The Bell Tolls

In a Paris clinic a shriveled old man with a magnificent head lay dying. His contemporaries among the giants of socialism were long gone--Lenin of Russia, Juares of France, Liebknecht of Germany.

But Francisco Largo Caballero, who had shaped the history of Spain by fighting stubbornly for the things he wanted, fought on for breath. If he could still remember, his memories must have been bitter.

Largo Caballero had had as hard an education as the 20th Century could give. Spain's schools were not for the sons of village carpenters. But at 24, a plasterer in Madrid, he had taught himself to read. The dogmatic tracts of Castilian Socialist Pablo Iglesias were what he read.

Path Up. He had carried his Marxist beliefs into the labor movement, become president of the Madrid builders' union. Later, he sat in a dingy little office on Madrid's Calle de Fuencarral, directing the Union General de Trabajadores, Spain's C.I.O., building it to 1,500,000 turbulent members.

Largo Caballero hated violence and preached against it, but was forced to it again & again by the violent faith he had espoused--and the violent reaction that faith provoked. In 1917, when he was 48, he led his first revolutionary general strike. He was arrested, sentenced to life imprisonment. Elected to the Cortes, he was released and permitted to take his seat. When he was 61, in 1930, he tried revolution again, spent three months in jail. In 1934 Largo Caballero was hurled into jail a third time, charged with helping foment the Asturian miners' revolt.

Path Down. His wife's sudden death helped free him. He was permitted to attend her funeral and, flanked by his prison guards, he marched behind her casket through Madrid's streets. More than 60,000 of his followers lined the way, saluting him with clenched fists. Hurriedly, the Government brought him to a belated trial and acquittal.

When Franco rose against the Republic, the old labor chieftain rushed to its defense, became head of the Government. He organized Madrid's defenses, armed the labor unions. He sounded like his old Barcelona anarchist competitors when he growled: "I would like to see every bricklayer go to work with his rifle slung on his shoulder. Then I know that nothing could exist in Spain except the will of the great mass of the Spaniards."

In his blue overalls and carrying a rifle, he went out to the front lines to be photographed, as Winston Churchill was to do later. When the photographers were not present, Largo Caballero wandered to more dangerous places, turned over dead bodies, stared into lifeless faces. His son, a Loyalist militiaman, was missing.

Nothing went according to those pat, rigorous socialist books he had read long ago. The struggle between the factions in the Republican Government reached the point where he was forced from office. He retired, accusing the Communists of using the civil war to take over Spain. But he remained loyal to the Republic, fled with its Government to France. There the Nazis found him, sent him to Oranienburg concentration camp.

Path's End. Last Spring Polish units of the Red Army overran the camp. They found Largo Caballero gravely ill. As soon as he could travel, the Russians hurried him by plane to Paris, where doctors removed a nephritic kidney, cut off a diseased leg, marveled as the old man clung to life, week after week. To Spaniards who came to see him the old warrior talked bravely of a restored Republic, though he knew he would play no part in Spain's future. Early one morning last week, in his 76th year, Francisco Largo Caballero closed for the last time eyes that had seen too many bad things and not enough good ones.

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