Criminal Madness

The slaying, sacking and burning in Spain reached such extravagant proportions last week that the Supreme Pontiff, His Holiness Pope Pius XI was moved to declare at Castel Gandolfo: "We are profoundly grieved and deeply moved by the wave of criminal madness which has broken over Spain."

The question which troubled the chancelleries of Europe was whether the madly battling Reds and Blacks of Spain would attach from outside enough Socialist-Communist and Fascist-Nazi aid to embroil the interventionists among themselves and light a general European war sooner than is expected.

Stiffest intervention of the week came from Adolf Hitler. In Germany every newsorgan wrathfully published news that Reds of Barcelona affiliated with the Spanish Government had slain four Germans who were hailed as "Nazi Martyrs." In vain pinko-red French newspapers insisted that the four slain men were Socialists who had fled from Germany to Spain to escape Nazi persecution. To Adolf Hitler they were "Nazi Martyrs" anyhow, and Der Reichsfiihrer took appropriate steps.

In Spain, outside the harbor of Ceuta, the Government warship Jaime I was preparing to resume its hit-or-miss bombardment of the Fascist rebel forts. Suddenly smack into range moved the most efficient warship in the world for its size, the German "pocket battleship" Deutschland. The Jaime I canceled her bombardment. Later came reports that the Deutschland had landed munitions for the Fascist rebel troops, that her captain had paid a "courtesy call" on the headquarters of Rebel General Franco. Eight German warships were in Spanish water last week, ready for anything.

But this week they were not alone. Increasingly irked by the shells which have whistled from Government ships around the Rock of Gibraltar, the British Government decreed that no more fighting would be permitted in Gibraltar Harbor, backed up this decree with a virtual blockade of the portal. Squarely between the Pillars of Hercules H. M. S. Queen Elizabeth dropped anchor, fingered the water with searchlights. Effect of this move was to block the Loyalist battleships from attacking Algeciras and Morocco, both firmly in Rebel clutches.

In Moscow, last week, thousands of hatless workers so jampacked the hump-backed surface of Red Square that dozens fainted in the congestion. For hours they listened to Soviet stump-thumpers whipping up enthusiasm for the plight of "brother workers" in Spain, then voted part of their monthly wages for a Spanish Government defense fund. At week's end it was announced that 12,000,000 roubles ($2,400,000; had been collected from this and other Bolshevik mass meetings, transferred through the Soviet State bank to the Spanish Government.

France, now thoroughly alarmed, pulled every possible wire to keep Spain's fire from spreading. The Quai d'Orsay hastily drew up a strict agreement of neutrality, sent it to Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Russia, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, The Netherlands. Italy, Russia and Germany hedged elaborately. But with anxious Britain backing France, the neutrality agreement was perfunctorily accepted "in principle" by almost every European State.

Greatest reason for the European powers' caution last week was that not even the shrewdest of European military experts, studying Spanish dispatches hour after hour, could decide which side was really winning. The possible advantages to Italy and Germany, should the Spanish Fascists win, were enormous. Should the Government win, on the other hand, any too obvious signs of German or Italian assistance to the rebel losers would be a bitter blow to Fascist prestige.

Meanwhile, in Manhattan the world's first class-conscious and bitterly partisan "Spanish Labor Red Cross" appealed for $100,000 through President David Dubinsky of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. The original Red Cross succors humans in distress without distinction, but the Ladies' Garment Workers' Red Cross prepared to render aid only to "worker victims of Spanish Fascism."

From South America came what seemed the queerest intervention of the week. By an old Latin American custom any rebel, if he can manage to reach a foreign legation a few jumps ahead of the loyalists who are after him, is permitted to find sanctuary there, and later is generally permitted to leave the country under the foreign flag beneath which he took refuge. In Spain recently Argentine Ambassador Daniel Garcia Mansilla, upholding this fine old tradition, received in his summer Embassy near San Sebastian five fleeing Fascist Spanish Rebels, was shocked and angered when Red Spanish Loyalists refused to let him take them out of Spain under the Argentine flag.

To the Ambassador such conduct seemed unworthy of Spain, "The Mother of the New World," and an absolute outrage. He called on Buenos Aires for help. Last week President Augustin Justo of Argentina sent help with a vengeance. Out of Buenos Aires harbor steamed Argentina's newest cruiser, the trim little 6,800-ton Veinticinco de Mayo with a full crew on war footing, her magazines crammed with munitions, her larder supplied with food for four months, and cheering on her deck, a doughty complement of the Argentine Marines.

Argentine editors, proverbially dignified, believed that the Argentine Marines would bring the five Spanish Rebels out alive, pontificated: "The right of political sanctuary is a sacred right." This week before they put in an appearance, the Spanish Government capitulated, guaranteed the five Rebels safe passage to the coast.

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