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Barcelona correspondents got a more authoritative statement from Battalion Lieutenant Alvin Cohen: "Honeycombe behaved badly and ran away, finally coming to me in Barcelona, begging to be sent back to America. I threw him in jail instead, to think it over, and then sent him back to the Brigade. Now he has run away again." Lieutenant Cohen called the figure of 8,500 Americans killed, wounded and missing in Spain given by Mr. Honeycombe "highly exaggerated." Barcelona Correspondent Herbert L. Matthews again cabled as the total U. S. enrollment in the People's Army the figure of 2,000 he gave in his recent book Two Wars and More to Come (Carrick & Evans, $2.50). In this Timesman Matthews wrote: "The outcome of the Spanish Civil War is not going to be changed by the advent of some 2,000 or more Americans: it is in the United States that they will make their deepest mark."
European observers incline to believe that the Communist Internationale and its section, the American Communist Party, were instrumental in creating the Abraham Lincoln-George Washington outfit, but according to its members it arose spontaneously in Leftist Spain on Christmas Day 1936. Around a campfire were some 90 U. S. Leftists who had simply gone to Spain as individuals and they formed the nucleus of the Battalion. Its money-collecting Friends organized themselves in Manhattan on April 20, 1937. According to their latest balance sheet, they have raised $115,701.42 of which administrative expenses have consumed $13,830.97 and there has been disbursed to the Abies & Georgies $95,395.38.