(3 of 4)
When Ambassador Bowers and the senior staff departed for the pleasant waters of San Sebastian four weeks ago he left the huge cream-colored stucco Embassy in Madrid in charge of youthful Third Secretary Eric C. Wendelin. Suddenly Diplomat Wendelin found himself responsible for the lives & safety of 150 U. S. citizens seeking sanctuary. He had been able to lay in enough food for a two-week siege. Every jug, every tub was kept full of water in case the city supply should fail. The ballroom was turned into a dormitory for women. Men were bedded down in the garage. Efficient Mrs. Wendelin organized a corps of amateur cooks and took over the kitchen.
There for nearly a week the refugees stayed, in occasional telephone communication with Washington, but with no chance of leaving the city, as all railroad lines were cut. Secretary Wendelin had other worries. His ornate building, a mass of French windows and hence difficult to defend, stands directly on the broad Paseo de la Castellana, main road to the fighting in the North, down which looting troops, bitter in defeat or delirious in victory, might pour at any moment. Over the trees in the garden loomed the office building of the newspaper A.B.C., on the roof of which was a machine-gun nest that could sweep the entire Embassy garden. Finally after days of haggling a special train and an armed guard were provided for both British and U. S. refugees in Madrid. They were hustled off to Alicante to the east coast, there boarded a British destroyer.
Into the narrow French harbor of Port Vendres dashed an unarmed Spanish motorboat last week equipped with a camera and a telephoto lens. Rapidly it snapped pictures of Spanish refugee yachts anchored there, dashed back to carry the names of the renegades to Government authorities. One who took no such chance was Spain's first Constitutional President, tousle-haired Niceto Alcalá Zamora, whose dismissal four months ago was a major event leading up to the civil war (TIME, April 20). Last week he arrived with his family at Reykjavik, Iceland. Another method of avoiding assassination was adopted by onetime Premier Santiago Casares Quiroga. He enlisted as a private in the Civil Guard, toughest, best-equipped, best-drilled corps in Spain.
By week's end Fascist forces held all Spanish Morocco, Seville and about half of Spain's 50 provinces, mostly in the North. Government forces still held Madrid and Barcelona, had regained control of San Sebastian. Both sides maneuvered warily for a great battle for the mountain passes due north of Madrid last captured by Napoleon's lancers in 1808.
At Burgos the northern Fascist commanders proclaimed a provisional government in the shadow of the medieval Gothic cathedral. Its figurehead was not General Mola but bushy-chinned General Miguel Cabanellas Zaragoza. Wagging a warning ringer at newshawks General Cabanellas announced:
"There is one thing I would like to clear up. Our national movement is not a Monarchist movement and it is not Fascist either. All my life I have been a Republican and I intend to remain a Republican."
"Why is General Franco not in your Cabinet?" asked a British correspondent.
"We have been unable to communicate with General Franco," admitted General Cabanellas.