"Pocket Maneuver"

At Barcelona, officials of Spain's Leftist Government confirmed last week that recent Rightist victories in the Teruel sector (TIME, Feb. 14) "completely eliminated the spearhead" which Leftist forces previously drove in north of Teruel. Rightist officials said their troops had recaptured an area twice as great as that taken from them by the Leftist offensive which took Teruel (TIME, Jan. 17, et ante), but the Rightists last week had not recaptured Teruel itself.

Describing the Rightist drive, partially under his command, General Juan Yague told correspondents at captured Peralejos, eight miles from Teruel, ''The operation was the same bolsa or 'pocket' maneuver we used to such good effect throughout our northern campaign and at Brunete last summer.

"It consists simply of splitting up our forces in three columns, and while one of these engages the enemy's attention with a vigorous frontal attack, the two others work around each end of the enemy's positions to meet behind them and close the mouth of the pocket.

"A large share of the credit for the success of this operation should go to General Monasterio's cavalry veterans, who demonstrated so well their efficiency in mountain fighting during our northern campaign and who have again repudiated the doubts some military authorities hold regarding cavalry's usefulness in modern warfare.

"We have added 250 square miles to the territory controlled by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, including 18 towns and villages and the strategically important Palomera mountain range, which dominates the main Teruel-Saragossa road on. the east."

The Abraham Lincoln and George Washington battalions of U. S. volunteers fighting for the Leftists were withdrawn last week for a rest from Teruel, where 700 U. S. citizens and 300 Canadians were revealed to have been fighting on New Year's Eve. The Karl Marx battalion was still fighting at Teruel last week, and volunteer casualties were indicated by Valencia dispatches saying the Internationals required 525 "replacements."

Without other explanation, the Leftist Government last week abruptly decreed a bonus payment of 26,000 pesetas ($1,500) to each Leftist general "due to exceptional present circumstances."

Members of the French Chamber who returned to Paris after being guests at the Leftist Parliament session reported that the Leftists had just arrested 2.000 political opponents in Barcelona suspected of conspiring for a coup.

The Leftist Government last week fired its Navy's Chief Political Commissar Bruno Alonso, also fired all political commissars appointed by him to keep an eye on the politics of Leftist sailors at the Cartagena base. The mayor of Barcelona announced that the Leftist capital has now been raided 23 times, the Rightists having dropped 528 bombs which wholly or partly destroyed 863 buildings, killed 918 persons, wounded 2,549 sufficiently for them to receive recorded treatment.

In southern Spain, Leftist mountaineering troops launched an offensive at an altitude of 5,000 feet in the snow-crested sierra, said they had killed 1,000 Rightist mountaineers, captured strategic heights above Granada.

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