As to treachery, fraternisation, etc., there were just enough rumours about this to suggest that such things happened occasionally, and in fact they are inevitable in civil war. There were vague rumours that at some time pre-arranged truces had been held in no man’s land for exchange of newspapers. I do not know of an instance of this but once saw some Fascist papers which might have been procured in this manner. The stories circulated in the Communist press about non-aggression pacts and people coming and going freely between our lines and the Fascists were lies. There was undoubtedly treachery among the peasants. The reason why no attack on this front ever came off at the time scheduled was no doubt partly incompetence, but it was also said that if the time was fixed more than a few hours ahead it was invariably known to the Fascists. The Fascists always appeared to know what troops they had opposite them, whereas we only knew what we could infer from patrols etc. I do not know what method was used by spies for getting messages into Huesca, but the method of sending messages out was flash-lamp signalling. There were morse code signals at a certain hour every night. These were always recorded, but except for slogans such as Viva Franco they were always in cipher. I don’t know whether they were successfully deciphered. The spies behind the lines were never caught, in spite of many attempts. Desertions were very rare, though up to May 1937 it would have been easy to walk out of the line, or with a little risk, across to the Fascists. I knew of a few desertions among our men and a few among the PSUC, but the whole number would have been tiny. It is noticeable that men in a force of this type retain political feeling against the enemy as they would not in an ordinary army. When I first reached the front it was taken for granted that officer-prisoners taken by us must be shot, and the Fascists were said to shoot all prisoners – a lie, no doubt, but the significant thing was that people believed it. As late as March 1937 I heard credibly of an officer-prisoner taken by us being shot – again the significant thing is that no one seemed to think this wrong.
As to the actual performance of the POUM militia, I know of this chiefly from others, as I was at the front during the most inactive period of the war. They took part in the taking of Siétamo and the advance on Huesca, and after this the division was split up, some at Huesca, some on the Zaragoza front and a few at Teruel. I believe there was also a handful on the Madrid front. In late February the whole division was concentrated on the eastern side of Huesca. Tactically this was the less important side, and during March-April the part played by the POUM was only raids and holding attacks, affairs involving at most two hundred men and a few score casualties. In some of these they did well, especially the refugee Germans. In the attack on Huesca at the end of June the division lost heavily, 4–600 killed. I was not in this show but heard from others who were that the POUM troops behaved well. By this time the campaigns in the press had begun to produce a certain amount of disaffection. By April even the politically uninterested had grasped that except in their own press and that of the Anarchists no good would be reported of them, whatever their actual performance might be. At the time this produced only a certain irritation, but I know that later, when the division was redistributed, some men who were able to dodge the conscription did so and got civilian jobs on the ground that they were tired of being libelled. A number of men who were in the Huesca attack assured me that General Pozas7 deliberately withheld the artillery to get as many POUM troops killed as possible – doubtless untrue, but showing the effect of campaigns like that conducted by the Communist press. I do not know what happened to the division after being redistributed, but believe they mostly went to the 26th division.8 Considering the circumstances and their opportunities, I should say that the performance of the POUM militia was respectable though in no way brilliant.
* N.B. that these notes refer only to the POUM militia, exceptional because of the internal political struggle, but in actual composition etc. probably not very dissimilar from the other militias in Catalonia in the first year of war [Orwell’s handwritten footnote].
* My medical discharge-ticket, signed by a doctor at Monzón (a long way behind the line) about 18th June, refers to me as ‘Comrade Blair’ [Orwell’s handwritten footnote].
1. Orwell’s first wife, Eileen, died under anaesthetic in 1945. On 13 October 1949, he married Sonia Brownell in University College Hospital by special licence (because he was very ill, could not leave his bed and the hospital was not licensed for marriages). Sonia Brownell was born in Ranchi, India, some 250 miles from where Orwell was born (at Motihari). She died in 1980, by when she had created the Orwell Archive at University College London and done much to establish Orwell’s reputation. See CW, XX/3693 and 3736.
2. The relevant section of Homage to Catalonia is pp.169–90 [VI/188–215], (Appendix I; formerly chapter V). Hugh Thomas commented in a letter to the editors of The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (1968), Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus: ‘first, that the CNT and FAI were actually different organisations of which the latter was, broadly speaking, the leadership of the former, having been set up in the ’twenties to keep the CNT from revisionism. Secondly, where George Orwell said in Homage to Catalonia that the Communists’ viewpoint and the right-wing Socialists’ viewpoint could everywhere be regarded as identical, this was only the case for quite a short time, since Prieto, the leading right-wing Socialist, moved over into a very strong anti-Communist position quite soon. Thirdly, it is only very “roughly speaking” that the PSUC was the political organ of the UGT [the Socialist Trade Union]. Indeed, this is nearer a mistake than any of the other points, because the UGT was the nationwide labour organisation, admittedly led by Socialists, whereas the PSUC was simply confined to Catalonia.’
3. bandera : flag, colours or infantry unit.
4. Probably the soft-nosed or dum-dum bullet was meant, which expands on impact, with appalling effect.
5. ‘Since February [1937] the entire armed forces had theoretically been incorporated in the Popular Army [by the Government], and the militias were, on paper, reconstructed along Popular Army lines’ (Homage to Catalonia, p. 97 [VI/91].
6. Presumably ‘when’ is meant.
7. General Sebastián Pozas Perea (1876 – died in exile), a Republican, was Director-General of the Civil Guard, and Minister of the Interior for the Republicans in 1936.
8. Orwell probably meant the 29th Division.
[441]
To the Editor, The Times Literary Supplement
14 May 1938
Sir, – I know it is not usual to answer reviews, but as your review of my book Homage to Catalonia in The Times Literary Supplement of April 30 amounts to misrepresentation I should be greatly obliged if you would allow me space to answer it.
Your reviewer1 begins:–
[George Orwell] enlisted in the Militia, took part in the trench warfare round Huesca, was wounded, and after some disheartening experiences in the internal rising in Barcelona in May, 1937, was compelled to flee the country.
The implication here is, (a) that I had been wounded before the fighting in Barcelona, and (b) that I had to flee the country as a direct result of my ‘disheartening experiences’. As was made perfectly clear in my book, I was wounded some little time after the fighting in Barcelona, and I had to leave the country as a result of events which I set out at considerable length and which, so far as I know, had no direct connexion with my ‘disheartening experiences’.
The rest of his review is mainly an attempt to throw discredit upon the Spanish Militias who were holding the Aragón front with inadequate weapons and other equipment during the first year of war. He has distorted various things that I said in order to make it appear that I agree with him. For example:–
Discipline did not exist in the Militia: ‘if a man disliked an order he would step out of the ranks and argue fiercely with the officer’.
I never said that discipline ‘did not exist in the Militia’. What your reviewer failed to mention is that in the passage quoted (‘if a man disliked an order’,
&c.) I was describing the behaviour of raw recruits their first day at the barracks, when they behaved as raw recruits always behave, as anyone with military experience would expect.
Yours truly,
George Orwell
The reviewer replied:
Mr. Orwell is unduly sensitive. I stated that he was wounded in the trench warfare round Huesca and that he was compelled to flee the country after some disheartening experiences in the internal rising in Barcelona – all facts recorded at length in his book. If my necessarily brief sentence implied that he was wounded before the rising this was unintentional and does not seem to reflect on him or anyone else. I did not say he was compelled to flee because of his part in the May rising, or that there was any direct connexion between the two events. Actually, however, it seems clear that it was because Mr. Orwell was then, and subsequently, associated with the POUM organization, which was officially blamed for the rising, that he was obliged to leave the country.
Of the May rising and the subsequent period Mr. Orwell uses the words ‘concentrated disgust’, ‘fury’, ‘miserable internecine scrap’, ‘cesspool’, ‘disillusionment’ and ‘a depressing outlook’. If that is not disheartenment, what is?
Finally, as to indiscipline, it is a question of point of view. Mr. Orwell speaks of ‘a mob of ragged children in the front line’, one of whom threw a hand grenade into a dugout fire ‘for a joke’; of slapping generals on the back, of how when men refused to obey orders it was necessary to appeal to them in the name of comradeship, and of how ‘You often had to argue for five minutes before you got an order obeyed.’ He says further:– ‘Actually a newly raised draft of militia was an indisciplined mob… In a workers’ army discipline is theoretically voluntary,’ &c. He adds that ‘it is a tribute to the strength of revolutionary discipline that the Militias stayed in the field at all’.
On 28 May 1938, The Times Literary Supplement published a second letter from Orwell:
Sir, – I am very sorry to trouble you with this correspondence, but your reviewer has again resorted to misquotation. For example: ‘Actually a newly raised draft of militia was an undisciplined mob.’ In my book the sentence ran as follows: ‘Actually, a newly raised draft of militia was an undisciplined mob not because the officers called the privates “Comrade” but because new troops are always an undisciplined mob.’
By suppressing the second half of the sentence he has given it a totally different meaning; and similarly with various other statements which he has picked out of their contexts. As for his rearrangement of the order of events in the book, he pleads that his account was ‘necessarily brief’, this does not seem any reason for altering the chronology.
Yours truly,
George Orwell
1. Reviews in The Times Literary Supplement were then customarily unsigned. Records show that the reviewer was Maurice Percy Ashley (1907–94; CBE, 1978), journalist, author and historian. He was Winston Churchill’s research assistant in 1929, served in the Intelligence Corps, 1940–45, was Deputy Editor of The Listener, 1946–58 and Editor, 1958–67.
[445]
Sir Richard Rees to Orwell
25 May [1938] Handwritten
c/o Thos Cook & Sons, Place de la Madeleine, Paris
Dear Eric
I have just reached Paris from Barcelona1 and I learn by a letter from Eileen that you have been laid up since March 8 but are doing very well – which latter I am indeed glad to hear. I knew you had been ill, but didn’t realise it was ever since March 8 (before I left for Barcelona). If I had known then I would have tried to get in touch with you before leaving.
I have sent you a book, which I hope you will enjoy – Georges Bernanos’ Les Grands Cimetières sous la Lune.2 You will, of course, like me, be infuriated by his sentimentality. He’s a Royalist and his attitude to ‘les pauvres’ is imbecile. He says they must be ‘honoured’, as the middle ages honoured women, for their ‘faiblesse’. All the same, he’s a very good chap in many ways, as you’ll find if you persevere with the book. His, and his son’s experiences with the Phalangistess3 are in a way analogous to your experience with the P.O.U.M. The fascist treatment of the Phalanges corresponds very much to the C.P. treatment of the P.O.U.M. and the idealistic anarchists.
And, by the way, if you want to read another really good book on Spain – try Elliot Paul’s Life & Death of a Spanish Town.4 It is about the island of Ibiza before & up to the war and makes a good comparison to Bernanos, which is about the neighbouring island of Majorca and which, more or less, begins just where Elliot Paul’s ends, with the first fighting in the Balearic Isles.5 Both these books really are worth reading, and, with yours, they are the only books about Spain that can be said to be written by people with free (i.e. fundamentally honest, if often mistaken) minds. I read your book through at one sitting. It is painful reading, of course, but on the whole it convinced me that you were lucky, in spite of everything, to have got mixed up with the P.O.U.M. & not the C.P.
That short period when the untrained anarchist militia, almost unarmed, were holding the Aragón front, really was the only pure revolutionary experience of the whole sordid business.
However, even my own even more sordid though less exciting experiences were not without flashes of the same thing – and anyway I did not need convincing that ‘equality’ in the anarchist sense can work – though whether it ever will be allowed to in this world, God only knows. With all respect to God, I find it hard to believe that he will ever allow it to. I get more and more pessimistic.
Chamberlain6 is going to sell Spain & Eastern Europe to Fascism in return for a (temporary) immunity for the British Empire & British Capitalism.
During my last visit to Spain I felt ashamed of being English. In my more catastrophically gloomy moods (which are frequent) I find myself hoping that hell will break loose soon. After all, it would be better than a few more decades of ignominious security which Chamberlain hopes to buy by his concessions to Fascism. All the same, your description of hand-to-hand fighting convinces me I could never be a good soldier. I had plenty of bombing & shelling & was sometimes under rifle fire, and I saw plenty of violent death – and I found it all more or less bearable.
But I never had to experience anything like that raid you describe, when the white armlets failed to arrive and somebody said ‘couldn’t we arrange for the fascists to wear white armlets?’! I should never have enough aggressive spirit (i.e. courage) to get through an experience like that, sitting tight while being bombed or machine gunned from the air is quite a different matter and infinitely easier.
I hope you are comfortable and have plenty to read. Eileen tells me you have written a Peace pamphlet.7
I can’t imagine peace, I can only imagine negative war – i.e. the kind of peace you find in Paris & London when you return from Spain. And really I am not sure I don’t prefer war to that kind of peace.
But I suppose it is nonsense to talk like that, really.
Well, au revoir, and I hope you’ll find Bernanos interesting.
Yours Richard
1. Sir Richard Rees (1900–1970) had been an attaché at the British Embassy in Paris, 1922– 3, and Honorary Treasurer and Lecturer, London District of the Workers’ Educational Association, 1925–7. From October 1930 to 1937 he was editor of The Adelphi (1930–1932 with Max Plowman), and he introduced a more political and self-consciously literary tone to its pages. His generous nature is reflected in Ravelston of Keep the Aspidistra Flying. He gave much encouragement to Orwell in the thirties, was a partner to Orwell in his Jura farm, and he became, with Sonia Orwell, Orwell’s joint literary executor. He was a painter; among the books he wrote is George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory (1961). He served in the defence of Madrid, initially with the Communist Party, becoming unwittingly embroiled in ‘the political business’.
2. Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) was a polemical novelist whose passionate stance was expressed with subtlety. Les Grands Cimetières sous la Lune (1938; Englis
h title, Diary of My Times, 1938) fiercely condemns the atrocities committed in Mallorca by the Fascists and sanctioned by his, the Roman Catholic, Church. He is best remembered for his novel Journal d’un curé de campagne (1936; English title, Diary of a Country Priest, 1937), made into a prize-winning film by Robert Bresson (1950).
Orwell in Spain Page 39
