Reprieve

In every war on every side, there are two kinds of court martial. When a traitor or foreign agent of real importance has been caught he is tried briefly and behind closed doors and then taken out and quietly shot.

Valuable psychologically, is another type of court martial in which a minor offender whose guilt is unquestionable, or one whose arrest brings important foreign repercussions, is brought to trial in a full blaze of publicity complete with defense attorneys and sheafs of copy paper in the press box, to show that justice and mercy still exist on whichever side is holding the trial.

In the dusty golden city of Salamanca, capital of Francisco Franco, last week was held a prize example of Court Martial Type No. 2. Star defendant was tall, ash-blond Harold E. Dahl, 28, of Champaign, Ill., a mercenary who enlisted with the Leftists for a promised $1,500 a week, was shot down into a nest of Moorish troops while on a bombing raid three months ago. Because Flyer Dahl was the first U. S. aviator known to have been caught alive, because his blonde wife, Edith, crooner on the French Riviera, had sent a photograph of herself to El Caudillo so toothsome that staff officers had passed it about for several days before presenting it to their very much married Generalissimo, the trial attracted every foreign correspondent in Salamanca.

Safe from possible front line duty to attend the prisoner as his lawyer was Lieutenant the Marques del Merito, a grandee of Spain, whose wife is a daughter of the Tin-King Bolivian Minister to Paris. Socialite Captain Espinosa acted as prosecutor. As judges, a Colonel Frederico Acosta and four captains sat behind their swords at a long table: Defendant Dahl wore a new suit for the occasion, brought to him by his attorney's Bolivian wife. Testimony of the defense centred on the fact that Flyer Dahl believed that he was to be merely an instructor, not an actual fighter, that of the prosecution that though he had gone once to France since joining the Leftists, he returned voluntarily to rejoin their army. For two days the trial continued, then came the verdict: death. Scarcely was it delivered than the Attorney-Marques tipped his client a prodigious wink. A reprieve, already signed and sealed, was on its way over from General Franco's headquarters in the Bishop of Salamanca's palace.

Benefiting from the same reprieve were three glum, middle-aged Russian aviators who had been shot down at almost the same time, were on trial simultaneously: Alexis Teodoro Chircasov, Michael Zaikin, Gregori Nicolas Jhosiainov.*

Their defense was brutally simple. They were flyers of the Red Army, had embarked on a Soviet ship at Odessa "under orders," not knowing where they were being sent or for what.

Hearing the news, Singer Edith Dahl wept for joy in Cannes, tried to decide which of two Hollywood contracts she should accept. At the last instant she turned down an offer of British Long-Distance Flyer James Mollison, who was sued for divorce last week by his equidistant flying wife Amy Johnson Mollison, to fly her to Salamanca, hurried to Paris to await her husband before returning with him to Hollywood.

A special reception awaits Flyer Dahl in Los Angeles where two deputy sheriffs announced last week that they had warrants for his arrest on three counts of forgery allegedly committed in October 1936 while he was still on parole for a similar crime in February 1936.

*Both Germany and Russia, needing good pilots at home, try to see that such "volunteers" as they have sent to Spain actually remain instructors, do as little fighting as possible. But while German volunteers are generally 18 to 20 years old, completing their own army training under actual battle conditions, Russian "volunteers" are fortyish, of the generation of Old Bolsheviks now being liquidated by Steel Man Stalin. Recently Russia has sent no more Soviet aviators, but gladly trains Spanish Leftist cadets on Russian soil.

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