Repugnant But Justified

Feeling their way along the 1,000-mile Spanish front for a soft spot to strike next, last week the Rightists struck Madrid. Taking advantage of the shift of thousands of Leftist Spain's best veteran troops to other more pressing areas, Rightist troops drove their way into Parque del Oeste, succeeded in momentarily scaring Leftist defenders of the University City salient.

In the East, Generalissimo Francisco Franco's forces, having reached the Mediterranean, widened the breach between the two parts of Leftist territory from 25 to 50 miles last week. To bolster the morale of his troops against advancing Rightists, General Jose Miaja, dictator of Southern Leftist Spain, confirmed the appointment of Jesus Hernandez, former Communist Minister of Education and Health, as Political War Commissar of Miaja's five armies.

On the Catalonian front Rightist troops advanced 40 miles along the mountainous French border to within ten miles of the tiny State of Andorra. They controlled at week's end nine of the twelve main roads from Spain to France. Barcelona Leftists again purged suspected Rightist sympathizers, two cinema theatres being necessary to hold one night's haul. Leftist organ La Vanguardia philosophized that such measures "repugnant as they are to a spirit of liberalism, are justified by the circumstances."

While a Barcelona audience was witnessing The Spanish Earth, cinema of the war with comment by U. S. Novelist-Reporter Ernest Hemingway, Barcelona was visited by an air raid. The stocky, mustached novelist, spotted in the audience, was applauded for five minutes by the ecstatic Catalans after the raid was over.

Lost to war news reporting last week was James P. Lardner, who went to Barcelona three weeks ago for Paris' New York Herald Tribune. Son of the late Ring W. Lardner, Harvard-educated, 23-year-old Lardner joined an artillery division of the International Brigade.

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