"YOU CAN ONLY IMAGINE HALF THE DANGER"

In the U.S., the hot weather had come and the folks were thinking warm and homey summer thoughts. Pittsburgh discussed the drop of the Pirates with the sad indulgence of a disappointed'parent. In Des Moines, and all through Iowa, farmers reluctantly decided that the heavy rains (a regular flood) had washed away the chances of a full corn crop. In Alliance, Neb., Editor Ben Sallows of the Times-Herald griped good-naturedly about prices: "Life must be worth living. The cost has doubled, and still everybody hangs on." Out in Montana, the people talked mostly about fishing and the Rodeo. Everywhere, they talked about vacations--and this year you could do more than talk; you could really go.

When U.S. citizens did think about the rest of the world--and thousands did, every day--it was generally in terms of the big conflict between the U.S. and Red Russia. Yet there were many moves in the world, not only along the main highway between Washington and Moscow, but on the other, more remote, and no less important roads.

From three vital way stations, three TIME-correspondents last week sent in reports. Emmet Hughes, TIME'S Rome bureau chief, who has spent four years in Spain, recently returned to Franco territory and found, contrary to wishful predictions, that the Franco regime seemed fatter and more secure than ever. In Poland, John Scott (TIME'S Berlin bureau chief) found a shaky but surprisingly energetic prosperity. From China, TIME'S Nanking Correspondent Frederick Gruin told no story of prosperity, but one of lean and bitter struggle and inevitable retribution. The reports:

"YOU CAN ONLY IMAGINE HALF THE DANGER"

"Visit Spain if you seek lively and lovely joy."

This coy summons in English appears on a big poster in the lobby of the Hotel Condestable in brown old Burgos. Similar appeals from a dollar-hungry Government can be seen in most of the world's tourist offices. Whether you will find what they promise depends on your definition of joy.

The Fat Life. Madrid today is a bright, booming city, American in its neon-lit vivacity. The streets are choked with double-decker buses, sleek, new blue trolleys and shining U.S. cars. One foreign diplomat lamented: "I managed to get a Packard, but nothing less than the biggest Cadillac makes anyone here turn his head." Bull rings are jammed; top Matador Manolete can pull down the official equivalent of $12,500 for an afternoon's work. The number of prostitutes has hit an alltime high.

Madrid is an accurate index to the expansive mood of Spain's rich & mighty who follow the traditional social season--Seville in April, Madrid in May and June, San Sebastian in July and August (then back to the Madrid black market for the drab winter months). Now they jam the Palace and Chicote bars, their ranks reinforced by distinguished foreign refugees such as the Petacci family of Mussolini's late mistress, Clara.

All this lively joy, the Government hopes, will keep the tourists' attention from the tuberculous children of the Vallecas slums, or the cave dwellers in the sandy hills outside Madrid, or the beggars who inconsiderately paw at the sleeves of guests exhausted after a night's dancing at the lovely Ritz gardens. Madrid's unskilled workers live on cheap fish, beans, occasional rice, watered wine. The housing situation is desperate. After years of waiting, some young couples are still looking for a chance to sublet a single room in the city's cheapest slum before they can marry. For these people, social life is simple. On Sunday, they walk out to the University City's crusted, sandy slopes, where they lie in the sun and talk and stare at the still unfilled trenches of the Civil War.

Resurrection of the Old Shirts. The average Spaniard is no worse off than a year ago. Basic prices have not risen since then. The year's crop was good, and Argentina is sending wheat. Franco is not threatened by an immediate economic crisis. Two years ago, with Naziism's defeat, the regime was panicky. One year ago it just began to recover. Today it is plain cocky.

The regime still does not dare slacken the pace of its political persecution, and underground warfare is spreading; guerrillas are now equipped with better arms, including machine guns (presumably from France). More effective than sporadic warfare was last month's general strike in the crucial industrial area of Bilbao, when some 35,000 men stayed home in protest against the provincial governor's punishment of workers who had observed May Day. But there is no power in Spain today that can seriously threaten Franco's rule.

All Franco rhetoric about "Christian democracy" has disappeared. Falangist "Old Shirts," supposedly displaced, are active again. Franco's phony succession law (which will permit him to appoint his own political heir) is practically being written by Falangists. Said Franco last week: "The Falange is . . . the soul of our national resurrection."

Blessings from the Little Man. Franco's confidence is enhanced by a number of factors. Chief among them is the Truman Doctrine, which has convinced his followers that the U.S. is now a friend of any anti-Communist force, no matter how reprehensible. Many Spaniards are asking how big their loan from Washington will be, $300 or $400 million?

A second factor to cheer Franco is Spain's increasing friendship with Argentina, as exemplified last week by the jubilant reception for Strong-Man Peron's wife (see LATIN AMERICA). Another is the regime's conviction that it enjoys the blessings of the Vatican. At High Mass last Sunday in Madrid's biggest Jesuit church, just before the elevation of the Host, I heard organ and choir strike up Franco's national anthem while the congregation stood at attention or sank to its knees.

The Spanish clergy is quite satisfied with such Franco blessings as the education law which assures them the right to teach Spanish children (according to the official catechism) that "the freedoms of conscience, worship, press and assembly . . . are pernicious." The supposedly nonpolitical Catholic Action group largely plays along with the regime. Said one of the few truly distinguished and independent Actionists, about this Catholic collaboration with Franco: "You can only imagine half the danger. I see it every day, growing steadily."

In fact, the Vatican is not happy with Franco; but its policy (like that of the U.S.) is paralyzed by the fear that the only alternative to the Franco regime would be a Communist regime. Neither the Church nor the U.S. can escape blame for not trying to create a democratic alternative.

"They Have Lost Interest." A Madrid Republican leader told me why Spanish democrats cannot understand the U.S.'s failure to take the initiative against Franco: "Since you yourselves think you may some day have to fight Russia, and appeal to the peoples of the world to defend freedom against Communism, I should think you'd want to have a good appeal ready. Your Spanish record isn't very appealing." Said a Basque nationalist leader: "Why can't your leaders see that they are playing the Russian game in Spain? Here only the Communists are getting stronger. Whenever the regime ends, they can say truthfully that only the Communists opposed it."

The U.S. is doing nothing to foster non-Communist opposition to Dictator Franco. When I asked one U.S. consular official about his Republican contacts, he said: "They have pretty much stopped coming around. I think they've lost interest in us."

Over cocktails at the cool Goto gardens, I asked a Monarchist friend what he thought had happened in the past year, and where Spain was heading. My friend, who has poetic pretensions, formed a delicate pyramid with the ends of his long fingers and replied solemnly: "Nothing has happened. Spain is a country anchored in the river of time."

"WHAT IS THE LARGEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD?"

In spite of war, successive occupations, grave internal controversy, floods and a bad harvest (somewhat exaggerated by a Government anxious to get a substantial U.S. credit), the Polish people are better fed, roughly as well dressed, and almost as well housed as the people of Britain.

The present Government of Poland is not a popular one. Poland has not had a popular government for several generations. (When I asked a peasant near Cracow what government he trusted, he thought back more than 30 years and said: "The Austrians.") But as a result of economic successes the Government's position has been improving. It is far less unpopular than it was eight months ago.

In Wroclaw (the Germans called it Breslau) you can see how much the Poles still have to accomplish, however. Most Germans are gone; few Poles have moved in. Unlike Warsaw, where great effort has reduced the rubble piles and brought rebuilding, Wroclaw's side streets are still choked with debris in which grow mullein and other weeds.

Fix Those Tractors. The only really happy face in Wroclaw was that of Hiram Heatwole, 25-year-old, blond, handsome Mennonite farmer of R.F.D. Route 1, Bridgewater, Va. He heard me speaking English in the huge, cavelike Monopol Hotel and introduced himself.

"I work on tractors." he said as the Polish waiter brought large glasses of beer. "You see, UNRRA sent these people about 10,000 tractors . . . good tractors, the best we have in America. Now, Poles are accustomed to working with these one-cylinder diesel jobs tied together with wire; when they get a brand-new American tractor, they don't know what to do with it. First thing they do is tighten up the bearings, take the pistons out to make sure the piston rings are around them. The result is that within a few weeks most of these tractors aren't working. My job is to get them all to work." Hiram is one of 25 volunteers sent to work in Poland for a year by the Mennonite Central Committee of Akron, Pa. The Polish Government furnishes room and board. Says Hiram: "We don't drink or smoke, so we have no need to spend our own money ($10 a month). I am still single and it's a wonderful chance to see parts of the world I didn't know about. . . ."

There is plenty to see. The average Polish farmer is short of machinery, fertilizer and clothing, but he is eating well (only bread is rationed) and has hope of rapid improvement in "the future. Stores are full of flashlights, hardware, textile goods, shoes, radios, etc. Prices are high, but Poles are buying.

Bitter political anecdotes still circulate in Wroclaw. "What is the largest country in the world? Poland--its frontier is on the Oder, its capital is in Moscow, its population is in Siberia."

Poland's bosses, however, can now think of relaxing their iron grasp a trifle. One Polish Communist told me: "Had we known before the January election by what a large margin we would win, we would not have engaged in those pressures and minor dishonesties which did take place in many localities. The next election, I believe, will be very much closer to what you in America call a democratic election. . . ."

Hold That Oder. In general, the Poles seem fairly happy. They have ejected all but 400,000 of the nearly 9,000,000 Germans who once lived in the western territories. Most of the rest will be gone by fall. The Government is busy dividing up the land and giving it to Polish peasants in small holdings.

Poles of all classes are united in determination to keep their 100,000 square kilometers of what used to be Germany. On that subject they are as romantic and emotional as ever in Poland's turbulent history. Many Poles think that control of these coal and breadbasket lands--Slav till the Germans took them in the Middle Ages--might give Poland the means to achieve real political independence some day.

"COMMUNISTS MAY BE ANYBODY"

The Communists in China say their armies are like a sea on which the Government armies are like a ship. The ship plunges this way and that, but ever the sea slides around it. On this fluid battlefield lies the southern Shantung village of Paiyen. Fortnight ago it was still a base for some 10,000 Communist guerrillas under stocky, black-bearded General Chang Kuang-chung.

Communist General Chang and a few of his men had stayed behind in Paiyen when the main Communist force retreated into the high mountains of central Shantung. Their job was to harry the Government's communications and hold villagers to the Communist line as they had been held since the Japs left in 1945. Then on a hot, dusty day, Government troops appeared before Paiyen's low mud walls.

Rifles in the Afternoon. There was not much of a battle. In late afternoon the Government general, a lean Szechwanese, ordered his men to close in. A few rifle shots, some mortar fire, and by dusk Paiyen and some 50 prisoners belonged to Government forces. Communist General Chang and most of his force scattered into the mountains.

The arrival of Government troops stirred anger and alarm in hunchbacked, round-faced Chen Wei-fu. He is one of Paiyen's few intellectuals--a primary schoolteacher who had wholeheartedly joined the Communists and become a magistrate. A report had reached Chen's ears, once, that an old woman carrying water through the fields had met some thirsty Government scouts. They drank from her earthen jars and went off. Wrathful Chen had summoned the old woman. "Why did you cooperate with Chiang's troops?" he shouted. "Why did you give them water to drink?" Then crying, "We must make an example," Magistrate Chen had ordered her head cut off.

Grenades in the Night. The Government general did not find the task of occupation easy. At night, in outlying hamlets, grenades would explode, usually in the homes of villagers friendly to Government troops. Government soldiers moved always in groups. A veteran corporal who had fought the Japs at Changsha said: "When we fought the Japs we knew our enemy. But now, how can we tell? Communists may be anybody. . . ."

Kinfolk of the villagers killed by the nightly grenades came to the Government general. They begged for retribution and protection. The general told them they must help. There were Communist informers and fingermen in the villages. Slowly, his intelligence men, with whispered guidance from those who bore grudges, rounded up Paiyen's underground. Most important captive was onetime Magistrate Chen Wei-fu.

Charges against Chen were many and grievous. When the Government general heard the story of the old woman who had been beheaded on Chen's order, he cried, "Really, it's hard to be kind to such people. We must make an example!" No heavy sword or ax could be found. A bayonet was considered, then rejected. Finally a heavy, short-bladed sickle, used to harvest wheat, was fashioned into an executioner's tool. While fellow informers watched, Hunchback Chen's head was hacked off.

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