Orwell in Spain

by George Orwell

  Actually I am quite ready to believe that in the main Mr. Jellinek is strictly fair besides being immensely well-informed. But in dealing with ‘Trotskyism’ he writes as a Communist, or Communist partisan, and it is no more possible for a Communist today to show common sense on this subject than on the subject of ‘Social Fascism’ a few years ago. Incidentally, the speed with which the angels in the Communist mythology turn into devils has its comic side. Mr. Jellinek quotes approvingly a denunciation of the P.O.U.M. by the Russian Consul in Barcelona, Antonov Ovseenko,7 now on trial as a Trotskyist!

  All in all, an excellent book, packed full of information and very readable. But one has got to treat it with a certain wariness, because the author is under the necessity of showing that though other people may sometimes be right, the Communist Party is always right. It does not greatly matter that nearly all books by Communists are propaganda. Most books are propaganda, direct or indirect. The trouble is that Communist writers are obliged to claim infallibility for their Party chiefs. As a result Communist literature tends more and more to become a mechanism for explaining away mistakes.

  Unlike most of the people who have written of the Spanish war, Mr. Jellinek really knows Spain: its language, its people, its territories, and the political struggle of the past hundred years. Few men are better qualified to write an authoritative history of the Spanish war. Perhaps some day he will do so. But it will probably be a long time hence, when the ‘Trotsky-Fascist’ shadow-boxing has been dropped in favour of some other hobby.

  Orwell was mistaken in thinking the Manchester Guardian correspondent was Jellinek. See his letter to Jellinek, 20 December 1938, below. On 13 January 1939, he wrote a letter of correction to the New Leader, which was printed under the heading ‘A Mistake Corrected’.

  In my review of Mr. Frank Jellinek’s Civil War in Spain I stated that Mr. Jellinek had expressed certain opinions which were in contradiction to one of his own despatches to the Manchester Guardian. I now find that this despatch was actually sent not by Mr. Jellinek, but by another correspondent. I am very sorry about this mistake and hope you will find space for this correction.

  1. Frank Jellinek (1908-75) was an American correspondent in London for the New York Herald Tribune and in Spain for the Manchester Guardian. See Orwell’s letter to Jellinek, below.

  2. The Paris Commune of 1871 (1937; reprinted 1973).

  3. Primo de Rivera’s government sold the Moroccan tobacco monopoly to Juan March Ordinas (1884-1962). See Thomas, 28.

  4. The ‘N’ document was a forged letter to Franco, purported by the Communists to be from Andrés Nin (see pp. 210 and 241, n. 6, above), a prominent member of the POUM, on which they based their charges of conspiracy between the POUM and Franco to justify their suppression of the POUM.

  5. Manuel de Irujo y Ollo was a Basque member of the Republican government, as Minister without Portfolio, from 25 September 1936, then Minister of Justice until he resigned in January 1938, remaining Minister without Portfolio. He had attempted to restore ‘normal justice’; see Thomas, 701, 778.

  6. ‘Barcelona after the Rising’, from ‘Our Special Correspondent’, Manchester Guardian, 26 June 1937.

  7. Vladimir Antonov-Ovsëenko was one of those listed by Thomas as having ‘either [been] executed or died in concentration camps’ following service in Spain. He was for a time rehabilitated, and his death was ‘regretted as a mistake, in passing, by Khrushchev in his speech denouncing Stalin in February 1956’; see letter from H.N. Brailsford to Orwell above, 17 December 1937, and n.i., and Thomas, 952.

  [466]

  Review of Searchlight on Spain by the Duchess of Atholl1

  Time and Tide, 16July 1938

  Although no one who publishes books at seven and sixpence a time (with a profit of ninepence to the author) can regard such a venture without alarm, the Penguin Library have shown admirable judgment in their choice of ‘specials’.2 The Duchess of Atholl’s Searchlight on Spain probably contains less original matter than Germany Puts the Clock Back or Mussolini s Roman Empire, but it is a worthy successor. As a short popular history of the Spanish war, simply written and well documented, it is not likely to be bettered until the war is over.

  Its chief virtue is that it is well-balanced and keeps the main facts in the right perspective. Its chief fault is the fault of virtually all books on the Spanish war – political partisanship. As I have pointed out elsewhere, there is not even among Government supporters one simple and generally-accepted ‘version’ of the Spanish war. The Loyalists include Socialists, Communists, Anarchists and ‘Trotskyists’ – one might add Basques and Catalans – who have never been in quite perfect agreement as to what the war is about. Every English writer on the Government side adopts more or less unreservedly the ‘line’ of one or other political party, and unfortunately he usually does so while claiming to be strictly impartial. The Duchess of Atholl follows the Communist ‘line’ throughout, and this fact should be borne in mind in reading her book. So long as she is dealing with the origins of the rebellion, with the military side of the war and the scandal of non-intervention, all is well; but I would be a little cautious about accepting her account of the internal political situation, which is one-sided and very much over-simplified.

  In her final chapter, ‘What it means to us’, she points out the probable consequence of a Fascist victory in Spain – that England may lose the command of the Mediterranean and France may be faced with another hostile frontier. This raises what is perhaps the most mysterious question of the whole Spanish war. Why has our Government behaved as it has done? Without any doubt the British Cabinet has behaved as though it wished Franco to win; and yet if Franco wins it may – to put it at its worst – mean the loss of India. The Duchess of Atholl states the facts but does not offer any explanation of Mr. Chamberlain’s attitude. Other writers have been less cautious. The real meaning of British foreign policy in the last two years will not become clear until the war in Spain is over; but in trying to divine it I believe it is much safer to assume that the British Cabinet are not fools and that they have no intention of giving anything away.3

  1. Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl (1874–1960; DBE, 1918), was trained as a musician, but devoted her life to public service. She became the second woman, and first Conservative woman, to hold ministerial office: Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education, 1924-9. She campaigned ceaselessly against cruelty in many forms and conducted a campaign in 1929 against the practice of female circumcision in Africa. Opposed to her party’s policy of appeasement of Hitler, she resigned her seat in Parliament in 1938 and campaigned, unsuccessfully, for re-election on a platform of resistance to Hitler.

  2. In November 1937, Penguin Books began a series of Specials – ‘books of urgent topical importance’. The first was an up-dated version of Edgar Mowrer’s Germany Puts the Clock Back; the second, February 1938, was Mussolini’s Roman Empire by G. T. Garratt; in the same month Blackmail or War? by Geneviève Tabouis, diplomatic editor of the Paris journal, L’Oeuvre. Tabouis (1892-1985) was a remarkably prescient international journalist. She correctly forecast on 9 July 1939 that the Soviet-French-British pact would not be signed, over a month before the British and French delegations arrived in Leningrad. A Soviet-German pact was signed on 24 August 1939 (see CW, XI/368, 389 and 398-9.) Searchlight on Spain (June 1938) was the fourth Special.

  3. Orwell also briefly reviewed The Civil War in Spain by Frank Jellinek, and Spain’s Ordeal by Robert Sencourt in this review; they are more fully reviewed above (and see 469 and 462). He again reviewed Searchlight on Spain in the New English Weekly, 21 July 1938 (469).

  [470]

  To the Editor, Manchester Guardian

  5 August 1938

  The same letter was sent by Orwell to the Daily Herald (a daily paper supporting the Labour Party) and the New Statesman & Nation . The latter acknowledged the letter but did not print it; the Daily Herald neither acknowledged nor printed it. For the vilification an
d suppression of the POUM and the torture of its leaders, see Thomas, Index, 1095

  ESPIONAGE TRIAL IN SPAIN

  ‘PRESSURE FROM OUTSIDE’

  August I.

  New Hostel, Preston Hall, Aylesford, Kent

  Sir, – News has recently reached England that a number of members of the Executive Committee of the Spanish political party known as the P.O.U.M. are shortly to be put on trial on the charge of espionage in the Fascist cause. The circumstances of the case are peculiar, and should, I think, be brought to public notice. The main facts are as follows: –

  In June, 1937, following on the fall of the Caballero Government, the P.O.U.M. was declared an illegal organisation and a large number of people were thrown into prison. Simultaneously the Spanish Communist party published accounts of what purported to be a ‘Trotsky-Fascist spy plot’ which was given wide publicity in the Communist press, though treated with reserve elsewhere. Later various delegations from France and England, two of them headed by Messrs. James Maxton, M. P., and John McGovern, M. P., visited Spain to inquire into the matter.

  It appeared that most of the leading members of the Spanish Government disclaimed not only all belief in the alleged plot but also responsibility for the arrest of the P.O.U.M. leaders, which had been undertaken on their own initiative by the Communist-controlled police. Irujo, the then Minister of Justice, Prieto, Zugazagoitia1 and others all took this line, some stated that they considered the P.O.U.M. leaders responsible for the fighting in Barcelona in May, 1937, but all declared the charge of espionage to be nonsensical. As for the main piece of evidence produced by the Communist press, a document known as the ‘N document’ and supposed to give proof of treasonable activities, Irujo stated that he had examined it and that it was ‘worthless’.2 More recently, in January, 1938, the Spanish Government voted by five to two in favour of releasing the P.O.U.M. prisoners, the two dissentients being the Communist Ministers.

  I think these facts should make it clear that this prosecution is undertaken not at the will of the Spanish Government but in response to outside pressure as a part of the world-wide campaign against ‘Trotskyism’. As Zugazagoitia put it in his interview with Mr. McGovern, ‘We have received aid from Russia, and so we have had to permit things we did not like.’3

  And there are other unsatisfactory features about the case. To begin with, the accused men have been kept in close confinement for thirteen months without the formulation of any clear charge and, so far as is discoverable, without facilities for legal aid. The advocate who at the beginning was engaged for their defence was violently attacked in the Communist press and later forced to leave the country. Moreover, a number of the people arrested have since disappeared in circumstances that leave little doubt as to their fate. Among these was Andrés Nin,4 who a short time previously had been Minister of Justice in the Catalan Generalidad.

  In spite of all this it now appears that the accused men are to be tried for espionage after all and that the ‘N document’, previously declared worthless’, is to be revived. I suggest therefore that it is the duty of all who call themselves Socialists to enter some kind of protest. I do not mean that we should protest against the Spanish Government’s trying its own political prisoners; obviously it has every right to do that. I mean that we should ask for a clear assurance that thèse men will be tried in open court and not in secret by a special tribunal set up for the purpose. Given an open trial and the absence of faked evidence or extorted confessions, those of us who happen to know something about the facts will have little doubt that the accused men can clear themselves. But that is a small matter compared with the preservation of ordinary justice, without which all talk of the ‘defence of democracy’ becomes entirely meaningless – Yours, &c,

  George Orwell

  1. Manuel de Irujo y Ollo, see p. 303, n. 5. Indalecio Prieto y Tuero (1883-1962) was a Socialist, Minister of National Defence in the Negrín government and a fountainhead of defeatism; see Thomas, 809. He founded the SIM, counter-espionage police of ill-repute, and died in exile in Mexico, Julián Zugazagoitia was editor of El Socialista and Minister of the Interior in Negrín’s government. He was shot after being handed over to the Gestapo in occupied France in 1940.

  2. For the ‘N document,’ see p. 303, n. 4.

  3. During a cabinet meeting, ‘Zugazagoitia demanded if his jurisdiction as minister of the interior were to be limited by Russian policemen’, according to Thomas. ‘Had they been able to purchase and transport good arms from US, British, and French manufacturers, the socialist and republican members of the Spanish government might have tried to cut themselves loose from Stalin’ (704).

  4. For Andrés Nin, see ‘Eye-Witness in Barcelona’, n. 6, above.

  [474]

  To Yvonne Davet

  18 August 1938

  New Hostel, Preston Hall, Aylesford, Kent

  Dear Comrade,

  I am writing in English this time. Very many thanks for your letter, and for several pamphlets, copies of La Fléche etc. I greatly hope you and your father have not been at too much trouble in enquiring about a house for us. We had intended to go to the south of France, but they now say I ought to spend the winter in Africa, so as far as we have any definite plan we are arranging to go to Morocco. The only difficulty I fear is that just possibly the French authorities might make difficulties about allowing us to enter Morocco. Normally there is a lot of tourist traffic there, but I suppose that if the European situation gets any more threatening they may object to the entry of foreigners. However, when we have fixed the date of leaving we will enquire at the French consulate before booking passages. I am keeping your father’s address in case we should have to consult him after all. We expect to leave England about the beginning of September.

  I hope all your trouble in translating the book has not been for nothing. I know it is terribly difficult to get anyone to publish translations nowadays. In England I don’t know how many books get translated from the French every year, but I doubt whether there are more than about three or four which have any success. I can also well understand that they don’t want books about the Spanish war. There have been so many, and most of them so bad. The trouble is that as soon as anything like the Spanish civil war happens, hundreds of journalists immediately produce rubbishy books which they put together with scissors and paste, and later when the serious books come along people are sick of the subject. Freda Utley’s1 Japan’s Feet of Clay, which you tried to get them to publish, had quite a success in England. As to my own book, I don’t know yet how it has sold. I should be disappointed if it sold less than 3000 copies, but I don’t suppose it would sell more than 4000. It had some good reviews, but the trouble is that books from small publishers never get the same amount of notice as the ones from the big publishers who buy up all the advertisement space. Possibly some paper would publish parts of it serially. I should hate to think of your having all that trouble for nothing. Certainly I would like it very much if Félicien Challaye2 saw it. I admired him very much for making a stand on behalf of the P.O.U.M. prisoners. I gather that the protests made from France have taken effect, as our latest news is that the Spanish Government has again postponed the trial and that one member of the Government (I suppose either Prieto or Irujo) declared that he would give evidence in favour of the P.O.U.M. prisoners. I wrote recently to three left-wing papers asking people to demand that they should be given a free trial, but only one paper, the Manchester Guardian, printed my letter. In private everyone says to me, ‘Yes, what you say is quite true, but it is not politic to mention it now.’ I have nothing but contempt for this attitude.

  There is not much news here. The general public is very little interested in the European situation, and I believe that if war were to break out in the near future the English people would refuse to fight, or at any rate would be very apathetic about it. The proposals for forming a Popular Front seem to have fallen through, though I think we may see some such combination on the eve of the next general ele
ction. In the form in which it was proposed in England it is a most pernicious idea, because the so-called Liberal party, with which it is proposed that the Labour Party should ally itself, represents some of the most powerful and reactionary sections of the capitalist class.

  I hope all goes well with you and that you will manage to find some more congenial and remunerative work.3 I will let you know later our date of departure and what our address will be abroad.

  Yours fraternally

  Eric Blair

  1. Orwell refers several times to Freda Utley (1898-1978). She wrote on China and Japan in the 1930s, in particular on the relationship of Lancashire to the Far East. In another letter to Davet (19 June 1939, see below), he refers to Japan’s Gamble in China (June 1938) and he recommended her The Dream We Lost: Soviet Russia Then and Now (1940). In September 1940, four months before her death, he read her account of her experience in the Soviet Union, Lost Illusions. He usually spelt her name Uttley.

  2. See p.273, n.i.

  3. Yvonne Davet (see headnote to ‘Eye-Witness in Barcelona, above) was in fairly desperate straits at this time; she was undertaking translations without certainty of payment or publication because of her belief in the value of what she was translating (private communication).

  [497]

  To Raymond Postgate

  21 October 1938 Typewritten draft

  Boîte Postale 48, Gueliz, Marrakesh, French Morocco1