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Sixty-two years ago Sebastian Pozas was born in Navarre, the province of General Franco's best Spanish fighters, the ardently royalist Carlist monarchists. Pozas' brother, a Rightist officer, was reported killed in the same plane crash with Franco's right-hand man, famed General Emilio Mola (TIME, June 14). A cousin, General Gabriel Pozas, is also fighting in the Rightist ranks. Leftist Sebastian Pozas has never concealed his disgust at Anarchists and other Leftist terrorists, did his best to suppress Leftist murder squads in Madrid in the earliest, bloodiest days of the war. In Morocco twelve years ago he and Francisco Franco were good friends, at a time when Franco and Miaja could not stand the sight of each other. On the Aragón front since last May, General Pozas has been able to: 1) bring the recalcitrant Catalans into the fight, 2) capture Belchite, and 3) hand over to his subordinate, General Rojo, the successfully prepared offensive which spectacularly took Teruel (TIME, Jan. 10, et seq.).
The People's Army now headed by General Pozas still lacks sufficient planes, heavy artillery and junior officers, but it has a unified organization, uniforms, better food than the civilians of Madrid or Valencia, at least five weeks' training of recruits before going into the lines (six months for officers) and a basic pay of ten pesetas a day (60¢). Three pesetas was the average pay of Spanish farm hands before the civil war. Leftist Spain confidently faces the new year with a new army.
Stalin's Generals. Not so confusing as it at first appears is the fact that Spanish Communists and the Soviet officials assisting them are doing everything in their power to prevent Leftist Spain from going too Red. Communism, by Steel Man Stalin's present definition, is primarily for Russian consumption. A Fascist Spain would be a tragedy for Moscow, but alienating France and Britain would be a tragedy too. To suit Stalin, the social revolution in Spain must wait or move slowly until threats of war to the Soviet Union from Germany and Japan are ended. Among the busiest of Russians in Leftist Spain are the secret agents of its Gay-Pay-Oo, whose job is ferreting out and suppressing troublesome Trotskyists.
The experienced generals from Russia, who have played a much greater part in the victories of the People's Army than the 5,000-odd Soviet Red Army soldiers now in Spain, are changed every few months, operate mostly under false names, keep in the background as much as possible. Many have not been of Russian nationality, one is known to have remarked with a grin, "I have five perfectly valid passports, one American." Veteran New York Times Correspondent Herbert L. Matthews names as non-Spanish Leftist Generals Kleber, Lukacs. De Gorieff (also called Van Rosen), Gall, Walter and an anti-Nazi German , General so leery lest his real name be found out that he is called only by the common Christian name of "Hans."
Correspondent Matthews relates in his Two Wars and. More to Come what efforts the Leftists make to have their offensives as Spanish as possible, records an instance in which he correctly deduced that a Leftist offensive was failing because only one day after it got going he found that a Russian general had already arrived at Leftist staff headquarters.