BOOKS OF THE DAY

A Mission That Succeeded Ambassador on Special Mission. By Viscount Templewood. (Collins. 16s.)

ON June I, 1940, Lord Templewood—then Sir Samuel Hoare— arrived at Madrid with the special mission—which at that time seemed almost hopeless—of keeping Spain out of the war. He remained there till August, 1944, when the liberation of France brought his task to an end. This is the account he has written of his experiences. Let me say at once that this is a book that will be read with the deepest interest by everyone who wants to learn more of the extraordinary series of chances—if one is to call them by that word—by which we were saved from defeat and annihilation after the fall of France. For three years—until the successful land- ings in Africa—there was imminent danger that Spain would follow Italy into the war. Had that happened nothing could have prevented Germany from closing the Straits of Gibraltar and occupy- ing the whole of North Africa. On three separate occasions it was on the point of happening. All the major reasons for it to do so were there, since, as we are told, Franco fully intended to come into the war against us—and yet each time something happened to prevent it. What these things were and how they operated are admirably set out by Lord Templewood, who has the gift of making what he says both clear and interesting. I think, therefore, that even those people for whom the word Spain conjures up wildernesses of un- intelligibility and boredom will find this book to their taste.

Lord Templewood's task, as he first surveyed it from the uncom- fortable buildings of the British Embassy, certainly seemed a hopeless one. Spain, in all but name, was an occupied country. The Germans were everywhere and controlled everything. The police, a quarter of a million strong, were organised on Hinunler lines. The Press was run by a Turkish Jew—a sinister figure called Lazar—who issued his instructions from the German Embassy. The only party permitted in the State, the Falange, worked in the German interest. So honeycombed were the Spanish ministries with spies that when a commercial treaty was being negotiated with the Minister for Trade no notes could be made for fear of their seeing them. And yet, we are told, this control had not been forced upon the Spanish Govern- ment. Both Franco and the Falange desired it, for the same reason that Communists desire control by Russia, because they felt that the Nazi cause was theirs. One sees that the famous " Spanish love of independence " needs some qualification, and Lord Templewood aptly brings up the subservience of the Spanish Bourbon court to Napoleon.

Then how was it that Spain did not enter the war against us ? There are a number of very interesting reasons why this did not happen, and I must not spoil the wiry, by letting them out. I will therefore mention only one. The conditions of famine and war- weariness in Spain Made it difficult for the government to contem- plate a war that would last more than a few months. Franco's plan was to come in at the last moment. But when it was seen that

the war might not be a short one, a strong opposition arose through- out the country to,,,entering it at all. It was by cultivating this

opposition and by lupplying the Spanish Government with the corn and petrol it needed that Lord Templewood was able gradually to build up a resistance to active intervention that, when the critical moment—the landings in Africa—came, was just (but only just) enough to sway the balance.

One of the most entertaining parts of the book are the character sketches. It is a p4 that, for reasons of discretion, no doubt, we have not been given more of them. There is Colonel Beigbeder,

for example, the quixotic Minister for Foreign Affairs, who had a strong leaning to tilt, Moors. He kept an illuminated Koran on

the table by his side, and in the middle of a discussion on high politics would suddenly break into an Arabic chant. Lord Temple- wood recognised an English type and got on with him. Then there was his successor, Serrano Surier, the chief enemy. Lord Temple-

wood analyses his character at some length, comparing him both to Robespierre and to Count Mosca in Stendhal's novel La Chartreuse de Parme. He was one of those new risen who rise to the top in

revolutionary times, lean and restless, very vain and of boundless ambition. In social life he had charm ; he was passionately attached to his children, but his enormous egotism made him ruthless. He sacrificed without a thought both subordinates and friends, and from- the street outside his office one could hear the cries of prisoners being tortured by his officers.

The masterpiece is, however, the portrait of Franco, which is built up gradually by small touches all through the book. This " fat, quiet little man ' " of Jewish origin " with the " voice of a doctor with a big family practice and good bedside manner," who " lived like an Oriental despot," surrounded by Moorish guards and sentries, set Lord Templewood wondering how he could possibly have arrived at the position of supreme power where he stood. The most striking thing about him was his " impenetrable smugness and complacency." He was remarkably ignorant of everything outside Spain, as well as of many things within it, and showed no desire to gain information. This was because he believed in his own infallibility, as a person under the direct guidance of Providence. As he lacked the common Spanish gift of talkinfwell, he avoided the give and take of discussion and read out even his most important speeches in a low mumble. He was congenitally irresolute and procrastinating, though when he acted he did so suddenly and decisively.

Actually, every small town in Spain contains a number of wooden- headed, deaf-minded, self-satisfied people of this kind ; the passer-by may see them stretched out motionless in the vast armchairs of the casinos, staring into vacancy—sunk, no doubt, in a dream of the pleasure to be got from being. themselves. But something more there must be in the Generalisimo than this. Lord Templewood saw the secret of his success in his Galician peasant's shrewdness and cunning that made him slow to commit himself. He who speaks last wins, says a Spanish proverb. He allowed his Ministers to make speeches and act, whilst he himself kept in the background. Holding as he did all the strings of power in his hands and following daily with great care'the reports of the secret police, he would suddenly come forward and act when the occasion required it. He lived on divisions and dissensions ; by keeping the different groups and personalities in Spain at loggerheads with one another—no very difficult task in that country—and allowing the people who served him to enrich themselves at the public expense, he prevented any effective opposi- tion from crystallising.

Lord Templewood's indictment of the regime is crushing. Spain is not the only country in Europe today where there is a total absence

of justice, humanity and common. decency in the administration, but it is the only one where oppression is combined with a high degree of corruption and inefficiency and with a paralysing sense of stagnation.

And it is deeply hostile to us ; " As long as this regime exists there will always be the danger of a treacherous blow, whilst its whole conception of the new Europe is in direct opposition to our own.. The sooner Franco and his Falange machine disappear, the better it will be, not only for ourselves but for the whole of Europe."

I think the excellence of this book must be put down to three things. First, it is well, written. Then its author went to.Spain to carry out a definite and by no means easy task. This gives him a story to tell—a story which is all the more enthralling because its ramifications extend far outside Spain into European haute politique. Thirdly, he has a sense for history. He found time to read a con- siderable number of books on the history of Spain• and of the Napoleonic wars and the comparisons he makes to the past are often illuminating. Most memoirs written by retired politicians and diplo- mats lack this, and that is why they leave such a flat taste behind them. For the present can be understood only when it is seen against a background of the past ; besides which it is the analogies and parellels which history provides—misleading though they sometimes are—that keep the mind alive and enable it to ask the proper questions of the present. I feel certain that the coolness and perspicacity of Lord Templewood's judgements and the good advice he was able to send home to the Government were due to his looking at the Spanish scene through the eyes of a historian. How otherwise could any sane person keep his head in such a maelstrom?

GERALD BRENAN.