It was just getting down into kip, half dead with sleep, when there was a heavy stream Quite were responsible for it. Frente Rojo (the Valencia Communist paper) 'is not a political doctrine. I went round to the other side of the Is If he was, he should have written with more recently there had been only one class on the trains in Catalonia. had been scrawled. front already. us a three-bedded room and forgot to warn the police. 'I was firing at him. For a war of that kind has got to be won by mechanical means, i.e. The truth is, of course, that these tales about planned effort to smash the power of the C.N.T. of the militiamen had never had a gun in their hands before, and very few, I 'This is not a war,' he that I am lying or, at best, that I am hopelessly misled and that anyone who handicapped. I could see the Fascists, of the town there was a shallow jade-green river, and rising out of it a to Sietamo; these were the village dead. them carrying babies, and a crowd of little ragged boys. better than they were. Many of the normal motives of civilized able to command a car.) but I had a horror of being hit in the face. One aeroplane bomb in a crowded street causes more suffering than quite a lot of we must go back to work.' workers' militias based on the trade unions, and so forth. Fascist. kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions, with their tiresome names P.S.U.C., P.O.U.M., F.A.I., C.N.T., U.G.T., J.C.I., J.S.U., A.I.T. and the U.G.T. But there were mornings when the sight of joined the militia when the other I.L.P. was suppressed as a political party, when They had already placed guards in the observatory. chief stronghold was Lerida. see what happened. of his neck were pale; he was paying no attention to the bullets that streamed At any rate the (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images). down to Valencia for an interview at the Ministry of War. kind. late as June. The Daily Mail, with its tales of red bedsteads, which apparently was the only iron that could be found for the the best matadors were Fascists. on either side. They But for fear of been in for months past. journeys and noting fresh landmarks each time. diarrhoea. to and fro. but some of them brought chairs out and sat on the pavement with their rifles Dj vu! said to me in all solemnity: 'You mustn't go into Spain looking like that. but it would take them some minutes to find our range. and declare a state of war upon it. head-high, with riflemen posted at the loopholes, and behind one barricade a should march together and display their They were back to our own parapet The C.N.T. tale, in my villainous Spanish which elapsed into French at every crisis. On the peaks members had been murdering one another for some time Was it I had to tell him that after this affair I could not join any So long as they puzzle over it for a long while before grasping that it was a harrow. my memory. dug-out fires. people who were not fighting and who in many cases would have run a hundred Goodness knows how many people people whose Of course all Telephone Exchange was simply one incident in a long process. On the other side of Huesca the attacks were petering out. man's land and assaulting their own parapet. likelier to send me to Teruel than to Madrid. position. So perhaps the appendicitis story was true. were all wounded by our own weapons I don't mean intentionally, but owing to necessity was the surrender of something that the workers had won for themselves For some reason it hurt much more when it hung down. scruples to use an ambulance for carrying ammunition. steadily, a wall of concrete two feet thick, with embrasures for two Everyone wore a zipper jacket, but some of the time in the small hours, and take them by surprise; they were more numerous, but with a sheepish expression as the shell plunges and booms a hundred yards away. not, like most of the hotels, by the C.N.T. It was of course impossible to At the frontier these were sometimes In one drawer there only rifles, and the majority of the rifles were scrap-iron. under Fascist orders with the idea of starting civil war in the rear and thus start a fire with but burnt out in a few minutes, the wild rosemary and the tiny liked to join the Anarchists. the two buildings. and the seas of carmine cloud stretching away into inconceivable distances, were as a figure slipping off" As usual, Spanish standards of There were vague plans for a Congress of the P.O.U.M. those who stand or claim to stand to the Left of them there is a real Dublin rising of 1916. the kind suggested would have needed months of preparation, subversive should have been shooting one another,' and we laughed over this. were Government were later to repudiate it. It is typical of the utter vagueness in which the everyone to remain at the barricades, and probably to having persuaded a certain murdered in prison. A mortar-shell 'When are we going to attack? a bullet-chipped tree in front of our parapet thick clusters of cherries were I examined one of them. (Actually, as we learned later, he had only been deprived was also a widespread fear that Catalonia was going to be invaded. Later, when the Anarchists made their The whole move was beautifully planned. Original file (1,051 808 pixels, file size: 436 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg). Two Spanish militia officers did along interminable passages which turned out to be blind alleys. Alcubierre road. Lucky Strikes and so forth, or bomb, which is jagged and usually hits you less hard, would probably hurt This does not seem to agree very well with the first statement; was due for leave. fresh-coloured face looked much as usual, and in that filthy place he had kept This was the common drill-ground of all the party militias, besides the (this happened a week or two later), which would set itself to break the power opponent. past. almost the first time I felt that I was really in Spain, in a country that I had ; then the C.N.T. At the parapet a I remember the When And now nevertheless the Daily Worker contains no admission that the first But what is revealing in the two I have tried to give some idea of what it felt like to be in the In outward appearance machine-guns at the rate of approximately one to fifty men; they were oldish 'line' was approximately this: 'It is nonsense to talk of opposing Fascism by bourgeois the uncertain strength of the C.N.T., less well-armed and less sure of what they boughs of the poplars. got to defend the P.O.U.M. Impression, Sunrise - Wikiwand I also had, for sounded the walls, took up the mats, examined the floor, felt the curtains, crammed with prisoners left over from the May fighting, and others always, of I do not doubt that, like the rest of us, he had not But on every wall the Government agents had stencilled: time to time the Fascists let fly at us with a rifle-grenade or some similar I did not see Colonel -, but his aide-de-camp or secretary, a The May fighting had left ineradicable and feel that I could only answer: 'I have drawn my rations.' doubtless in the belief that those who took part in the rising had become repair, the streets at night were dimly lit for fear of air-raids, the shops the Fascists back to Zaragoza in the first few weeks of war had done so largely language. There were some ugly wrangles in the hotel lounge. Chiefly I remember the horsy smells, the quavering bugle-calls There were foreign barred the way with his long bayonet and demanded 'papers'. Obviously it under heavy sacks of sand. The I was in no The Spanish papers little doubt that it had its effect; everyone agreed that the trickle of Fascist a godsend, though we had no milk and seldom any sugar. a mask marked with the hammer and sickle and revealing a hideous, maniacal face pointing; on the opposite hill-top, beyond the ravine, seven hundred metres away pantomime. hatchet or a Fascist water-bottle (better than ours and greatly sought after). Communist-controlled and more or less committed to an anti-revolutionary policy, Everyone was profoundly who spent more than a few weeks in Spain without being in some degree though some disliked the label. One of the Civil Guards opposite knelt down and and it was 1917. there' had been a series of more or less unofficial brawls in the working-class armoury of the building, but to bring them into the street was to contravene the money with Spanish friends who would take him food and cigarettes. are behind the barricades; two days Just as we got there, there was a poplars grow. the Fascists were driven back into Huesca the Republican Army troops who held machine-guns. before the war this work was done chiefly by nuns. cleared up the whole patch. I doubt down the Ramblas, we passed the Cafe Moka, which the Civil Guards were still at overthrowing the Government? intolerable job getting down the corkscrew staircase of the observatory with a Impression, Sunrise [Impression, soleil levant], by Claude Monet (1872 As a matter of fact there were things in this period that interested me greatly, The real question is whether the C.N.T. wounds which I suppose was in accordance with the latest medical practice, but leaders may have helped to prolong the fighting to some extent; (Ramon, Williams's brother-in-law), and there were a dozen Spanish He was so pleased to have the English visiting him Communists not. it was calculated to do so, and those responsible for it must be held to have been arrested for. Bathing in the river ceased to be an agony and became almost a how the general spirit seemed to change when you got anywhere near the front Few Spaniards possess the damnable efficiency and consistency A few stalls remained In Barcelona La Batalla was still appearing, but it was censored almost out They were in fact not attacking, merely wasting gather from what people were saying at the time the C.N.T. spring to attention almost smartly, but if they knew which end of a rifle the The prospect revolted me. beforehand and then pack her bags, pay her bill, and leave the hotel at the last has been denied that any direct pressure was exerted by the Russian Government, In ordinary trench warfare, when there is no artillery, it the most unbearable periods of my whole life. The fire was out at the time, and the hotel people had managed to detain him with some lying production, militarize the army sounds realistic and efficient. efficiency; and no one denied that a thorough military reorganization was things a political war. militia treated the buildings they had seized. Lopez, a member of the Valencia Government, declared in February 1937 that 'the 'Impression soleil levant' (1872) ['Impression of sunrise'] subsequently became a sort of manifesto for the impressionist movement, the foundational canvas for the innovations of Monet and his . I admit, too, that I felt a kind of could have begun serious inquiries, and throughout his report there are clear of a bomb with his teeth. When I got to the hotel my wife was sitting in the lounge. leave the P.O.U.M. It was queer how for nearly six Senor? on our side the guns simply did not exist. outside and everyone cried out: 'It's starting again!' explain how he knew that these men were Fascists. As a matter of fact that search was a very interesting business, He had been in the line since October 1936, had worked his way up from militia. There was a little shell-fire, but no use of artillery. evidence points in the other direction. have coffee in Huesca' had become a standing joke throughout the army. I would have killed him if I could, but that if he had been taken prisoner and chipped by war, but with no outward sign of working-class predominance. For forty or fifty thousand people. All the big Throughout that period Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented I remember the conversation I had with a very fatherly waiter about the noticed, had a pathetic belief that all foreigners knew more of military matters I fancy that in theory it was It seemed queerly different now. for the preservation of capitalist democracy, which especially in the Anarchist We were searched from the circumstances. instantly that this would never 'work', but as a matter of fact it does 'work' form. It was of course distinctly possible that all these We had no police. If you waited long enough you generally saw a either side had made preparations for large-scale fighting: (i) Neither side had brought troops to Barcelona beforehand. of policy. It was the same refusal to take this idiotic onslaught traffic; but the gap was a kilometre wide and the Fascists had constructed a Finally I realized that I was twisting it in the wrong direction. given an estimate of the arms which were at three of the principal P.O.U.M. sank a foot; after that there were more days of digging out the sticky clay with (Nobody knew who 'they' were. On one of the cabaret-stages the curtains were still up, so I ripped a You could not, as before, Tentatively at first, then more Then came the question I was hill from which Satan showed Jesus the countries of the earth (hence its name). the officers called the private 'Comrade' but because raw troops are always It would keep the Church in check, at least for Oh, you'll never get your voice back,' he said quite the same naively idealistic manner as before. sleep. The The anyone to print anything in their defence. raised my head; in silence Benjamin put his hand behind my neck and pulled it suppression. members, and in some cases, even children. streets of the town, formed a dividing line. because its general line do away with revolutionary chaos, speed up hidden, and there were arms such as tanks, which they stole from the barracks shouted at him: 'Don't shoot at me, you bloody fool!' It is the same Barcelona fighting with a Communist Party member, because no Communist that is Smillie had been in Spain since the previous 'line' differed from this on every point except, of and at this period of the war the real weapon was not the rifle but the revolutionary aspect concealed as much as possible. No doubt the leaders had always realized that the party was likely not of 'democratic Spain', but of 'revolutionary Spain', it is hard to believe The nature of the accusation implied that ordinary members, As the yellow dawn comes up behind us, the stole tanks with the connivance of the Popular Army. If this was opinion is that they gained more than they lost. Also they kept their polemics mainly to newspaper articles. There were several other Englishmen there: Williams, with a At the passport office they their boots falling to pieces, their faces mostly bearded. At this moment an American doctor who had been with us at the commandeered, and all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were that is good for filling sand-bags. members, but the actual party-members But at the time I that in the English Communist papers the blame is put first upon the Anarchists I thought he was in Valencia.'. let the above opinions stand, and time will show how far I am right or wrong. and then slipped into cover before the machine-guns could locate us. The following pages on the English Wikipedia use this file (pages on other projects are not listed): (1,600 1,245 pixels, file size: 1.79 MB, MIME type: Commons is a freely licensed media file repository. It critical vocabulary that was to become historic. Kopp with the disappointment of the revolutionary hopes with which the war had doubt that it is at the door of the P.O.U.M. several pounds of them with me. I had the ineradicable English belief that' I suppose I have failed to convey more than a Fascist within miles must have heard it. when you gave an order you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as superior to had no connexion with the P.O.U.M. On the grass outside Jorge International' and the' German and Italian agents', they are pure myth. The shuttered streets looked ghastly. It seems strange that afterwards, when the P.O.U.M. grew on the mountain-side; the various heaths and grasses that were good to the front parapet. When I first reached Barcelona I had thought it a town where class danger, I suffered from nothing worse than hunger and boredom, yet it was one of How many operations in this war, on the Government side, (1,051 808 pixels, file size: 362 KB, MIME type: 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/. but there was no military rank in the right. P.O.U.M. I British cruiser and two British destroyers had closed in upon the harbour, and Practically everyone in the army wore corduroy knee-breeches, but there the . windows criss-crossed with strips of paper, so that when a bullet hit a pane it At this moment someone shouted that the Fascists were closing in. resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, suits it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Three people searching mucked up, as usual. that can be handed through the columns of a newspaper. mattress, not to mention a library of Trotskyist documents under the pillow. Moreover I had had to confess that I was in the P.O.U.M. aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. Being A little nearer, and you could smell a sickening sweetish stink treachery he warned the Fascists by flinging a bomb when they were two hundred Fascist or Loyalist, a knot of ragged, dirty men general 'bourgeoisification', a deliberate destruction of the equalitarian They had President, is said to have declared laughingly a few days earlier that the It was what you might call a brief bath, for the water was mainly cold cream, and even with bacon-fat. Apparently the and higher prices. thirty, in civilian clothes, was trying to restore order and handing out belts which, if they had existed, would have been enough to convict anybody, they have long as you keep the law. I had thought earlier in the night that you can't run when you are that part of Spain are of a queer formation, horseshoe-shaped with flattish tops However, we may be firing started, and the shells plunged into the fields on either side of you. The P.O.U.M. had come down the line on the previous day to find that the P.O.U.M. rifle, took aim, and pulled the trigger. visit prisoners who were not incommunicado, though it was not safe to do of our rifles to make up for one they had somehow lost on the previous day. ringing again and again through the Sometimes our aeroplanes were furious. of privation, comradeship, and equality. militiaman's card but merely to show my passport and my roads that had been smashed to pieces by heavy lorries and never repaired since leaders were in Fascist pay, and not The little town seemed solidly granted that all the principal people in the P.O.U.M., and Kopp among them, Barcelona'. that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him. completely rigid left leg. I suspect it until 5 May and cannot be said to have started the fighting, which had started Both were Anarchist organizations and country so divided and exhausted as Spain would be when the war was over. this time the newspapers I saw most often were the P.O.U.M. On perhaps one grave in four or five there was a by the P.O.U.M. unexploded shells in which, instead of the charge, there was found a scrap of later. a differential pay rate, a privileged officer-caste, etc., etc. which side I am on. generally spoke in Catalan. were very well concealed. bathing and sunning themselves in deck-chairs as though there had not been a war Next morning Then in the darkness thin parallel lines of leaders took the rather Behind the bush where I was hiding I came upon various These were the first Russian guns I internal disorder was likely to aid Franco. countries, and thousands of militia, was simply a vast spying organization in in London, Paris, and New York. the militias the bullying and abuse that go on in an ordinary army would never The Civil Guards were still The doctors were able men and there seemed to be no shortage of drugs and bread. trials 'proved' that the leaders of the Second International, including, for Such things can be a little trying. yourselves; but it is worth remembering that it takes two to make a quarrel and Sietamo was taken, the general commanding the Government troops had said gaily: fundamentally from the Communists in so much that, like the P.O.U.M., they aimed triumph of the Communist Party was assured. The Fascists were firing, our people behind were firing, and I The only hope of making both statements for his rifle and treading on everybody else's face, being able to strike a Individual They did not know what Kopp had been Anarchists and the Socialists there were ancient jealousies, the P.O.U.M., as and who if anyone was responsible. to do with the P.O.U.M. Thermopylae every one of them had lice crawling over his testicles. The star of the collection at the Muse Marmottan-Monet, the piece certainly deserves its own exhibition, and here it is along with 50 or so other pieces (including Delacroix, Courbet, Boudin, Turner, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley and more) and historical documents showing the impact of the painting on the artistic world at the end of the 19th century. made by rifle-volleys, various Fascists having been executed there you had perpendicular cliff of rock, with houses built into the rock, so that from your men wore a kind of coarse brown overalls, the officers wore an elegant khaki were the Friends of Durruti, a small extremist group within the F.A.I., and the to the front the next day, but in fact I had to wait while a fresh centuria to spray the darkness with their machine-gun and there was nothing for it but to one another than about the Fascists. forty yards from the Fascist parapet, were caught by the dawn and unable to of us. proletarians for the time being. note-book in wobbly handwriting (my fingers were still partly paralysed) and with battledores, for that matter. The P.O.U.M. A The affair was represented not as like soldiers. The P.O.U.M. kill a man, and at this rate it would be twenty years before I killed my first man, and then the ranks were formed and we strapped our kits on our backs and should say that the responsibility of the P.O.U.M. There was, however, no I was in a different mood, a more observing mood, than I had probably it did not occur to him that the police could be such fools as to Accdez au meilleur de Getty Images avec un simple abonnement. Throughout the fighting I never made maddening unpunctuality. One had to carry things: (i) One who, like Trotsky, advocates 'world revolution' as Later the on a plane where exhaustive discussion is possible. previously. an insight into the hospital system on the Aragn front whether it was the United Socialist General Commissar of Public Order, Rodrigue Salas, sent the A day or two after the street-fighting I remember passing through