"Something New . . . Different"

"Something New . . . Different"

Spanish brown bears, frightened by the clash of Rightist and Leftist forces among the crags of the Pyrenees, came loping in large numbers over the frontier into France last week. Another refugee from North Leftist Spain was the Socialist who built its People's Army, famed Indalecio Prieto. Traveling by car with two women of his family and a secretary, Socialist Prieto said shortly to correspondents at the frontier: "Yes, we are driving up to Paris, but I have no mission."

In Barcelona, which had already gone on daylight saving time, Leftist Premier Dr. Juan Negrin shoved clocks ahead yet another hour last week, to save still more electricity. Tap water usually ran in the capital for only a few hours each day. Food shops were on short rations, gone altogether the displays of wines, cold meats, biscuits and pastries of a few weeks ago. In Barcelona last week 28 Rightist suspects were executed by Leftist firing squads, and the worst Rightist air raids in six weeks had killed 30, wounded 50 at latest dispatches.

Hottest fighting of the week was on the Mediterranean coast between North & South Leftist Spain. Rightists under General Miguel Aranda, who first won a coastal strip and split Leftist Spain, last week drove south down the coast with difficulty, opposed by young Leftist troops well supplied with automatic rifles, hand grenades and tanks.

In a six-hour Leftist counteroffensive amid deep mud, as the fine weather which has favored Generalissimo Francisco Franco's advance for six weeks gave way to rain, Rightists were stopped in their tracks, then managed to resume their offensive, announced the taking of 2,000 Leftist prisoners, nearly all youths under 20. The Rightists accused their retreating foes of having massacred 100 civilians of Alcala de Chivert before evacuating this town, claimed on entering it to have found the Leftists had burned the mayor alive at a stake.

On the Pobo Mountain front, just northeast of Teruel which has been quiet since March, Rightist troops under General Jose Varela seized the Leftist key stronghold, Escorihuela, prepared for an offensive against the Teruel-Sagunto highway. On the north Catalan front, brisk Leftist counterattacks regained several strategic villages and Barcelona restored contact with "the Leftist Lost Battalion" (43rd Division). "We prefer to fight where we are with our backs to the French frontier!" announced its commander.

For the first time ships of the Rightist Navy took an important role assailing Leftist land positions, bombarded 25 miles of coastline, including strategic Castellon de la Plana, while Valencia was bombed from the air. Rightist warships seized a fleeing coast guard vessel aboard which were found eleven minor Leftist leaders, quantities of gold, silver and art objects.

A mobile Rightist force intercepted a truck from Madrid loaded with stocks and bonds which it had been hoped could be taken off in a Leftist ship. Don Rafael Clarimon Ferraz, a director of the Bank of Saragossa, made the Rightist inventory, reported the truck from Madrid had contained 30 cases and one box of securities from various banks in South Leftist Spain, including nine cases from the Madrid correspondent of the Bank of Saragossa.

Although Portugal has been most friendly to Rightist Spain from the first, its cautious dictator, Premier Dr. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, did not uncross his fingers until last week, then finally joined Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, the Papal State, Nicaragua and Guatemala in extending diplomatic recognition to the Rightist Government.

In London, stockholders of the famed Rio Tinto mines in Rightist territory were told by Board Chairman Sir Auckland Geddes last week that but for Soviet intervention Franco would probably have won the war in 1936 and but for Italo-German intervention might very well have lost it in 1937. "The Rio Tinto Co. has always been strictly neutral in Spanish politics," said Sir Auckland. "Some day the civil war will end. ... If Franco wins, how will he organize peace? . . .

"There is no doubt that the Falango-Traditionalist [Franco] program has many superficial resemblances to the totalitarian principle, but there is a profound difference. The essence of totalitarian ideology is the absolute importance of the state and the complete insignificance of the individual, who may do nothing, say nothing and think nothing contrary to the accepted ideology. But the Falango-Traditionalist doctrine, as officially promulgated, lays the strongest emphasis on the unique importance of the dignity of the individual, taking the Christian faith as the foundation of the future state. In other words, it breathes the individualism of the Spaniard.

"Whatever the outcome, Spain will be something new and different and something Spanish. Whatever comes, we shall do our utmost to cooperate with the new Spain."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.