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The lights were burning late in El Pardo, the somber palace on the outskirts of Madrid. As he waited in the cold, cavernous halls hung with tapestries of medieval Spain, Generalissimo Francisco Franco might well have wondered if the lights of his destiny were also burning late. It was going on midnight when a motorcycle courier raced into the high-walled palace grounds, roared past the Moorish sentinels, and delivered the text of the Tripartite declaration. "It is hoped," London, Washington and Paris had broadcast, "that leading patriotic and liberal-minded Spaniards may soon find means to bring about a peaceful withdrawal of Franco. . . ."
Was this all? No call to the republican masses? No sanctions, economic or political? No threat of direct intervention? Nothing to follow up the French closing of the border? The Generalissimo and his advisers breathed a long sigh of relief.
In the next days Europe's No. 1 surviving Fascist breathed defiance. At Madrid's War Museum, he proclaimed again "the failure of liberalism [Anglo-American]." He assailed again "the strongest of tyrannies [Russia]." He played on Spanish national pride and long-deferred social hope: "The outside [world] is not important. We are looking to the inside. . . . We are going to make . . . a better social justice, which is the basis of prosperity of the people. . . . Do you think that God would permit barbarism and lack of gallantry in the country of Don Quixote?"
Not on a sorry steed but in a Packard limousine (he no longer uses a German Mercedes-Benz), the most unquixotic of Spaniards drove through his capital. His Sancho Panzas were red-bereted bodyguards armed with Tommy guns. A clamorous crowd was assembled to cheer his progress through the Puerta del Sol. They gave the Falangist salute. They chanted: "Franco! Franco! Franco!" They screamed: "Franco, yes! Russia, no!"
This noisy enthusiasm did not penetrate to the dungeons under the plaza, where some of the Generalissimo's 50,000 political prisoners were rotting.
What Next? On paper, Washington's indictment of Franco as the nonbelligerent lackey of Hitler and Mussolini was damning and determined. The Allied manifesto addressed to "leading" Spaniards was daring, high-principled and humane. But, as practical measures, what did they amount to? Would huffing & puffing blow Franco down? Would the brave words be buttressed by bold diplomacy? If so, would there be repercussions that might not only drive the Generalissimo from power but also upset still further the uneasy balance of Europe?
Wherever the West faced the Russians, its moral position was weakened by the embarrassing fact of Franco. Geographically and historically Fascist Spain was a responsibility of the Atlantic powers. If they could not get rid of the anachronism in Madrid, time might bring an opportunity for renewed Russian intervention, far to the west of the present Russian sphere.