RELIGION IN SPAIN [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
Sm,—Perhaps you will allow me space to reply to the relevant points in Mr. Arnold Lunn's devastating letter published in The Spectator of April 9th?
To Mr. Lunn white is white, but black is evidently " Red." No half shades for him. Every time he refers to an individual in loyalist Spain, or to any activity, he lets fly with the epithet " Red " or " Communist." And this makes nonsense of his case, for everyone but Franco's blindest supporters knows that President Azafia, Alvarez del Vayo, Indalecio Prieto, Martinez Barrio and others who are responsible for Spanish policy today are about as " Red " as Mr. Herbert Morrison or Sir Archibald Sinclair.
A study of the Communist (really Communist) Press in Spain would convince anyone but Mr. Lunn that the Commun- ist Party is too engrossed with the war to have any energy over for anti-God propaganda. And even if it were not so, the " Reds " would not have the smallest chance of seeing their wishes adopted as a national policy. The Communist Party holds only two seats in the Cabinet.
The Spanish Church, Mr. Lunn assures us, must be adopting a neutral attitude in the struggle " because the Church has not yet recognised the Government at Burgos." Really, such a sophistry is unworthy of him. The Vatican, like other temporal powers, has its diplomats, but it is to the attitude of the hillier Ecclesiastics in Spain that one looks for proof of impartiality. Led by the Cardinal Primate they have with very few exceptions lent the full weight of their spiritual authority to General Franco's movement. The Primate's very explicit declarations have been published, often in full, by The Universe and the rest of the English Catholic Press. This consistent and considered attitude follows logically from the active political role assumed by the Spanish Church before February, 1936. One must pay tribute to the Basque Catholics, to the Bishops of Vitoria and Pamplona, and to devout laymen like Senor Ossorio y Gallardo, who have refused to associate themselves with a reactionary movement masquerading under the guise of Christianity. Now to deal with Mr. Lunn's challenges to myself. Enquiries made personally on the spot have convinced me that certain churches in Barcelona were, in fact, used as fortresses from which the troops attempted to dominate the city during the July rising. I am supported by a public statement issued by Senor Bosch-Guimpera, the well-known archaeologist who is Rector of Barcelona University.
Mr. Lunn is perfectly capable of dismissing the testimony of this distinguished man as a " Red lie " ; and so, if he should visit Republican Spain in search of material to support his more reckless allegations, I shall be delighted to give him an introduction to a non-Spanish and non-political eyewitness of the machine-gunning incident upon which he casts doubt, and of much else besides. Incidentally, on the first day of the rising the populace was defending itself desperately with flower-pots and kitchen-knives against well-armed troops, and " Red propaganda " did not yet .run to news-reel cameras !
With regard to " Nationalist " atrocities, and in particular to the massacre of Trade Unionists, I suppose that the detailed declaration of the Madrid College of Lawyers is out of court, and that Don Eduardo Ortega y Gasset, over whose name it appears, is a " Communist." I must therefore trouble Mr. Lunn to turn to The Times of August 6th, 17th and 28th, September 5th and October 3oth; and to the Daily Telegraph of November 14th.
I hope he will take particular note of the massacres at Badajoz and the slaughter of the Rio Tinto miners. Not a word of protest against these excesses has reached this country from the Spanish Church which General Franco champions.
Finally, to satisfy Mr. Lunn's understandable desire for documentary evidence, I am sending him a list of over a hundred non-combatants who have been put to death in towns controlled by the rebels. Most of them are professional men belonging to one of the Liberal parties, but there are also Catholic priests among them.
And it still goes on. General Mola has just threatened to " raze to the ground " the whole Basque country, whose pro- foundly Christian inhabitants he is attempting to subdue with the aid of Moors and probably pagan Germans. Yours faithfully,
to Egerton Road, Manchester 14. R. M. KEYES.
[Mr. Arnold Lunn having challenged Mr. Keyes, and Mr. ey:s having now replied, the correspondence cannot be continued. The citation of rival lists of atrocities can lead nowhere, and the pressure on our correspondence columns is such that we cannot give further space to a discussion of that particular aspect of the Spanish situation.—En. The Spectator.]
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