Franco on the Spot

Never had the fleshy, Falangist fundament of fat Francisco Franco felt a smarter whacking than it got last week.

Aristocratic Whack. In his Swiss villa at Lausanne, handsome, non-hemophilic Don Juan Charles Teresa Silvere Alphonse, Prince of the Asturias, Count of Barcelona, and pretender to the throne vacated by his late father Alfonso XIII, judged the time ripe for a manifesto to the people. Proclaimed Don Juan:

"Spaniards: I well know your disillusion and your fears. . . .

"The regime established by General Franco, modeled on the totalitarian systems of the Axis powers . . . is fundamentally inconsistent with conditions prevailing in the world.

"Spain faces the dangerous possibility of a new fratricidal conflict as well as world isolation. . . . The only instrument capable of avoiding both threats and bring ing about a reconciliation of all Spaniards . . . is Spain's traditional monarchy. . . .

"I . . . solemnly call upon General Franco . . . to relinquish power . . . ." In Paris moderate Miguel Maura, one time Minister of the Interior, declared that most Spaniards were opposed to the monarchy. In London, astute Juan Negrin. the Republic's last Premier, labored quietly for a Republican comeback.

Proletarian Whack. From Moscow, via London, came a venomously polite inquiry: two Spanish soldiers had been captured on the Russian front -- long after Madrid announced withdrawal of its notorious Blue Division; what should the Kremlin do? Regard the two Spaniards as prisoners of war, despite their Government's announcement? Or treat them as irregulars, liable to summary execution?

Embarrassed Madrid replied: treat them as irregulars.

Dictator Franco, hastening to change the painful subject, tried to make common cause with the U.S. and Britain (whom he once called "victim to [their] own errors"). Over a Vatican report that Jap troops in Manila had butchered 172 Spanish men, women & children, the controlled Madrid press waxed hotly indignant. An official communique protested the "systematic, premeditated murders." An official demand for satisfaction was dispatched to Tokyo.

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