We Saw Spain Die

by Preston Paul

  Jay dabbled with his books on nineteenth-century Spain, on his experiences in the German prison and on the Spanish Civil War. On 20 March 1943, it was announced in the New York Times that Jay Allen, recently returned from N. Africa, had delivered a book to Harpers which would be published by summer 1943 under the title The Day Will End: a personal adventure behind Nazi lines. This was clearly ‘My Trouble with Hitler’. Nothing more was heard of it. Apparently, dissatisfied with the editorial changes that Harpers had suggested, Jay had withdrawn the manuscript and continued to work on it. He and Ruth moved to Seattle during 1944 to take care of his father and his father’s estate. His spirits were sustained by the hope that, when Hitler and Mussolini were defeated, something would be done about the Franco dictatorship. He hoped to return to a free Spain, not least to collect the several thousand books that he had had to leave in Torremolinos when he had set off for Gibraltar in July 1936. His great hope was to see the Republic re-established and ‘to resume where we left off’. This he thought possible ‘if we keep our heads on our shoulders and realize that far more potent than the atom bomb for our defense would be a forthright, courageous policy of support, economic and political, in countries like Spain, where people have come to doubt our intentions’.103 When that did not happen, and the United States colluded in the survival of Franco, Jay essentially retired. What happened exactly remains a mystery but it appears that there were few commissions coming his way, because he seems to have been blacklisted. After his father died, he began to live off his inheritance. In 1946 he moved to Carmel, and remained there with frequent visits to New York.104

  In many respects, Jay Allen, the courageous journalist, disappeared. The defeat of the Spanish Republic, the attrition of trying to alert America to the danger of fascism, his experience in a Gestapo prison, and the anti-leftist backlash that poisoned American life in the late 1940s, all conspired to drain away his optimism and determination to go on fighting for what he believed in. His son wrote an article in which it is impossible not to see a reference to a downcast and disillusioned Jay:

  I knew men who fought to preserve the freedom of the Spanish Republic. Here were men who lived an ideal of democracy, freedom, opportunity. They saw a vision of a new Spain. And then Spain fell and with it their dreams. With the dreams were destroyed their lives. I was a small boy when that war was fought. Perhaps then the memory is stronger. My mind was less cluttered. I saw tragedy more clearly, so death was more vivid. Then there were those who sought to awaken America to the threat of Hitler’s fascism. They loved this country too much to see it betrayed to sordid fears and petty ambitions. They saw that our borders lay on the Rhine and that our hopes were centred in Paris as well as Milwaukee. But they too went down. Premature anti-fascists they were called.

  Similarly, he was surely thinking of his father when he wrote of the pain of those ‘who nursed the sorrow of blunted goals. These were men who watched their most cherished desires disintegrate piece by piece.’105

  It was a feeling that seemed to grow as Jay worked on a book about the Spanish Civil War in an attempt to explain what he and others had been fighting for. He wrote to Negrín, along with a lengthy series of detailed queries which revealed just how closely they had worked during the war: ‘My trouble has been due in part to something Ruth calls defeatism. I don’t care for her choice of words but – need I explain?’ He went on bitterly: ‘I made a serious mistake going to North Africa and passing up a fat lecture season in 42–43. I have never recovered financially from this. I had the quaint idea that I was serving my country. Imagine!’106 Explicitly, Michael Allen wrote of Jay: ‘My father was a journalist who breathed the air of Spain until it became his country too. Loyal to his nation and all her hopes, he fought for the Spanish Republic. At a very early age I saw the fullness of life reflected in my own home – the fullness that comes alone from dedication to some ideal beyond our limited beings.’107

  Throughout this time, Jay dabbled in his ongoing interest in nineteenth-century Spain. He told Bowers in 1948 that he was writing a life of Isabel II and again in 1957. However, as with the book on the Spanish Civil War, his perfectionism stood in the way of completion. His research was meticulous but he dithered about sending Bowers a couple of chapters: ‘I never seemed to get them into good enough shape. I value your opinion highly and I’d rather pass for a sluggard than for a no account historian.’ He and Ruth put a great effort into helping their friend Margaret Palmer, who had lost everything in Spain and was destitute.108

  In the 1960s Jay watched the revival of interest in the Spanish Civil War stimulated by the publication of Hugh Thomas’ book. Interested only in seeing the truth, he urged Herbert Southworth to send Thomas a copy of his manuscript on the activities of the African columns as they occupied Badajoz. Thomas had consulted Southworth in the preparation of his book but, surprisingly, not Jay Allen: ‘You are the person to get in touch with him. Despite the suggestions of Ham Armstrong and others he never did look me up.’ He was somewhat hurt, but concerned only that Thomas be given the means of getting his facts right: ‘I would find it difficult to write Thomas out of the blue. “Pride” maybe.’ In fact, thinking about Thomas’ book resuscitated regrets that he had never properly finished his own book, of which the splendid section on Badajoz might have formed part. He dabbled with some of his notes in the light of Thomas’ text and even wrote to Herbert about whether it was worth trying to do something substantial with the ‘Chronology’.

  In fact, his heart was not in finishing the book. His depression at what he perceived as the endless betrayals, the American arms embargo, Munich, defeat of the Spanish Republic, stood in the way. Just as his experiences in Vichy had undermined his enthusiasm for publishing My Trouble with Hitler, now he could not summon the energy to finish the Spanish Civil War project. One difficulty was that he had agreed to a request from the Hoover Institution at Stanford to deposit his considerable library on Spain there. Apparently, Princeton University wanted to buy it for a considerable sum but, living in Carmel, California, ‘I preferred to have it where I could conveniently consult it and so gave it to Hoover. When I diffidently raised the question of remuneration, they seemed shocked. “But we never pay for such collections!” My collection is hidden away in a cellar.’109 In a letter to Herbert, he made a sad and revealing comment that applied not just to the book but to his political activities on behalf of the Republic:

  Looking back (which I do frequently but not too often lest I cut my throat) I realize that I was hideously at fault in not finishing it. But what good would it have done, except to my morale and that of my friends? As I said at the time, it was like repapering the inside of a barrel going over Niagara. As you know Munich spelt doom to me and I wasn’t far wrong.110

  Nevertheless, Jay could never entirely put aside the idea of doing something on the Spanish Civil War. He was greatly inspired by Herbert’s two books, El mito de la cruzada de Franco and Antifalange, the latter of which was dedicated to him. In letter after letter to Herbert, he talked of what he had seen in Badajoz and his distress that he had been doubted. He was also inspired by Herbert to think in terms of doing something with the ‘Chronology’. In late 1967, he started to work on a resumé of it with a view to sending it to Herbert for him to correct.111 Jay never did finish the great book on the Spanish Civil War. He faced money problems. Somewhat envious of the huge sums made by friends like John Gunther and William Shirer, he wrote to Herbert: ‘Money, money, money. Why don’t we ever get our hands on it in any sizeable sums? John Gunther says that I have the Midas touch in reverse. Everything I touch turns to pennies.’112 Jay’s health deteriorated and he wrote to Herbert on 28 May 1967 that he had lost thirty pounds in weight. He had the first of a number of increasingly debilitating strokes in the early summer of 1968. He wrote to Herbert that it had affected his left side and his voice box. He continued to keep abreast of publications on the war and went on tinkering with the manuscript of the Chronology, which he was surprised to find
more incomplete than he had remembered.113 It was eventually donated to Brandeis University. He had another stroke in the autumn of 1972 and yet another in December. He died five days before Christmas. Ruth wrote to Herbert: ‘It broke my heart to have Jay go without ever having put his vast knowledge of Spain into printable form.’ In response, Herbert made considerable efforts to find a publisher for My Trouble with Hitler, and Ruth worked hard to piece together into a coherent whole the many versions and amendments left by Jay. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find a publisher prepared to undertake what she called ‘the enormous editing job necessary’.114 Consequently, the most substantial literary monument to Jay Allen remained his newspaper articles during the Spanish Civil War.

  PART THREE

  AFTER THE WAR

  10

  The Humane Observer: Henry Buckley

  It is said that when Hemingway returned to Madrid after the civil war, he would always turn to Henry Buckley in order to find out what was really going on in Franco’s Spain.1 When Hugh Thomas published his pioneering and monumental history of the Spanish Civil War, he thanked Buckley for allowing him ‘to pick his brains remorselessly’.2 William Forrest, who was in Spain during the war, representing first the Daily Express and later the News Chronicle, wrote that ‘Buckley saw more of the Civil War than any foreign correspondent of any country and reported it with a scrupulous adherence to the truth that won the respect even of those who sometimes might have preferred the truth to remain uncovered’.3 Henry Buckley may not have written any of the most famous chronicles of the war, like Jay Allen’s account of the massacre of Badajoz or George Steer’s account of Guernica. Nevertheless, in addition to his sober news items throughout the war and to the help freely dispensed to less experienced colleagues, he did produce one of the most enduring records of the Spanish Republic and the civil war, a monumental testimony to his work as a correspondent.

  Henry Buckley’s Life and Death of the Spanish Republic constitutes a unique account of Spanish politics throughout the entire life of the Second Republic, from its foundation on 14 April 1931 to its defeat at the end of March 1939. Here was a book that covered the entire period, combining personal recollections of meetings with the great politicians of the day with eye-witness accounts of dramatic events, and recounted the complex experience in vivid prose laced with humour, pity for human suffering and outrage at those whom he considered to be responsible for the tragedy of Spain. It summed up his work as a correspondent during the Spanish Civil War representing the Daily Telegraph. It was an ironic commentary on the experiences recounted in the book that, not long after it had been published in 1940, the warehouse in London containing stocks of the book was hit by German incendiary bombs and all the unsold copies were destroyed.

  Henry Buckley was born in Urmstow near Manchester in November 1904 and, after stints in Berlin and Paris, he had come to Spain to represent the now defunct Daily Chronicle. He returned to Spain after the Second World War with his Catalan wife and lived in Spain until his death. Despite his record as a fervent supporter of the Second Republic, he managed to go back as a correspondent after the Second World War. Ironically, he was regularly received by General Franco in the formal audience granted annually to the Foreign Press Association.

  Henry Buckley was a devout Roman Catholic, with radical social instincts. It was human empathy, rather than ideology, that accounted for his support for the struggles of the industrial workers and the landless peasants in the 1930s. This is something that is clear throughout his book. As befitted a conservative, he was an enormous admirer of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, whom he once passed on one of his nocturnal strolls: ‘This very great Andalusian gentleman’ – ‘Rather than a dictator, Primo was a national Father Christmas’. He disliked Alfonso XIII – ‘his face showing cleverness, cunning perhaps, but not intelligence’ – and that was partly because he felt that the King had betrayed Don Miguel Primo de Rivera. Buckley was a determinedly honest man. He liked the dictator’s son, José Antonio, although he was disturbed by the paid thugs who belonged to the Falange, he sympathized with Franco’s brother-in-law, Ramón Serrano Suñer, and didn’t really like the Republican leader, Manuel Azaña.

  He was disappointed by his first sight of Spain, and by the shabbiness and poverty of the peasants, yet was also fiercely self-critical of the complacency implicit in reporting on a country of which he knew nothing in 1929. He writes throughout with a humorous awareness of his own deficiencies, describing himself, on leaving Paris for Madrid, as ‘a rather crotchety and thin-blooded virgin’. His eye for female beauty is always open but tempered with a sense of his own male ridiculousness. He tells us of a German girlfriend who fainted in his arms every time he kissed her: ‘a result due I am afraid to her weakness of heart and not to my prowess in this direction’.4

  Buckley may have been ignorant on his arrival, but he set out to learn and learn he did. Initially, he was working as stringer for Jay Allen, who was the principal European correspondent for the Chicago Daily Tribune and was based at the time in Paris.5 Henry Buckley disliked Madrid as ‘bleak and draughty and monotonous’, and was outraged by a situation in which ‘one million Spaniards live at the expense of the rest of the nation’. Yet, as is shown by his account of the siege of the capital during the war, he came to love the city and admire its inhabitants. It seemed like a conservative Englishman speaking when he said: ‘I feel that the democratic system adopted by the Republic when King Alfonso left the country was in no small part responsible for Spain’s tragedy’. But it was soon apparent that his view was based on the rather radical belief that the Republicans were insufficiently dictatorial to engage in a thorough reform of the country’s ancient economy.6

  The overwhelming value of his wonderful book is that it provides an objective picture of a crucial decade of contemporary Spanish history, based on an abundance of the eye-witness material that only a really assiduous resident correspondent could garner. Perceptive and revealing anecdotes abound. With Republican crowds surging through the streets of Madrid, Buckley, waiting in the bitter cold on the night of 13 April outside Palacio de Oriente, asks a porter what the Royal Family was doing: ‘I imagined its members in anxious conclave, calling up friends, consulting desperately. The answer was calm and measured: “Their Majesties are attending a cinematographic performance in the salon recently fitted up with a sound apparatus.”’ On the next day, he witnesses the then unknown Dr Negrín calming an impatient crowd by arranging for a Republican flag to be draped on a balcony of the Palacio de Oriente. In Chicote’s bar in the Gran Vía, ‘a polished British-public-school-educated son of a Spanish banker tells him “the only future the Republicans and Socialists will have will be on the gallows or in gaol”’. In the autumn of 1931, he sees the wife of Niceto Alcalá Zamora refused entry to the Palacio de Oriente on the day of her husband’s investiture as President of the Republic, something which he sees as emblematic of the status of women.7

  One of the greatest joys of Buckley’s prose is to be found in his immensely perceptive portraits of the major political and military figures of the day. Buckley’s knowledge led to perceptions which have profoundly coloured the later judgements of historians. On Julián Besteiro as President of the Cortes, whose misguided judgements stood in the way of agrarian reform, he wrote with mordant irony: ‘he showed fine tolerance, quick to hurry to the support of the weak – in this case the representatives of feudalism who had ridden rough-shod over their opponents for many a century’. In the aftermath of the massacre by security forces of anarchist peasants at Casas Viejas in the province of Cádiz on 8 January 1933, Buckley describes Carlos Esplá, then subsecretario de Gobernación, as a ‘superlatively inefficient and muddle-headed Republican’, and goes a long way to explaining the weakness of the Republic because of its politicians’ inability to deal with the highhanded brutality of the Civil Guard. Despite lack of sympathy for his politics, Buckley admired the political efficacy of the CEDA leader, José María Gil Robles – �
�truculent, forceful, an excellent executive and with considerable judgement in men and politics’. In contrast, he saw Largo Caballero’s alleged revolutionism in 1934 as utterly false. He referred to General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano as ‘an excitable and irascible officer’ and described Alcalá Zamora’s vacuous oratory in satirical terms.8

  Henry Buckley knew every politician of note in 1930s Spain. Cedric Salter, who also wrote for the Daily Telegraph, visited Madrid in the spring of 1937 and wrote later of a meeting with Buckley, whom he described as ‘small, observant, with a one-sided smile and a passionate admiration for Negrín’.9 Buckley certainly admired Negrín, but he was utterly bowled over by Dolores Ibárruri. After meeting her in Valencia in May 1937 and being subjected to a passionate harangue, he wrote: ‘But what a woman! She was, I think, the only Spanish politician I ever met; and I think I know most of those who have any call on fame during this generation, and she is the only one who really did impress me as being a great person.’ He liked Indalecio Prieto and admired his untiring work as minister during the civil war, but was aware that not all of his feverish work was as productive as it might have been since he insisted on dealing with every minor detail, even to the extent of personally examining journalists’ applications for visits to the front. Buckley notes with exasperation how Prieto’s secretary, Cruz Salido, simply referred everything back to Prieto.10