THE TABLET
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW
VOL. 168 No. 5023
ESTABLISHED 1840 R EG ISTERED AS A N EW SPA PER
LONDON AUGUST 15th, 1936
SIXPENCE
PRINCIPAL CONTENTS
THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK ..
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR; RIBBENTROP’S VISIT; THE SITUATION IN ALBERTA; TRADE UNIONISM IN THE U.S.A.
THE CHURCH IN S P A I N ........................ 200
197 THE CHURCH ABROAD ........................ 208
SPAIN; PORTUGAL; AUSTRIA; GERMANY; CANADA LETTERS TO THE ED ITOR........................ 210
CATHOLICISM AND SCOTLAND; THE MEANS TEST; OTTO I ; ST. JOHN FISHER
THIEVES OF DAMASCUS........................ 201 THE NEW B O O K S .................................... 212 THE RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND OF THE ORIGEN; NORMAN ANGELL; BISHOP CHALLONER
OLYMPIC GAMES—II By ARNOLD LUNN
201 CHESS AND CROSSWORD........................ 217
SPAIN: THE TRUTH ........................ 203 THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD . 219 CAMBRIDGE SUMMER SCHOOL. . 204 THE CALENDAR .................................... 222 PARIS AND ROME LETTERS 206 THE A S SU M PT IO N .................................... 224
THE WORLD WEEK BY W EEK The Spanish Civil War
It is one of the gravest features of the Civil War that both sides in Spain are loose, and quite likely temporary coalitions. Left Wing papers use the word Fascists for one party, and Right Wing use the word Red for the other, but these names only apply to one element in each combination. The Fascists in Spain were a very small party, led by the son of Primo de Rivera ; their recruitment now is said to be advancing by leaps and bounds, and even to have reached three quarters of a million, a third well armed, but they are a subordinate element in the anti-Government forces. Except for the agreement not at present, at any rate, to countenance the Monarchists but to stand by the Republic, the provisional government has drawn no clear line of political structure. It is perhaps of some importance to bear in mind that General Mola was in charge of Public Safety under General Berenger in the last stage of the monarchy, while General Quipo de Llano played an important part under Premier Azana in the first phase of the republic. If they are victorious, the Generals will be faced with problems with much in common with those which proved too much for Berenger. Their great advantage will be the experience of the last seven years since Primo fell. A great many of the elements which overthrew the throne in 1931 did so in an irresponsible and happy-go-lucky mood which they are little likely to recapture. Five years ago, it was the popular thing not only in academic circles but among many of the clergy, to be anti-monarchists, and to underrate the great difficulties of maintaining any kind of stable government in Spain. The millionaire tobacco magnate, March, owned the paper Libertad, which flourished on feeding the popular discontent. The present savagery will build up a much larger public opinion in support of government as government, the sort of opinion upon which Napoleon relied after Brumaire.
On the Government side, the disunion is much more pronounced. The history of the Republic ever since 1931 has been the story of the failure of the ministry in Madrid to control the Left Wing elements. The Ministers working a parliamentary system, some honestly, some dishonestly, had never appealed either to Syndicalists or Communists as anything but an intermediary step between monarchy and real revolution. Premier Azana was compelled to suspend most of the constitutional safeguards embodied in the new constitution, on the well-grounded plea that without arbitrary powers the Government would have no chance of maintaining order. The Right Wing cabinet in 1934, had immediate experience in the proletarian rising of that year, how little respect the Cortez commanded. At that time, people like Miss Ellen Wilkinson did not talk about the Spanish Republican Government as the democratically elected choice of the people which was being defied by armed revolt, their sympathies then were with armed revolt. The most serious threats to the Madrid Government come from the Syndicalists and the Communists, who find common enemies in Liberals and Radicals, but who detest each other. Syndicalism is something unknown in England, and its ideas are quite unfamiliar. Syndicalists and Anarchists, whose strongholds are the Catalan towns, do not recognise the State as the unit, but the town, or the guild or factory. Syndicalists do not believe that men can really be represented by other men, and the larger the unit, the more they dislike it. They stand for workers’ control of some particular unit of production, the control to be seized by force at a propitious moment. The present moment is for them a beginning, a great
