Safety First

The first air bombs of Spain's civil war to fall upon Madrid came thudding and blasting down last week. Later the corpulent figure of President Manuel Azana was seen leaving the capital, as he said, "to inspect our glorious Government forces in the field."

With the war in its seventh week, the strongest figure in Madrid, correspondents agreed, was no member of the Cabinet of Premier Jose Giral Pereira but enormous Socialist Indalecio Prieto to whom Spaniards in the capital looked for inspiration. Fighting at the front in overalls was No. 2 Socialist Francisco Largo Caballero, which left the No. 1 a clear field in Madrid last week to state for the first time what is the Government's program in case its Red militia defeat 80% of the Spanish army led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco and General Emilio Mola in a White (i. e., conservative) insurrection against Madrid (TIME, July 27 et seq.).

"Victory for our Government," said Indalecio Prieto, mopping his brow and fanning himself, "will mean that the large estates will have to be collectivized, almost on a Communist basis, and credit will have to be found for the small farmer. Although fundamental changes will be necessary, Spain is not ready or well enough developed economically for pure Communism. We shall nationalize the banks, industries, mines, railroads and other transports, but we need the wealth provided by the small trader." This from Socialist No. 1 might be considered the Government's minimum pro gram, since Socialist No. 2 on one of his brief dashes to Madrid from the front had already declared: "We shall establish the dictatorship of the proletariat."

Hitherto Joseph Stalin has never sent a Soviet Ambassador to Spain, but the Bolshevist Dictator last week transferred his League of Nations representative, resourceful Marcel Rosenberg, to Madrid. There Comrade Rosenberg found himself not only Soviet Ambassador but the sole Ambassador of any kind in the Spanish capital. All the others, including cigar-chewing U. S. Ambassador Claude Bowers and sherry-sipping British Ambassador Sir Henry Getty Chilton, considered it too dangerous to be in Spain at all. They were living at Hendaye, France, trying to agree on a diplomatic formula to be submitted to Spanish leaders of both sides urging them to "humanize the civil war and mitigate the sufferings." In this they were cheered on by that great humanitarian British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, who dispatched from London a long and encouraging cable to Sir Henry Chilton. Even so, the only Ambassador in Spain last week remained Rosenberg.

These activities of the Great Powers, plus the rounding out last week of the French-sponsored international embargo on arms shipments to Spain by the adherence of Germany, made Madrid Bigwig Prieto angrily conclude that evidently the White forces in Spain enjoy the covert sympathy of London and Paris as well as the candid sympathy of Rome and Berlin. "I cannot understand why France and Great Britain can be so blind!" cried Indalecio Prieto. "How can they envision with pleasure the establishment of a Fascist regime in the west end of Europe? What will they say if General Franco wins and gives our Balearic Islands to Italy or to Germany as a reward for their aid?"

Asked why Madrid did not lay its case against the Whites before the League of Nations, the Socialist No. 1 replied: "Ethiopia presented her case to the League. You know what happened! I am afraid our Spain has become the Ethiopia of Europe."

"We are quite well equipped now, of course," continued Senor Prieto more cheerfully. "We have all the country's gold reserve right here in the Bank of Spain, while the Rebels have only the crowns of virgin saints which they have stolen from the cathedrals." Reverting to Socialist Premier Blum of France with bitterness, Spanish Socialist Prieto added, "Last year our then conservative Minister of State, Jose Martinez de Velasco, negotiated a new trade treaty with France, and the French insisted on the inclusion of a clause that compelled us to buy a certain quantity of war materials from them each year.

"Martinez de Velasco signed. They gave him a banquet for it. The French, with a Popular Front government like ours, now have gone back on their word and have refused even to let us have war materials which the treaty stipulates we must buy."

No mystery to neutrals was the reason why Britain and France had joined Italy and Germany in trying to put a "cordon sanitaire" around Spain. Just at the moment Stanley Baldwin, Leon Blum, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were each not only scared to start a general European war but equally panic-stricken that they might blunder into one on some Spanish pretext. To them the only course of wisdom and "safety first" last week seemed to be to have Spain stew in her own blood.

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