Irun's Fall
Spanish workmen of the Red Militia, desperately battling to save Madrid, outnumbered two-to-one last week the advancing spearhead of White professional soldiers 67 miles from the Capital. Ensued a conflict savage in the extreme, with Madrid claiming that the Whites had been pushed back 15 miles, and Seville headquarters of the Whites saying they had defeated the Reds. But the week brought one decisive action in Spain's bloody stalemate.
Ever since civil war burst over Spain, European military experts have been saying that a crucial test was whether the White forces of Generalissimo Francisco Franco would be able to take Irun on the French frontier and thus cut off the Madrid Government from receiving covert aid from the French Front Populaire.
In defending Irun the proletarian militia supporting the Government, which had been deserted by most of its Army, carefully mined the terrain over which it was thought Generalissimo Franco's forces must advance. This trap was betrayed to the White forces by their sympathizers in the Government camp fortnight ago, and last week they were able to avoid it and get down to straight fighting.
Untrained, the Government militia made such a mess of trying to use their artillery that finally a sympathetic French reserve officer undertook to direct their fire. The French Ambassador, bold Jean Herbette, meanwhile undertook to take out of Spain a mysterious individual whom the Red guards at the Spanish frontier viewed with so much suspicion that they threatened to open fire. Cried M. Herbette from his Ambassadorial car flying the Tricolor, ''Fire if you dare, Messieurs—upon the French Ambassador!" As the Reds hesitated he dashed to safety in France.
Next day the battle opened in earnest, with General Emilio Mola personally commanding the White forces against Irun. They advanced under withering fire and at the last moment the Communist defenders of Irun broke and ran but not the Anarchists. With their philosophy of "direct action" it seemed to defending Anarchists that the thing to do before giving up Irun was to set torches to this ''Wool Capital of Spain" and burn it to the ground. Newly famed Anarchist Buenaventura Durruti sounded the keynote when he cried ''We are not in the least afraid of ruins. It is we who built these palaces and cities here in Spain. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are going to inherit the earth. There is' not the slightest doubt about that."