Refugees Return

Into the main station of Geneva, Switzerland one night in February 1939 crawled a train of 22 freight cars. Atop every second car sat a machine-gun crew, and as the train stopped, three French soldiers with fixed bayonets jumped from each car. The art treasures of Spain, snatched from Madrid's gun-gutted Prado and many another lesser museum, vandalized churches and bombed palaces, had reached safety in Switzerland. In the cars were 1,842 big packing cases, containing 266 masterpieces by El Greco, Goya, Velasquez, Titian, Rubens, scores of other paintings, priceless collections of gold and silver work, porcelain, tapestries, sculpture, manuscripts. For nearly two and a half years they had lain in crates, ponderously tagging after the defeated Government as it fled from Madrid to Valencia to Barcelona. Armored trucks finally took Spain's art along the refugee road to France, where it was sent for safekeeping to the League of Nations. When the Spanish war ended, most of the cases were shipped back to Spain. Only 175 masterpieces were kept in Geneva for exhibition--a show which turned out to be Europe's biggest peacetime event of the summer.

Last week, with French and German big guns booming within range of Geneva, Spain seemed about the safest place for the 175 Spanish paintings. They were crated again, began their journey back to the Prado.

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