Plum

If shaking the tree would help, long-overripe Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain was surely due to fall with the frosts.

As the plum-plump dictator approached his ninth anniversary as Chief of the Spanish State, the tree was shaken vigorously at a typically spectacular rally in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden. There Russian anger and British impatience with the lingering Fascist regime were semi-officially proclaimed. Cried Nikolai Novikov, Soviet charge d'affaires in the U.S.: "The peoples of the Soviet Union hope that General Franco, this hireling of Hitler and Mussolini, will receive what is coming to him and his regime of Fascist dictatorship will be abolished."

By radio from London, Harold J. Laski, British Labor's left-wing philosopher, told the rally: "Our peoples didn't make the immense sacrifices of this war to perpetuate either a tyranny like that of Franco, or an unedifying mythology like a Vatican-sponsored King of Spain trying hastily to learn the vocabulary of the Four Freedoms while making it painfully evident that he finds no meaning in the words."

The American point of view was not presented at the rally by a State Department official, but by such left-wing spokesmen as Michael J. Quill, president of Manhattan's powerful Transport Workers Union, and Norman Corwin, radio writer. Also present to provide the glamor expected on such an occasion were Sono Osato, Luba Malina, Margo and the Broadway stars. (Frank "Harvey" Fay, a Roman Catholic, later went roaring to Actors' Equity against participation of stage folk in "a Red meeting" where the Roman Catholic Church was denounced.)

The Official Share. Though an authoritative U.S. voice was absent from the rally, Washington was not long chiming in with a "me, too." Within two days, a reporter primed Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson with a casual question: just what is the American attitude toward Spain, anyhow?

"I am surprised that you do not know what our position on it is," replied Acheson. The policy, he said, was stated in a letter written seven months ago by Franklin Roosevelt to Norman Armour upon his departure for Madrid as Ambassador to Spain. The letter, in fact, could now be released for publication. In no more than 15 minutes, mimeographed copies of the letter were ready for reporters.

Franklin Roosevelt had described the American policy toward Franco thus: "As you know, it is not our practice in normal circumstances to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries unless there exists a threat to international peace. The form of government in Spain and the policies pursued by that Government are quite properly the concern of the Spanish people. I should be lacking in candor, however, if I did not tell you that I can see no place in the community of nations for governments founded on Fascist principles."

That, said Washington tipsters, was what Harry Truman remembered when he helped draw up the Potsdam declaration, and it was what was in the back of his mind when in August he said: "None of us likes Franco or his Government."

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