Uneasy Christmas

Spain's civil war seemed to hinge last week upon profound deliberations by Adolf Hitler in his Bavarian retreat and on secret Anglo-French moves to sway Berlin. The German envoy accredited to the Spanish White Government at Burgos is General Wilhelm Faupel. Last week he arrived in Berlin from Spain in a cloud of rumors that White Generalissimo Franco was asking an additional 60,000 German soldiers to help him win his war.

Without confirming or denying anything, Adolf Hitler's personal newsorgan Volkischer Beobachter significantly ruminated thus: "Newspapers are full of alarming rumors and comment on the development of the crisis in Spain and speak of a joint Anglo-French protest in Berlin.

"What is the source of all this excitement? It arises from rumors regarding the landing of German volunteers in Spain. As long as we only heard of Bolshevist volunteers arriving in streams in Barcelona the Madrid situation, in the opinion of Western European journals, was not at all 'threatening.'

"The British themselves would not normally become excited over the presence of German volunteers in the Spanish ranks. What is happening is the same old affair. Because the Paris People's Front newspapers see fit to become excited and the French Foreign Office is issuing alarming statements, the Fleet Street editorial desks must become excited.

"Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, would do his policy, however, a very bad service if he leaned in the volunteer question on the guilty shoulders of his Paris friends."

In Britain and France, newspapers close to their respective governments reported them angling to find out what Adolf Hitler would take in the way of economic concessions and returned German colonies as his price for behaving differently in Spain. This was all very well, but the British Cabinet notoriously want the Whites to win in Spain, while the French Cabinet just as notoriously want the Vhites to lose. Those who were trying to bargain with Der Fuehrer therefore were sharply divided and they were also frightened. According to London newspundits, the German troops in Spain seem to be moving in equipped to settle down as an Army of Occupation. Should anything like 60,000 arrive, Generalissimo Franco would simply be Dictator Hitler's puppet. Meanwhile in Germany, decrees were drafted to keep in the Fatherland all men of fighting age (18 to 45 years); an acute grain shortage was admitted in the German press; frantic Nazi campaigns were launched to make Germans save bread crusts, "tighten their belts," and Naziland seemed to be preparing for some great effort next spring or sooner.

Additional factors in the German situation are that among Adolf Hitler's advisers both pro-colonists and anti-colonists are prominent. The faction of Dr. Schacht thinks it paramount for former German colonies to be returned, licks its chops at the colonies of Portugal, figuring that England could make Portugal give some of these back to Germany. Today Portugal is on a war footing and last week took delivery of ten new bombers. Another German faction, that of Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, "The Great Ideologist of the Nazi Party," holds that colonies have always cost the countries that owned them more than they are worth. Germany must have additional territory, agrees Dr. Rosenberg, but it must be a direct extension of the land surface already covered by the Fatherland--therefore, "War to the East" to establish Nazi rule over the rich Ukraine.

News from Spain itself last week featured such curious things as that the Radical Madrid Government had just won the Grand Prize in its own lottery; that middle-of-the-road Spanish President Manuel Azaiia was now refusing to have anything to do with proletarian Premier Largo Caballero who remained at Valencia. In a mountain retreat back of Barcelona, the President said: "I feel better here reading a great deal and walking with my wife."

On Christmas Eve the "Yankee Squadron" of famed U. S. aviators headed by Bert Acosta, pilot of Admiral Byrd's transatlantic flight, at the last minute abandoned plans for a whoopee party with their wives at Biarritz, swank French resort across the Spanish frontier. They decided that they would rather raid Burgos, Generalissimo Franco's headquarters. The hundreds of incendiary bombs that they dropped on White hangars and munition dumps they jokingly described as "Messages of Christmas Cheer for the boys in Burgos."

Around Madrid, "the hottest battle of the war was being fought last week for the capital. Blood was up on both sides. Radicals and Whites scrambled out of their trenches calling each other names and demanding hand-to-hand fights. After an exchange of machine gun fire, there lay dead 50 Radicals, 50 Whites. With grim determination Generalissimo Franco spat out orders that White officers who could not control their men were to be shot. Meantime White bombers winged over Madrid, plunked seven bombs on the U. S.-owned International Telephone & Telegraph Building, largest structure in the city. In retaliation for Generalissimo Franco's bombing of Madrid on Christmas Day, Red operatives secretly installed a series of bombs in a roadbed near Talavera de la Reina, blew up a 23-car train of White troops, killing hundreds.

Wearing an old Etonian tie under his red muffler, Britain's 34-year-old Earl of Kinnoull fretfully paced the deck of the trawler Mino which was anchored olf Southampton last week while customs officials nosed around the ship's hold. His Lordship was all ready to sail to Spain with 100 tons of food and $5,000 to aid Madrid's Radical Government. No hidebound aristocrat is Lord Kinnoull. In 1928 he married the daughter of the late Kate Meyrick, London's "Night Club Queen" who was imprisoned five times for selling unlicensed liquor, bribing police. In 1934 he staggered Britain's bluebloods by declaring from his seat in the House of Lords: "This House is a farce."

Into the Bay of Biscay belligerently steamed six German warships, attempting by the menace of their guns to make the Spanish Reds release the Nazi freighter Palos which they had seized and interned at Bilbao. Amid much bluster on both sides, the Nazis made "unalterable demands," the Reds "unalterable refusals," and the little Palos became a bone over which could snarl the mightiest dogs of war. Meanwhile a fresh White offensive surged completely into Madrid from the west, occupying the north station near the onetime Royal Palace, then was swept completely out again by the Reds.

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