Where They Stand

The few correspondents thus far permitted to interview General Jose Miaja, valiant "Defender of Madrid," have mostly been given whispered warnings by his secretary: "Please do not mention his family! Only twice in my life have I seen the General weep--he is most courageous--but please not to mention his family. Hostages, you know! They have been held since the beginning of the war in Morocco, and the General knows that at any moment they may be shot."

It was a good omen in Spain last week that this distressing state of Miaja affairs ended without another such butchery as had already wiped out, in both White and Red territory, some 120,000 innocent non-combatants in Spain's savage, stalemated civil war (TIME, July 27 et seq.). A quiet little deal was arranged by General Miaja through intermediaries with Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Of the quid pro quo only half was disclosed. What Franco got was not revealed, though he was rumored to have bought the lives of several prominent Whites; but what General Miaja got was his great big bouncing family: Mother Miaja, Daughters Pepita, Concha, Luisa and Teresa, and Son Emilio.

These Miajas were landed not in Spain but in France and put up at the Hotel Beauvau in Marseille. They seemed to have no intention of proceeding to Red Spain, a perfectly simple thing to do last week. The Spanish Red Government promptly appointed Son Miaja a Consul to be stationed at Alexandria in Egypt and the news Agence Espagne rang up the Defender of Madrid. "I am entrusted with the defense of Madrid and I must stay at the front!", General Miaja told Agence Espagne. "I blame Fascist propaganda for the reports that I will soon arrive in France!"

Capitalism is Dead!" In Spain's deadlocked war the Miaja Family were last week's prime news copy, but Italian forces were becoming most active in the White drive to secure Malaga and Il Duce loomed large in Spanish eyes. At Rome that sympathetic female correspondent to whom so many statesmen find it easy to talk, Mrs. Anne O'Hare McCormick, had a long session on Spain with Mussolini. Crisply he said that Europe's first task must be to end Spain's war, that no other European problem of consequence can be solved until that has been accomplished, that Spain is potentially much more apt to give rise to a general European war this year than was Ethiopia last year. "You make me impatient when you talk about Democracy," Il Duce told Mrs. McCormick. "You talk as if it existed or could exist in this 20th Century world of machines and mass production, as if we were still living in the 19th Century world of individual enterprise! I tell you Democracy is only a mask for Capitalism, which clings desperately to the outmoded forms that allowed it free play. "The era of Capitalism is over! Here in Italy it is finished, it is dead.* If by democracy you mean government for and in the interests of the people then our system and ours alone is truly democratic.

Bear in mind, that in the future it will be recognized that we were the first to face and adapt government to the facts of modern life. . . .

"I admire Roosevelt. Do you wish to know why I admire him? I admire him because he is so bold, because he is also something of a dictator, not in the sense that I am a dictator. . . . He is what I should describe as a social dictator. . . . He concentrates in his hands all the power possible under your system in order to dictate social justice.

"Roosevelt's task is difficult because he had to carry out his social reforms within the Capitalistic system."

Franco for Fascism-Had not Benito Mussolini, the Founder of Fascism, thus brought everyone up to date on what Fascism is in 1937--namely not the handy prop for Capitalism it was once pictured, but a dynamic social force--the significance of where Spain's leaders stood last week would have been much less clear. They were suddenly and squarely asked where they stood by Roy Wilson Howard, one of the most usefully inquisitive executives journalism has yet produced.

In Manhattan dapper Mr. Howard dashed off cable questionnaires to Spanish Premier Largo Caballero who removed his Cabinet from Madrid to Valencia on the seacoast some months ago (TIME, Nov. 16), and to President Francisco Franco whose Spanish Government, officially recognized by Italy and Germany (TIME, Nov. 30), was established at Burgos on the sixth day of a civil war which this week was seven months old.

President Franco replied to Mr. Howard's questionnaire in 1,600 words. Boiled down they amounted to this: Spain's White Leader is "an admirer of the way in which Fascism has stemmed the advance of Communism in many countries. He would remake Spain into a close approximation of the Italian Fascist Corporative State as set up and run by Il Duce. He answered in the negative Mr. Howard's question whether he is a Free Mason, adding a blanket disclaimer that his Whites have anything to do with the Grand Orient. Franco affirmed that his Government would negotiate a concordat with the Vatican, insuring that Spain remain Catholic. He refused to answer whether he would support restoration of the Monarchy, refused to guess when Madrid might be captured. On the historic Spanish question of Catalonia, always violently separatist, the Generalissimo said: "Catalonia is as much a part of Spain as Lancashire is a part of England or Pennsylvania is a State in the Union. The world already knows something of the terrible suffering experienced by Catalonia under Red rule, of the destruction of private property and the murder of thousands of peaceful, harmless citizens for no other crime than their ideas or their respectability. "

Bear in mind that none of this cruelty can find a pretext in the Civil War, for Catalonia has escaped civil war up to the present, and you will see that the misdeeds and atrocities of which our enemies are guilty are but part of the policy to which they intended to subject the whole of Spain in accordance with the dictates of Moscow had we not risen to prevent them."

To Mr. Howard, the Generalissimo added a prediction that his White Army would be received with "enthusiasm" on entering Catalonia by all except the terrorist Red element. Few days later, his Whites finally overwhelmed Malaga, the last enemy stronghold on Spain's south coast, broadcast that they had been welcomed with "enthusiasm" while Red militia fled headlong from the city, as well they might. Few hours after No. 2 White General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, "The Radio General," entered Malaga he broadcast that he was setting up courts-martial, that "Marxists will be instantly executed!" By nightfall nearly 5,000 persons had been rounded up. Released from Red prison ships in the harbor by General de Llano were 200 men and women, many of them Spain's aristocrats.

Largo Caballero for Democracy? Impressions in Spain that blue-overall-wearing Premier Largo Caballero is in doubt what his Government stands for and is constantly advised by Soviet Ambassador to Spain Marcel Rosenberg, who in turn spends much time consulting his superiors in the Soviet Union, were strengthened this week by Red Valencia's reaction to Roy Howard.

His questionnaire was most courteously received. From day to day the Premier continued "about to answer." After nearly a week's delay, the Caballero entourage said their Ambassador in France would answer Mr. Howard the next night. Twenty-four hours later Valencia's Paris Embassy was "going to answer within a week."

Thus the world's appetite was whetted for what should be a masterpiece of international word-wangling, combining plausible ideas of the French Popular Front, the Comintern of Moscow, plus Largo Caballero and Rosenberg. Wiseacres agreed that Premier Largo Caballero will most likely reply that he "stands for Democracy."

In Europe today, standers for Democracy have become a subway crush in which everyone gets on the other's feet. Great Democrat Adolf Hitler recently described Germany as ''the perfect Democracy." Great Democrat Joseph Stalin recently gave his Soviet Union what he called "The Most Democratic Constitution in the World," then riveted his dictatorship tighter by the shooting of 13 Old Bolsheviks (TIME, Feb. 8 et ante}.

Meanwhile great Professor Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, revered "Father of Czechoslovakia" (which is often called "the last European stronghold of genuine Democracy") has retired from its Presidency tranquil in his own mind that the so-called "dictators" of today are in fact a genuine expression in new guise of the popular will--that is of Democracy. Placing the tips of his old fingers together in the quiet of his study at Prague, piercing-eyed, piercing-minded Professor Masaryk--even though the Hitler dictatorship is an ever-present military threat to the Czechoslovak Republic--philosophically points out that the German people, the Russian people, the Italian people and certainly the people of the U.S. are by overwhelming, real majorities convinced that they are following a Leader who is pure, wholesome and efficacious. In Professor Masaryk's opinion the Industrial Revolution is being followed by an international Political Revolution of a kind "not only made possible but made inevitable" by Machine Age appliances which permit One Man to make friends with all or nearly all his countrymen. The worldwide result, as yet not fully achieved, seems likely to be not Democracy or Dictatorship but both in one--a mystery potent enough to recall the Trinity, since devout Communists and devout Fascists alike today show all the symptoms of religious fanatics.

*A recent Fascist law forces sorely vexed Capitalists and landowners in Italy to buy Mussolini bonds up to a figure representing 5% of the value of their property. If they lack cash to buy these radical bonds they are forced to borrow it from the Government, paying interest on the loan. In Russia the financing of Five-Year Plans by forced loans is continually cleaning the pockets of the proletariat. In Germany moderate Adolf Hitler has greatest difficulty in restraining the arrant radicals of the Nazi Party led by such as Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels who continually agitate to persuade Der Fuehrer to reshuffle the German capitalist economy drastically. Japan's new Cabinet is "opposed to such radical modern ideas as Fascism," its press officer announced in Tokyo last week. Italy's Dictator was named by his extremely radical father "Benito Juarez Mussolini," after Mexico's great radical hero. He was for years editor of Avanti, Italy's No. 1 Socialist newspaper. When he broke with Socialism to found Fascism, he stormed out of a wildly yelling Socialist assembly in Milan with the words: "You hate me because you still love me!"

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