Tight Little Cabinet

"Stillborn," "reactionary," "suspended in the air," "counter-revolutionary," were some of the epithets flung last week by the Anarcho-Syndicalists. most extreme of Spain's Leftist groups, at the newly-installed radical Government of Socialist Premier Dr. Juan Negrin (TIME, May 24). Stocky, 48-year-old Dr. Negrin-- born in the Canary Islands, educated in Germany, onetime professor of biology, Finance Minister in the Largo Caballero Cabinet--was not disturbed by these howls. The crisis forced on his predecessor's Government by a revolt of Anarcho-Syndicalists in Barcelona had been smoothly overcome, and Dr. Negrin now had under him a tight, unified, little Cabinet of nine, the sixth Leftist Cabinet since the civil war's outbreak. The refusal of the Anarcho-Syndicalists to participate in a Government that they derided as "bourgeois" worked in Dr. Negrin's favor, for that label took some of the curse of radicalism off a Government which has for ten months been trying to convince the world democracies that it is not Red. It heartened the majority of Spanish Leftists who seem to want democracy more than communism. In point of fact, the Cabinet of Dr. Negrin last week was no more and no less Red than that of French Premier Leon Blum.

Dr. Negrin knew that his immediate job was to prevent the Anarcho-Syndicalists from sabotaging the united Republicans, Socialists. Communists and Basque Nationalists represented in his Cabinet. In his favor, the Madrid General Federation of Labor, most potent Socialist-Communist labor group, threw in its lot with the new Government and the menace of Anarcho-Syndicalists, largely industrial workers, shrank proportionately. His other and bigger job--winning the war-- he tackled by giving the strongest politician on the Leftist side, onetime Bilbao newsboy Indalecio Prieto, sole charge of the War, Navy, Air and Munitions Ministries. For the first time in the Civil War, all the reins of defense and attack were thus in the hands of one man. Spunky General Jose Miaja ("The Savior of Madrid") reassumed civil and military control of the capitol after a four-week interregnum by a Civilian Council. The reinstatement of Miaja, famed for his valor and firmness, was a popular, shrewd move.

For the difficult key post of Minister of the Interior (controlling the national police force and secret service) Dr. Negrin chose young, forceful Basque Socialist Julian Zugazagoita who announced that he would maintain internal order with a rod of iron. A weaker spot in the new Cabinet was in the Foreign Ministry. Julio Alvarez del Vayo, who during the Civil War has acquired the distinction of being one of Europe's most brilliant foreign ministers, had to be replaced because he is inextricably linked with former Premier Largo Caballero. The newly appointed Foreign Minister, Left Republican Jose Giral Pereira, though Premier last summer for six weeks, is a man of less spectacular record. Dr. Negrirt, however, did not waste Senor Alvarez del Vayo, appointed him delegate to the League Council from the new Government. In this capacity he is expected to produce formal evidence at Geneva this week of German and Italian intervention in Spain.

With these foundations laid, Dr. Negrin paused last week only to tell newshawks: "The way to end this war is to win it. . . . Gas masks today are worth more than all the protests to Geneva. We will fight in the language the enemy understands."

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