Demi-A nniversary

Demi-Anniversary

About 120,000 non-combatants had been butchered and about 80,000 combatants had fallen in the Spanish Civil War up to last week, when it reached the gory tombstone of its first-half year.

"This correspondent for one," cabled the New York Times's Herbert L. Matthews from Madrid, "would not be surprised six months hence to see himself seated before the same typewriter in the same place writing a summary of the first year of the war. . . . All Europe has been drawn into the conflict and there has been a mass uprising more significant than anything since the Russian proletariat rose in 1917. . . . The hatred which has been aroused on both sides is indescribable. ... It is a question whether France and England can keep out indefinitely If those countries join in to help Madrid there will be a European war; if they do not, there is still a chance that Germany and Italy can be bought off, or that Government troops will soon get into a position to counterattack and drive Franco back. . . . The Spaniards have always been an unpredictable people and they have never been more so than at this moment."

To tap out this dispatch calmly in a Madrid which continued to be battered, bombed and shelled last week, and then to get it past a suspicious Spanish censor was objective U. S. journalism at its best and bravest. The two biggest lies of the week were told respectively by the opposed Spanish leaders:

Francisco Franco: "Today two-thirds of Spanish territory has gladly flocked to our banner and considerably more than half of the total population."

Largo Caballero: "We have balanced the budget."

In a strict geographical sense it was true that Spain continued almost equally divided between Reds and Whites, but altogether lacking were gladness and budgeting.

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