Still Bilbao

Fifty-two, 53, 54--day after day the Basque soldiers defending Bilbao cut calendar notches in their dugout walls, as Rightist troops inched ever closer and still the city did not fall. Three times in the past century Bilbao has been besieged, in 1874 for 125 days, but Bilbao has never been captured.

Bilbao has never been attacked by as modern an army as Generals Franco & Mola had at their command last week, nor was the capture of the city so vital a point in any of Spain's previous civil wars. On the hillsides northwest of the city are some of the richest coal and iron mines in Spain. If Italy and Germany could get access to these for their rearmament program, their entire investment in the Spanish war might be justified and the galling defeat at Brihuega might be forgotten. If the Basques could stem the drive against their capital it would be a victory over Fascism that should impress the whole world.

Two things the Bilbainos feared: a bloody air raid against the civil population like the massacre at Guernica (TIME, May 10) and poison gas. Rightist planes strafed the outlying districts and military airports, but had not attacked the centre of the city in force by week's end. Generalissimo Franco not only wanted Bilbao, the second industrial city of Spain, but he wanted it whole. Fearful of enraging world opinion, neither side in Spain has used poison gas as yet. Basques worried greatly last week at the capture of dozens of Rightist soldiers carrying gas masks, and word from secret agents that Rightist gas squads were being organized behind the lines.

In Southampton, England, last week arrived the first shipment of Basque refugees, 4,000 children on the steamer Habana, high-water mark in one of the greatest mass evacuations of children in history. Many of them carried their Sunday clothes in little bundles. They staged a healthy, yowling child-riot when forcibly washed, given haircuts. Next day in a tent city in which they had been installed the Basque children suddenly lost all bravado. A squadron of British planes on practice flight hammered overhead. Screaming in terror, the Basque children stampeded for their tents, holes in the ground, anywhere they could hide. They were not quieted until a Basque priest had said Mass, a Basque chef stewed up steaming caldrons of their national dish, bacalao Bilbaino (creamed codfish).

Authentic photographs reaching the U. S. last week (see cut) made perfectly clear why, though no mass bombing raids had yet been launched, Bilbao's children had to be evacuated.

At last the Valencia Government reorganized by Premier Negrin (see p. 24) realized that it could no longer afford to leave the Basques entirely to their own devices. Fifteen Russian-built planes got through to Bilbao, the second shipment to reach the city, which has been practically without an air force since the beginning of the siege. Newshawks learned at the same time why other reinforcements of planes have not been made. The Russian-built pursuit planes are fine fighters in the air but have small gasoline capacity. Previous flights frequently ''got lost" over France and refueled at French airports. Pro-Rightist French papers and observers of the Non-intervention Committee have made this increasingly difficult. Last week's flight of planes got successfully lost, came down at the French air field at Pau. Chaperoned back to the frontier by a Danish and a British control officer, the 15 planes calmly continued their flight.

Again to relieve the pressure on Bilbao, Leftist offensives were pushed near Toledo and the Corunna Road near Madrid. Even recalcitrant Barcelona, which so far has done practically nothing to win the War for the Leftists, promised to start an offensive against Rightist-held Zaragosa "in the immediate future." Rightists retaliated with one of the heaviest artillery bombardments of Madrid in weeks, killed 30 people, wounded over 100.

One place where there was no offensive was Brihuega, scene of the memorable Italian rout in March. Just back from a well-earned vacation in London, the New York Times correspondent, Herbert L. Matthews, was almost blown out of his Madrid hotel at dawn by fire from Rightist eight or nine-inch guns. Later in the morning he rode out to visit Brihuega.

"The difference from Madrid was almost incredible," he wrote. "The countryside is green and covered with flowers. No shot was fired to disturb its serenity. We enjoyed a superb luncheon in a picturesque old town in the very room where the historic battle of Brihuega was planned. . . .

"At one point there is a steep valley which is the 'no man's land,' with the town of Muduex right in the middle of it. Neither side holds the town, but both sides send patrols into it to buy eggs and other produce from the inhabitants. . . . This very morning two soldiers dashed into Muduex to buy eggs for the Spanish omelette we ate for luncheon."

On the Mediterranean frontier Rightist planes heavily bombed Portbou in an effort to break the railroad from France. Unfortunately one of the planes splattered the streets of adjacent French Cerbere with machine-gun bullets, wounded a small boy in the leg. Cerbere's mayor yelled for protection; the French Government started an inquiry.

May's Fighting (see map). As May drew to a close, staff officers of either side had little of which they could boast for their past month's work. Spain was still almost equally divided between Leftist and Rightist territory. The Leftist offensive on the Madrid front had fizzled out with a tremendous loss of life on both sides, done little to improve the former capital's position. Leftists were unable to relieve Bilbao or to recapture Toledo.

Near Teruel where Rightist territory points a long finger towards Valencia, the Leftist capital, Rightists regained much land lost early in the month but were unable to push their main line any farther. Bilbao was the real theatre of war, and here a month's fighting advanced the Rightist line about ten miles but had not yet won the city. Eibar, important for its munitions manufacture, was captured, the holy city of Guernica was destroyed. Mt. Solluve overlooking Bilbao was captured, and so was Bermeo on the seacoast, but before it finally fell the prestige of Italian soldiers is said to have received another dent when robust Basque fishwives threw dozens of them into the sea. As this week began, the White pressure was heaviest at Amorebieta and Munguia, just outside Bilbao's ring of forts.

Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden evidently believed last week that the German and Italian backers of the Rightists were sufficiently gloomy about General Franco's present chances for him to propose a truce, during which "volunteers" of all nations would be withdrawn from both armies. Howls from the Rightists who would have their armies halved, from the Leftists who would have a peace without victory, greeted his proposal this week in Geneva.

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