Spain and the World. Vol. 1, no. 21

              SPAIN AND THE WORLD
Vol. 1. No. 21.  LONDON, 13th OCTOBER, 1937
PRICE 2d.—U.S.A. 5 CENTS.
Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends — Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it ...
- Thomas Jefferson
The League Will Not Stop The Massacre Of The Innocent In Spain, China or Abyssinia. A Conscious, Militant Internationally Minded Working Class Only Can Save Them From - Annihilation By The Forces Of Reaction
EDITORIAL
DURING the last fifteen months numerous declarations by the worlds' politicians printed the fact that Fascist invasion of Spain would not be tolerated. These were the speeches in Parliament, to the Press and at the seat of the so-called League of Nations. On the other hand the Trade Union leaders adopted the attitude that intervention in Spain meant war.
It is with the latter remark that we are concerned. Politicians, representatives of Government are too well-known as the sources of fine, courageous words and underhand work, but the representatives of a workers' movement should at least
be divorced from all these methods of justifying an existence and several hundreds of pounds a year, and should openly work towards the achievement of a League of Nations of the working class. That is, the creation of an international movement so strong that aggressions such as we have witnessed during the last few years, and in which the civilian populations have been completely annihilated, shall be impossible.
This international solidarity is impossible at this juncture, as has been seen in Spain, because controlling the working class are elements which have been inebriated by the "rank" they hold in their organizations.
This solidarity is impossible now because the working class is still not allowed to think independently, but allows itself to be guided blindly, and so often in the wrong direction.
As an example we previously mentioned the Labour movement's excuse for shirking its responsibility towards Spain and Ethiopia by stressing the possibilities of an international War. In Spain today there is an International War, and few will be prepared to deny this fact. Germany and Italy have not only supplied arms for Franco but have sent battalions of men. This outrage did not stir up the British and French governments to the extent of declaring war. Italian submarines have been sinking merchant shipping and torpedoing British warships, and yet war was not declared. And now Mussolini and Hitler have sent a further supply of armaments, aeroplanes and men to Majorca to prepare to attack the Eastern coast of Spain simultaneously with the Rebel attack on the Aragon front. As a retaliation France promises to open the frontiers to the Spanish government ... but she has said that for a year now and nothing has been done yet.
Thus it can be seen that a handful of hard-boiled underhanded politicians have been able to betray the Spanish people fighting International Fascism in spite of the protests of all the world's proletariat. Why? Surely it cannot be said that the ruling class is more numerous than the workers' organizations. Neither can it be said that the company directors produce the arms, textiles, foodstuffs which go to arm and feed the people. Nor can it be said that politicians who advocate wars take an active part in them.
The answer is simple, and yet apparently so complex. Capitalists can supply the wealth in monetary form. Arms barons can supply the arms of destruction but at the base of everything, the virtual controllers of all, are the workers. In the factory and in the fields they are the producers. It is they who from the bowels of the earth obtain the raw materials required to make and to feed the machinery of industry. Catalonia has shown that the worker is more important than the factory owner or company chairman. And this is the arm of the workers, the basis of their international solidarity. It must exist today under the present regimes as it must exist in the society of the future. But this arm must be used at the right moment to achieve its maximum of effect.
The busmen for instance have achieved nothing by their sacrifice. It will take them five years to make up the money they lost during the few weeks' strike. The reason? Simply that at their head they had a reactionary who was far from representing their cause.
On the other hand one notes with a feeling of satisfaction that the bourgeois Government of Valencia was obliged to liberate Joaquin Ascaso (president of the late Council of Aragon) through threats that CNT would call a general strike if he were kept in prison any longer. Similarly world opinion has forced the Ogpu to liberate Erich Musehlm's widow who had spent many long months in Russian prisons.
These are but small indications of the strength of working class opinion. Still undeveloped. Its strength when each worker will sense his own personal responsibility in his organization and towards his fellow creatures can be but envisaged.
And it is towards this goal that the English working class must strive. The worker's movement must include quality with quantity. Then the results of the conflict in Spain would no longer be in doubt. Then Japanese aggression in China and Italian conquest of Abyssinia would be impossible. Then, and then only will we be moving towards a new social order, rather than patching up present society as our Trade Unions are actually doing. And as we move towards the new social order so will that sense of Justice and Liberty, apparently so lacking even in our working class movements, become deeply felt by one and all to the same degree as in Spain where our comrades prefer death to dictatorship and Church slavery.
After Fourteen Months Of Free Spain
By X.X.X.
WAS there ever a period so foolishly and tragically wasted for the cause of progress than the fifteen years since the end of the great War? Since then, we have reaped the fruits of the intellectual clumsiness and ethical sloveliness of these fatal years. The vindictive territorial rearrangements provoked intensified nationalisms, the scheming, plotting and preparing treachery of most European States and the race for armaments for the coming totalitarian, pan-destructive wars. Moreover the old routes of trade obstructed by the long war, were finally destroyed by the new frontiers, State rivalry, ambitions, emnity and impoverishment; the distress of most of the consumers and the increased output of the rationalised means of production created that permanent economic crisis, poverty and unemployment, which the present immense, but entirely unproductive international output of war materials is not alleviating in the least, but rather perpetuating, for peace, disarmament, under such conditions, would mean fresh ruin by unemployment - and war is ruinous as well, as we all know by this time.
If the great War was the product of an authoritarian age when competition and craving for riches and power finally led to the clashing in arms of ever so many opposing interests, the contending forces, Statal, economic, military and their ideologies could only produce dictatorial solutions, imposing the right of the strongest: but were these really all the vital forces of Humanity? That is the point, in my opinion.  At that crucial juncture, the real forces of Humanity were deficient, kept silent or were silenced and have not spoken up as yet, to this very day, to an appreciable and efficient degree. Humanity - that is at least that minimum of ethical conduct which permits social life and excludes the worst forms of cannibalism. It is science and technical skill which raise our conditions of life above those of the other animated inhabitants of this globe. It is labour which alone keeps up the standard of civic life which we enjoy. On this basis alone thought and art, beauty and comfort, ease and plenty can unfold. Whatever is the State contributing to all this? — the State which in the last analysis centres in a few men who are timid or cynical, clever or the reverse, disinterested or not, routine is made or capricious, just managing things or downright mismanaging them? Whatever is the contribution of the economic forces — the vested interests dating back from centuries of privilege, new riches based on monopolies of every description or arising from State supported competition? Or that of the military forces which from all eternity have never understood how to win a war so as to create real peace, but have always sown the seeds of new wars? Or that of parties, of religious, of national ideologies, all of which by their very existence perpetuate dissension and strife? As long as the life and death of every community is in the hands of these incorrigible wreckers of social life, situations like the present one, about the worst one can remember, are inevitable.
All this was felt or understood by many since the eighteenth century, but seldom expressed with that full vigour which we find as some of the writings of Godwin (Continued on Page 4, col. 4)
HAVE YOU SEEN THE LATEST FILM ON SPAIN?
"FURY OVER SPAIN"
— Turn to page 4
Nyon Pact In Force
Piracy Continues Unchecked
While the French Foreign Office is still waiting for Mussolini's reply — no longer with any illusions as to its contents —Italian authorities in the Balearics appear to be becoming more reckless every day.
Their latest exploit, as reported in to-night's Paris papers, has been to capture and force into Palma harbour the French cargo vessel Cassidaigne, sailing from Marseilles to Oran along the route prescribed under the Nyon Arrangement — a route 32 miles east of the Balearics. On Tuesday afternoon the ship was approached by two chaser 'planes, which, flying low, turned their machine-guns on the crew and signalled the order to proceed to Palma. The captain changed his course in accordance with these instructions, but slowed down at the same time and several messages were sent out, which were clearly received at Algiers but do not seem to have produced the desired effect of bringing immediate aid to the scene.
On nearing the Balearics the ship was approached by two gunboats and later by a destroyer, and was escorted by these into Palma harbour. According to the crew the destroyer was flying the Italian flag, as did also several other warships anchored at Palma. It was not until after an inspection of the ship by the rebel authorities, who carried away the wireless operator's book, and the arrival on the following afternoon of the French destroyer Fantasque that the ship was released.
(Manchester Guardian).