The Republic v. The Republic
(See front cover)
Spain's atrocity-spangled Civil War burned and butchered into its second month this week. At least 25,000 Spaniards had been killed and less than half of these had died on any battlefield. Night after night all over Spain men were torn from their weeping families, lined up and shot for what were supposed to be their political opinions. Scores of cities, towns and villages had been bombarded and burned. More than 200 churches had gone up in flames and over $40,000,000 in cash and Spanish Government bonds stripped from clericals. Meanwhile Ladies of the Civil War made off with Singer Sewing Machines while Gentlemen seized out of salesrooms brand new Fords and Chevrolets. Property of U. S. citizens in Spain worth $70,000,000 had in large part been confiscated, temporarily at least, and U. S. consuls looked silly as they did their best to paste on U. S. doors stickers warning the Spaniards that U.S. "property must be respected."
Atrocity of the week occurred in the village of Buitrago in the Guadarrama Mountains which form the chief bulwark of Madrid on the north. There some 80 children too young to have any political opinions were discovered hiding in a church. Out they were dragged, to be lined up, dispatched by firing squads and left to rot on the ground. In the sore which was Spain last week, festering from the Pyrenees to Morocco, it was both confusing and disheartening that both President Manuel Azafia and his opponents, Generals Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola, claimed to be "Republicans"; and to be fighting for "The Republic." Enshrined Violence. His Most Catholic Majesty Alfonso XIII was chased out of Spain year after exiled Dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera had quietly died in bed in Paris and the Spanish people had voted strongly Republican (TIME, April 20, 1931). The Republic brought with it a new Constitution grimly designed to destroy the influence of the Church and to break the big landowners of Spain but leavened with idealism, notable in such clauses as that under which the Spanish Government cannot itself declare war on another country without obtaining the consent of the League of Nations. In the elections of 1931 the Republic seesawed violently to the Left, then to the Right in 1933 and again to the Left early this year.
On the basis of the popular vote, the Left won only 4,356,000 ballots to 4,910,000 for the Centre and the Right.
Thus, backed by slightly less than half the ballots cast, appeared the present Spanish Government under corpulent and frog-faced but politically agile and astute Don Manuel Azafia, a Republican of ultra-conservative Socialist leanings. He found in the Cortes that he could win votes of confidence only by yielding more & more to the radical Socialists and out-&-out Communists who thought hanging was too good for a priest or a wealthy landowner. Last spring astute Azafia, foreseeing to what upheavals this situation must lead, resigned the hot seat of Premier and got himself elected to the more stable office of President, the better to weather Spain's coming storm (TIME, May 18).