Socialist Blood

It got so that even the men who filed the cables grew bored with them. Week after week, month after month they had sent out the same stories: General strike threat. . . . Syndicalists riot in Barcelona. . . . Alfonso denies responsibility. . . . Fall of Government imminent. . . . Street fighting in Asturias and the Basque provinces. . . . Andalusian peasants rebel. . . . Generals arrested. . . . State of alarm declared. . . . State of alarm lifted. . . . All these things were true but the average Spaniard took his daily siesta, went to the bullfight every Sunday, ate a seven-course dinner at 10:30 at night.

Another general strike was declared month ago. As usual, the Catalans in whose northeastern province lies Spain's chief port, Barcelona, started it. They objected to the National Government's interpretation of certain land laws. The strike lasted a day and then collapsed, but suddenly in Madrid, the word went out that the National Government was in serious danger. Reporters hurried to the office of Minister of the Interior Salazar Alonso, found him gravely dotting a huge map of Spain with colored pins: one color for Civil Guards, other colors for police reserves, airplane squadrons, cavalry, infantry, artillery. Pausing in his handiwork he told them a startling story. In Northern Asturias police had raided a secret cache of arms and discovered a plot to overthrow the Republic. The arms came from the National factory at Toledo. They had been paid for by a rich financier with the good Basque name of Echevarietta, theoretically for shipment to French Somaliland. The guns seized in Asturias were only a small part of the order. Where were the others?

It did not take long to find some of them. Police chased the athletic coach of Madrid University around the campus and finally cornered him and a truckload of cartridges, flame projectors and machine-gun belts. Other caches were found almost everywhere the police looked.

Cause of the whole cancer was the general election of last November. To the horror of the ardently Republican Martinez Barrios, then Premier, the women of Spain, voting for the first time in history, piled up a terrific Conservative majority. Barrios fell. First Lerroux, then Samper became Premier. Month after month Socialists, Syndicalists, Communists have seen the country swing further and further to the Right. There is definite threat of a semi-Fascist dictatorship. Radicals of all complexions from the rose-pink of Manuel Azana to the black anarchism of innumerable hotheads joined for a final attempt at revolution.

Early last week the Cortes (parliament) reassembled and the Conservative-coalition Cabinet of Premier Samper fell. President Alcala Zamora asked idealistic Alejandro Lerroux to form another Government. He did, giving three seats to the reactionary Catholic Party which was largely responsible for Samper's fall.

Promptly the dam broke. Spanish radicals might be in the minority, but they were ready, and they were armed. In every part of Spain, with rifles, revolvers, machine-guns, and occasionally light cannon, the revolutionists fought their way. But, to their unbounded disgust, army, navy and civil guards stayed loyal. At least 400 were killed, 1.500 wounded in the bloodiest week-end the Republic has seen. What caused this revolt to fail, like all the others that have shaken the country since the fall of Alfonso XIII, was a complete lack of organization.

Bloodiest spots were Asturias, Madrid, Barcelona.

In Asturias striking coal miners cut down trees to block roads, fired their villages, and then fled to the hills where squadrons of bombing planes blew the ground out from under them.

Madrid's civil warfare was most effectively reported because most of it took place right under the office windows of foreign correspondents. For half an hour a furious crowd besieged the U. S.-owned telephone company. The U. S. manager. Captain Logan Rock described the attack:

"When the firing started about 15 of our 200 girl employes fainted. They all went back to work again, showing great courage. ... It was a touching scene, with bullets cracking and the dark-eyed senoritas praying fervently."

Marooned with a former Director of Mines, a Deputy, and three Mexican bullfighters, an Associated Press correspondent sat on the floor with a telephone to his ear shouting his story to London while Civil Guards and rioters swept back & forth in the face of spitting machine guns right in front of him.

Barcelona as usual went off completely halfcocked. Without waiting for definite news of the progress of the revolution elsewhere, impetuous Luis Companys. President of Catalonian Generalidad, climbed out on a balcony of the Government palace and proclaimed Catalonia a separate Republic. Government troops rushed down from the fortress and promptly besieged him. A few hours of firing and Luis Companys and the Catalan Republic surrendered together.

Martial law had been proclaimed the instant the revolution got under way. On the morning after the bloodletting, Spanish warships were still plumping shells into a few rebellious villages, there were snipers still on the rooftops of various towns, but the great Socialist uprising was over. Strikers, however, were still out. In Madrid, Spanish soldiers were called in from the streets. Stripped to the waist they labored in the city's deserted bakeries, baking bread.

Spanish nerves were still taut. After a late afternoon outburst of firing in Madrid, 12,000 retired army officers and an association of noblemen headed by the Viscount of Cubas stepped forward to offer their services to the Government. Snapped a potent Deputy: "This uncertainty, if it continues, will end in military dictatorship. The Government should take the most drastic steps. . . ."

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