1,000 Miles

In the midst of the Pyrenees only 15 mi. south of the French border lies the town of Jaca, which has been in Rightist hands for the past 15 months. Furiously soldiers were digging in Jaca last week, building pill boxes, establishing munition dumps. After nearly a week's methodical advance, Leftist troops were less than two miles away, and Jaca is a key point on one of the three railroads from France into Spain.

Capture of Jaca would not only give the Leftists control of two of these lines, tremendous advantage should France make good her repeated threat to open the frontier for volunteers and munitions, but it would also make a flank attack on the Rightist stronghold of Saragossa possible. To Generalissimo Franco the threat to Jaca had an even gloomier significance: it meant that the Aragon Front, consistently the quietest sector in the entire war, had been kicked into action by the energetic Negrin Government at Valencia. It meant that undisciplined malingering Leftist militiamen who had been quite content to play football with their adversaries between the lines have been replaced by trained troops eager to fight. Up to the breach Caudillo ("Chief") Franco rushed divisions of Italians that would have had more than enough to do on any one of Spain's four other fronts last week.

Dividing Spain's war into five "fronts": Aragon, Teruel, Madrid, Estremadura and Andalusia (see map) is merely a journalistic device that has been adopted by both sides. There is a sixth and quite separate front, that in the province of Asturias on the Bay of Biscay where last week Rightists were crawling over tremendous mountains ever closer to Leftist Gijon, but the five consecutive fronts form a writhing battle line that snakes a full 1,000 mi. from the French frontier near Jaca round Madrid and ends in the Mediterranean Sea between Malaga and Alicante. There are about 500,000 troops on each side to defend this line and the country behind it, and more of the 1,000 mi. is fortified and actually entrenched than these figures would indicate.

Front No. 1. From the French frontier to a few miles north of Huesca, there were until three weeks ago few formal fortifications, no trenches on this, the most scandalously inactive of all Spanish fronts. Last week's offensive has changed all that, but there is still no trench system. Defense is a matter of individual strong points and gun emplacements among the rocky precipitous hills. From ten miles north of Huesca half way down to Teruel, trenches begin in earnest. They have been dug with great enthusiasm, in systems two and three lines deep, but with little science. Dugouts are improperly constructed, firesteps and proper bays are lacking, connecting trenches are generally at the wrong angle, but since there has been practically no action on this sector for months it makes little difference.

Front No. 2. From there down past Teruel, rocky hills and easily defended passes make actual trenches unnecessary, but the strong points here are well built, well defended, so much so that neutral observers agree that Generalissimo Franco's old scheme, to drive a wedge from Teruel to the sea thus breaking Valencia's communications with Madrid, is no longer practicable. Conversely, Teruel itself is immune to direct Leftist attack. West of Teruel to the Guadarrama Mountains is one of the two sectors in the entire line where no formal fortifications exist. In this barren rocky country such fighting as takes place consists of open guerrilla raids. Many scrubby villages do not know for weeks at a time in whose territory they are.

Front No. 3. From the Guadarramas, scene of the great Italian rout of March, round Madrid and down to Toledo are the strongest, finest fortifications in the entire line, works of which any World War engineer might be proud. Once again last week Rightist troops were assembling for still another attack on Madrid, urged on by German staff officers with the knowledge that few of their own men would be engaged.

Front No. 4. Below Toledo, for a full 150 mi. along the rolling hills of Estremadura to Merida, again no formal line exists, but there is no unofficial truce here as in the similar sector to the north. Cavalry raids and guerrilla fighting are an almost daily occurrence. Only a shortage of men on both sides prevents Rightists from consolidating their line properly, keeps Leftists from a forceful drive through to Badajoz and the Portuguese frontier which would break Rightist communications between Franco's capital at Salamanca and the important southern strongholds of Seville and Cordoba.

Front No. 5, Cordoba itself is protected by formal lines of trenches almost as strong as those at Madrid, quiescent for many weeks, and this silence extends over the high peaks of the Sierra Nevadas to the sea, where there has been no effective action since the capture of Malaga seven months ago. All this line is under control of el Caudillo Franco's most colorful subordinate, hoarse-voiced bombastic General Queipo de Llano, the "radio general."

Twice last week General Queipo de Llano was in the news. From Valencia came word that his sister Rosario, a Leftist hostage since immediately after the beginning of the war, had finally been released from jail in an exchange of prisoners. From his headquarters at Seville came a story of an attempt to kidnap the radio general himself. Weeks ago General Queipo de Llano set out on an inspection trip of the lines north of Cordoba. Entranced by his ceaseless flow of conversation, staff officers did not notice until almost too late that the chauffeur had put on a sudden burst of speed, was heading straight for the Leftist lines. A quick revolver shot in the back killed the chauffeur, ended the attempt. The party drove back to headquarters quietly.

Valencia last week had excitement of a different sort. For the first time in many months, the Spanish Cortes (parliament) met, for the first time in history it did not sit in the traditional semicircle, divided physically as well as spiritually into Left. Centre and Right, but in an ordinary auditorium set up on the trading floor of Valencia's silk exchange, the Lonja de la Seda.

Out of 473 elected Deputies, only 188 attended. Anarchists and Trotskyite Communists staying away. After a series of emotional speeches the Cortes voted unanimous confidence in the Negrin Government and adjourned for the day. Two facts were important. Into the hall to take his seat stepped 75-year-old Manuel Portela Valladares, Premier of Spain in 1936 when the Popular Front took power, and politically about as Red as U. S. Senator Carter Glass. Since the beginning of the war he has been a voluntary exile in Paris. Last week he promised allegiance to the Negrin Government, brought three other conservative Deputies with him as a sign of truce between the Popular Front and Centre Right Republicans.

Down the street at the same time occurred a meeting of the Socialist U.G.T. labor unions, backers of disgruntled ex-Premier Largo Caballero, chief thorn in the Negrin Government's side. Largo Caballero controls but seven of U.G.T.'s original 42 assorted unions, has forced the expulsion of 29 others. Those 29 held a meeting of their own last week, and insisting that they were the real majority of U.G.T., voted confidence in the Negrin Government's "win the war first" program.

The saga of Harold E. Dahl, the U. S. aviator who fell into Rightist hands while fighting for the Leftist air-force and whose pretty wife has interceded on his behalf with General Franco, this week comes to its climax--Aviator Dahl's trial. Moaned he last week: "I lie in this cell at night and think of her and myself alone together on some South Seas island. . . . Then I come to and say 'What's the use? I'm going to be bumped off by a firing squad.' "

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