Babies, Bombs & Battleships

Unshaven, mud-caked, a treasured cigaret drooping from his mouth, a Rightist Spanish staff officer grinned toothily at a knot of foreign correspondents in Irun.

"We shall be in Bilbao any day, any hour," he boasted. "Eight thousand Italians and Germans are leading the advance, and this time we are mixing the Germans in with the Italians just so the Italians will not repeat the Brihuega adventure."

Spaniards are poor marksmen and worse at close order drill, but they do not run away. Not in all the nine months of Spain's civil war has there been anything on either side to match the complete rout of the Italian divisions at Brihuega, and Rightist General Franco and his German and Italian backers were bound to make that defeat good last week. More than prestige was at stake in the attack on Bilbao. Bilbao captured should give the Rightists control of the Biscay coast, remove serious military pressure on their rear, allow thousands of men to be transferred to the siege of Madrid. Most important of all it would bring Franco and his Nazi and Fascist backers the most valuable iron deposits in Spain.

Early in the week the Irun staff officer's complacence seemed fully justified. Durango fell, mile after mile the Basques fell back with little artillery, no foreign technicians and practically no air force, fell back again & again toward a triple ring of concrete trenches, last stand in defense of their capital. Then two things happened, both in the air.

So heavy were Leftist losses in the recent surprise offensive around Madrid that the Valencia Government could not spare a single division to help their Basque allies last week. They could spare some planes, 32 of them with Russian and French pilots arrived at Bilbao to help the defense.

Guernica, Rightist planes attacking Bilbao under General Emilio Mola were German Heinkel and Junkers bombers, proven inferior to the Russian planes called chato (snub-nosed) by the Loyalists. On the advice of German aviators and with the approval of Generalissimo Franco, General Mola ordered the stupidest move of his entire military career: a punitive air raid on Guernica, 12 miles northeast of Bilbao.*

Guernica, a village of 10,000 souls, has a small munitions factory and barracks on its outskirts. Guernica is also the traditional capital of the Basques. To this town Spanish sovereigns, including Ferdinand & Isabella, went to swear by the stump of an ancient oak tree to protect the ancient privileges of the Basque people. The tree of Guernica is prominent on the Basque flag. Basque deputies met biennially in their "Holy City" to legislate.

Last week the German planes came over in waves, blasting the houses from their foundations with heavy bombs, loosing showers of glittering two-pound aluminum incendiary bombs to turn the "Holy City" to a furnace. Skimming the roof tops, fighting planes followed with all machine guns popping, harrying terrified peasants through the fields, sending them sprawling in their own blood. Over 800 men, women and children were killed. The munitions factory and barracks, untouched, were later seized by advancing Rightist infantry.

Said Catholic Canon Alberto Onoindia of Valladolid Cathedral:

"I saw the bombing and burning of Guernica, one of the terrible crimes of this age. I walked through streets thick with blood, and saw bodies of the dead, many of them dismembered. There were bodies of old men, women and children.

"And behind the carnage of German aviators I saw the blood-crazed Moors move through another town at night, raping wives and daughters of the innocent. . . . Now I am going to try to see the Pope and beg him to intervene ... in the hope that he can obtain a promise from the Rebels to renounce this warfare against the civilian population."

To the world President Jose Antonio de Aguirre y Lecube of the Basque "Autonomous Republic" sent this message:

"Is it permitted to exterminate a people that has as its cherished motto the defense of its liberty and its traditional democracy --that is symbolized by its centuries-old tree? I wish to believe that nations will aid the more than 300,000 women and children that are taking refuge in Bilbao. We ask nothing for men, for, filled with determination to defend the liberty of our country, we shall make the greatest sacrifices with serene spirit and tranquil conscience."

So saying, valiant President Aguirre took leave of his wife and two children, who fled forthwith on a British destroyer to Saint-Jean-de-Luz. At Biarritz, Mme Aguirre had for sorrowful company the families of other Basque leaders who had preceded her to safety.

Reactions. News of the massacre of Guernica startled all Europe. French Leftists sent an appeal to President Roosevelt to intervene. In the House of Lords elderly Viscount Cecil of Chelwood cried: "There is no precedent in the history of civilized nations for anything like this raid. Let me repeat that there are rumors that it is to be followed by a similar attack on Bilbao!"

Cried Laborite Arthur Henderson in the House of Commons: "These massacres were caused by German machines driven by German pilots."

In the U. S. news of Guernica inspired normally cool Columnist Dorothy Thompson as follows:

"In every great struggle there comes a point where minor issues are sloughed away. . . . That point has come in Spain. It is no longer possible for any human being with a head on his shoulders coolly to debate the pros and cons of Loyalists versus Rebels. For what is now happening there is the ruthless, coldblooded, vicious extermination of one of the rare peoples of the earth, the Basques. . . . This little people is one of the few rare and absolutely pure races left in Europe, having a beautiful language and literature, beautiful bodies and faces, a people proud, independent and free, whose history is as old as Europe's, and who, during all its centuries, have minded their own business, tilling the soil, building a domestic architecture of purest design and exquisite proportions, and churches which are among the gems of civilization. They are Catholics of deepest piety, and Ignatius Loyola, founder of that most intellectual of Catholic orders, the Society of Jesus, is their son. ... To sit by and not to protest with all the breath in one's body rules one out of the ranks of civilized and Christian society. . . . Good God! The game laws of most of our States prohibit the shooting of birds from airplanes. It is unsports-manlike."

Espana. British freighters meanwhile were running General Franco's blockade of Bilbao with impunity, making preparations to evacuate as many women and children as possible to France, England and Scandinavia. Out of Bilbao harbor last week came the British freighter Knitsley, loaded with Basque iron ore for Welsh steel mills. Six miles offshore the Rightist destroyer Velasco and the Espana, only battleship in General Franco's navy, steamed up, the Velasco firing shots across the Knitsley's, bow. With helm hard alee the Knitsley started to run back to the shelter of nearby Santander, still held by Leftists. High in the air there suddenly appeared a flight of Leftist bombing planes. The 15,45 2-ton Espana was launched 24 years ago, but she had been recently fitted with new German anti-aircraft guns. Watchers on shore could see them go into action, white woolly puffs bursting all round the circling bombers. What happened next was a splendid moot point for naval historians. Loyalists say one of their air bombs plopped straight down the Espana's funnel. Rebels insist that the Espana struck a floating mine. In any case, up she blew and in 45 minutes sank by the stern to the bottom of the Bay of Biscay. Of her crew, normally 854 officers and men, no were rescued by the Velasco. Fishing boats searched the area for hours, found not a body or a survivor but other things: several German newspapers, the captain's cap, an officer's jacket, the Espana's, logbook. Its last entry:

"Have sighted an English ship. Proceeding to investigate."

The loss of the Espana swung the balance of sea power from Rightists to Leftists. Spain's only other battleship, the-Jaime Primero, is in Leftist hands.

It also greatly strengthened Leftist morale. The Basque lines again held firm, pushing back General Mola's men at several points. Then came a bit of news even more galling to the pride of Benito Mussolini than the rout at Brihuega. In an attempt to encircle Bilbao Italian troops pushed ahead. One Italian brigade reached the port of Bermeo eight miles from the capital on the Biscay coast, captured it. Here they were counterattacked by Basque militia, for the most part fishermen and their armed wives. When the Italians broke ranks, the bloodthirsty fishwives chased them into houses, beat them, threw them out of windows. Many escaped by jumping the sea wall, swimming two miles to the eastern shore of Guernica Inlet.

-"Pertinax," foreign editor of the Echo de Paris, announced last week that orders for the massacre of Guernica came direct from Hermann Wilhelm Goring, anxious to show the unconvinced German general staff what his air force could do. No source for this interesting theory was given.

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