The offensive of the Spanish Rightist Armies—described as the greatest since the War — rolled on with increasing force and fury last week. What began three weeks ago as the "Aragon Offensive." with a width of some 60 miles (TIME, March 21), had now placed the Rightists in possession of the whole of Aragon and they were sweeping on against Catalonia and the onetime kingdom of Valencia on a front of 135 miles. The objective of this drive was to cut the head of Leftist Spain from the body, to decapitate rich, industrial Catalonia, in which is the Leftist capital Barcelona, and leave as the trunk that portion of Leftist Spain in which are Valencia and heroic Madrid, still uncaptured last week after 20 months of war.
With almost every hour last week the final Rightist motorized drive across the plains of Aragon moved so far forward that correspondents with the Leftists kept referring in their cables to its "bewildering swiftness." Filing their stories in towns which changed hands before the dispatches reached print, they could realize with full force that the People's Army was for the time being in outright flight, pursued by a Military Machine in which the preponderance of tanks, planes and artillery was overwhelming.
There is an end to the plains of Aragon, and this week the People's Army had fled into the uplands of Catalonia and Valencia. It remained to be seen if the Military Machine could effectively blast its way through the hills as it had on the plains. In the air Rightist supremacy was not unchallenged, but over many a Leftist town and city in the theatre of war the whole sky again & again filled last week with as many as 200 Rightist bombers, and while two or three might be shot down the other 197 dropped their cargoes of bombs unscathed, returned in a few hours with more death.
France to Fight? It was time for Soviet Russia, France, or any other great power favorably disposed toward Leftist Spain to pour in the heaviest supplies of war material, and in Paris detailed assertions appeared that unofficially this was being done last week, although the French Popular Front Cabinet still kept its frontier with Spain legally closed to munitions.
The Leftist Paris paper Ce Soir, while continuing its campaign of protest against the undoubted Italian and German aid to General Franco, abruptly came out last week with the joyous announcement that 55 motor trucks, loaded with a total of 920 tons of supplies for the Leftists, were speeding to Barcelona, and that eleven truckloads were on the way from Lille, six more from Belgium. Neutral and Rightist papers in Paris carried more of the same news, the Rightist press coming out with detailed charges covering almost every day in February and March—for example, that on March 12; four freight cars of machine guns and anti-aircraft guns, plus 38 cars of knocked-down tanks ready for assembly and other heavy equipment entered Leftist Spain from France.