view of the fiasco of his pretentious plans for making himself the "protector" of the Arab world and the dominant Mediterranean power...
...There is," it explained, "a movement of uneasy wonderment and even of suspicion with respect to the economic pacts signed between our nation and the United States in September, 1953...
...They would do well to know that Spaniards have a saying, "as gullible as an Englishman," meaning also North Americans because they speak English...
...Of this more later...
...an almost nondescript fellow not even mentioned in the terms of respect usual among Spaniards...
...government's dealings with the Spanish dictatorship in matters pertaining to what are known as the Spanish bases agreements...
...Unlike Spaniards, they don't "use the eye...
...It is in the earth...
...The clear announcement that without Franco "the entire military apparatus of the West" which perforce includes the U.S...
...About half an hour after the passage of the NATO resolution, and after a long eulogy for a late Congressman had been pronounced in a deserted Chamber, there was a roll call...
...Here are some highlights on the way the United States has been pouring out money under various kinds of Spanish pressure, with their connotations of blackmail...
...So here I am, and there they are, and between us there is a large measure of understanding...
...It asked how praising the most oppressive dictatorship in Europe as one of the "ties" upon which freedom depended corresponded with inspiring words about the right of all peoples to freedom, uttered by both Mr...
...Recently Franco has been making a great show of fighting the common enemy of Communism—in a country where Communism is almost nonexistent...
...The point has been made that Spain is helping to pay for the bases with "counterpart"—that is, Spanish pesetas obtained by Spain through its sale of surplus commodities bought from the United States...
...Once again Franco, the great political leader, the grand statesman of the West that is the Caudillo, has not found it necessary to petition or even to suggest his right to participation in the international conferences, because once again the Western World has discovered that without the collaboration, without the assent, and without the alert vigilance of the generalissimo, the Western World would be irreparably condemned to utter failure of its chosen political course...
...And of course they were branded as Communists— a kind of accusation that always impresses Washington's Capitol Hill when there is a question of providing more money for Spain...
...This last line is the stinger...
...The Arriba article was full of menacing words of which this is an example: "If, after having squandered fabulous amounts of Marshall Plan aid in Europe without notable results, we were to be denied what is indispensable, the great program of aid and mutual cooperation would be in grave danger...
...Dulles' anxiety to please Franco also accounts for the surreptitious manner in which resolutions were slipped through both the House and Senate in March, 1957, expressing the "unanimous" sense of Congress that Spain be invited to become a member of NATO...
...These will bring the total to about one and a quarter billion, with more to come in "fiscal 1959...
...The chamber was virtually empty...
...This editorial and others have made it clear that one of the things Franco expects of the United States is deliverance from its unhappy position of being the shunned nation of Europe—shunned as unclean by all Western countries except the United States and totalitarian Portugal...
...It is die migrant birds making the dawn sweet and loud again and taking up their seasonal residence, preparing to nest and egg and hatch...
...These figures, added to the one billion 71 million dollars reported previously by Senator Mansfield, reach a grand total of one billion 282 million dollars shelled out, in process of being shelled out, or being negotiated, to date...
...About the same time that Arriba was uttering its warning, La Van-guardia of Barcelona published a violent editorial, "It Is Necessary to Fulfill...
...His tactics have been publicly denounced by the King of Morocco...
...And of its entire military apparatus...
...Again it was published in Barcelona's La Vanguardia...
...How it got there, I don't know...
...It is the slowly warming earth,, frost oozing away and streams full and springs bubbling...
...The first of these threats, published in Arriba, the organ of the official Spanish party, Falange, was followed by a succession of others, each more truculent and menacing than the one before...
...Washington legislators might well reflect on the warning uttered by Lord Templewood, the former Sir Samuel Hoare, which is as valid as ever: "As long as it [the Franco regime] exists there will always be danger of a treacherous blow...
...Although these facts are known in Spain and reported in dispatches from there, they are kept under cover in Washington...
...It also gets outright surplus grants...
...In the House the unanimous consent resolution was moved and passed immediately after the prayer...
...The Barcelona editorial is arrogant, almost insulting in its treatment of Dulles...
...He looks to Dulles to extricate him from this humiliating position...
...It isn't really that close, of course, but we cling to the old hope engendered by an arbitrary calendar...
...warning Spain that, with bases "under foreign control" on its soil, Spain "cannot avoid the disastrous consequences of a modern war...
...They also inquired about the morality of this sort of thing and asked how it corresponded with words about political morality which Dulles uttered often...
...Spain also got $20 million from the President's secret fund...
...About five years ago, at the time the bases agreements were signed, the United States was helping Franco attain respectability by easing his way into UNESCO...
...That never has been, is not, and I pray never will be the American ideal...
...It is the lengthening day and more and more sunlight each day on this northern hemisphere...
...Its collapse has been total...
...The Arabs he courted, feted, and flattered have taken Spanish Morocco from him, are in the process of taking from him his other North African enclaves, and are laughing at him...
...He is "Foster Dulles," a mere messenger, coming to give an account of himself for his failure at Paris...
...The agreements, three of them, involving construction of bases, military aid, and economic assistance, were concluded in September, 1953...
...I should be amazed, to tell the truth, if they didn't hear it...
...If we did we would probably be getting three or four times more aid than we are getting now...
...bearing at the same time a message from President Eisenhower...
...economic aid...
...It is necessary to fulfill the pact," it insisted, "and we are certain that the United States will not fail to do so...
...Embassy would of course take note of these stories and tell Dulles about them...
...That is what some of the critics wanted to know...
...Spaniards who "use the eye" are convinced we are headed for about the biggest double-cross in history in relying on Franco...
...Responsible Spaniards in exile who know Franco and his ways also interpret it as an intimation that Franco could make a deal with Russia for the use of the bases...
...But he is not yet a member of NATO, the organization in which he aspires to cut a figure as a European power, equal to if not even more equal than, his European neighbors...
Vol. 22 • April 1958 • No. 4
