RIPOSTES
77
Mr. Frank continues, "And they do struggle
-until a bomb or a bullet ends their in–
dividual will altogether." So everyone is
happy in Loyalist Spain today; the masses
because they can struggle (until that
'bomb or bullet' comes along) and Mr.
Frank because he can write rich beautiful
prose for the
New Republic
about it.
Mr.
Frank, indeed, has been able to keep
his spirits up admirably in the face of the
ordeal of the Spanish war. His morale is
excellent. "The Spanish people cannot, in
my judgment, be beaten, because their will
to live has become less the will to survive
or to win than
the will to struggle."
(Italics
his,
but they don't make the meaning any
clearer.) Later on, he tries another form–
ulation: "As I pointed out, many years ago,
the Spanish essence has not changed . . .
I don't see how the foreign Fascists, short
of murder, can beat it." So now we have
the Spanish essence as the guarantee that
Franco can't win-unless, of course, he
resorts in sheer desperation to bloodshed.
Mr. Frank admits that even the Spanish
essence couldn't stand up against actual
killing. But even if Franco takes this final
step and wins the war, it won't mean any–
thing, Mr. Frank reassures us, because, al–
though when the revolt first broke out,
there were undoubtedly many real Spani–
ards, full of the genuine national essence,
on Franco's side, it took only a few months
for the great majority of them to realize
their error and go over to the Loyalists
either openly or secretly. Tnat leaves prac–
tically no one on the rebels' side except the
Germans, the Italians, and, of course, Gen–
eral Franco himself. And as for the last,
Mr. Frank hints darkly, "I have a suspicion
of the state of mind of General Francisco
Franco." A journalist who can tune in on
the thought waves of eminent personages
like this is wasting his talents in the liberal
weeklies.
Mr. Frank loves the Spanish politicos
almost as much as he loves the Spanish war.
From Caballero to Negrin, his heart is big
enough to take them all in . 'Companys is
"a slight, subtle, fragile man with dextrous
hands and deep grey emotional eyes . . .
he talks so well ..." Pena: "a man whose
heavy slow body seems to express the dolor
of his people." Azana: "one of the few
great intellectuals of Spain, a cultural critic
and statesman ." Caballero is "a true and
great proletarian leader," Del Vayo "the
instinctive Spaniard," Negrin "cold, tem–
pered, double-edged as the best Toledo
steel ... a good cultivated mind." With
such a group of supermen opposing him,
FraMo has done well to hold out as long
as he has.
The crude might call this sort of thing
bootlicking, the suspicious might speak of
'puffing'. But the truth seems to be that
Mr. Frank has simply identified the Loyal–
ists
in toto,
from the
hum~st
soldier up
to Negrin, with his long-loved 'Spanish
essence'. It is hardly necessary to note that
this substitution of a 'national character' for
the analysis of concrete social and political
data is closely related to Nazi concepts,
though this time it happens to be on the
side of the angels. And Mr. Frank's pseudo–
Christian glorification of suffering as re–
demption comes disturbingly close to Adolf
Hitler's doctrine of purification by sacrifice-–
on dIe battlefields. No, it is not this kind of
ecstatic and foolish faith in a classless, mys–
tical 'Spanish people' that will defeat
Franco but such unromantic and 'rational–
istic' factors as working class action in
England and France to force their govern–
ments to open the borders to Loyalist muni–
tion shipments, pressure on the Kremlin by
workers both in and outside the Soviet
Union to release more than the niggardly
munitions Russia has so far sent into Spain,
and, above all, a drive to carry on the
revolution inside Spain towards its goal of
Socialism- which involves getting rid of the
politicians Mr. Frank so much admires. In
the face of such political problems, Mr.
Frank's rainbow mysticism is as powerless
as the incantations of a witch doctor to
cure typhoid fever.
Note on Literature
and
Revolution
"This country was not made by Wall
Street. It was not made by the big business
men. They helped ; I do not doubt that ;
but the litHe men made America. Read
Kenneth Roberts' books,
Rabble in Arms
and
Northwest Passage,
his stories of the
sea, and you will realize that America was
made by little men, small investments, and
hard work. Those were the things that
made America." (From a speech made by
the late Senator Copeland of New York in
Congress several months ago.)
