Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - August 17, 1963, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press saturday August a is today s world a weekly Page of news and comment after two decades time blurs Spain s memory jumbles civil War passions no time for smugness sino soviet Row opens Way to world divided by rate by Jack Halpern by James Morris Madrid Spain special the track climbs steeply and bump ily to Riznar leaving the Golden towers of the Alhambra away to the East but if you think the Road disagreeable wait till you reach the Vil Lage. The moment you Bounce into its Little Plaza a weird sensation of Baleful hostility As saults you. Villagers stand Stock still to stare at your arrival. The Donkey Man at the Fountain the Young men at the tavern door the housewives poised above their brooms the grocer half glimpsed through the dim clutter of his commodities All stand there Frozen in attitudes of dramatic resent ment As you self consciously switch the engine off and get out of the car. If you ask a question you will be snubbed. If you offer a Man a drink at the bar he will almost certainly refuse it. It is like an Epi Sode in some rather stagy Tele vision thriller when the hero stumbling along the Edge of a mystery finds himself inexplicably and alarmingly ostracised by everyone he meets. Even the goats you May feel seem to be observing you in a suspicious sort of Way and even the baby that normally infallible accessory of Spanish travel raises Only the fros Tiest of maternal smiles. No other Village in the whole of Spain i dare suggest will treat the traveller thus and the cause of this Forward distinction is the Spanish civil War. It was in Riznar so it is thought one night in july 1936 that a group of unknown Assas sins murdered the poet fed Erico Garcia Lorca. The affair is plunged in mystery still and the Spanish government has gradually allowed Lorca s reputation to emerge year by year from the political Muf Fles but Riznar it seems has been permanently soured or frightened by the tragedy. I am not quite sure Why such an air of resentful secrecy hangs Over the Village whether these people know More than they care to admit whether they have been bullied into these attitudes by the Dic tates of officialdom or whether the murderers themselves have scared them into silence. I do know however that Long be fore you have returned dazed and perhaps a Little shaky to the familiar comforts of Gran Ada the police Down i the City will have Learnt of your visit to Riznar. Valley of the fallen a government memorial completed in 1956. Passions jumbled it is Odd but typical that the very reasons for Lorca s death have Long been muddled in the Public mind. He was apparently killed by men of the right but he was not a communist or even a socialist he was a Catholic in Many ways a Man of tradition and if he. Had fought at All he might easily have fought on the nationalist Side. He was murdered it seems Only because he stood for everything that men of autocratic tastes detest Gener Ous social the supremacy of Art Over National Ity tolerance variety Liberty and somehow this blurring of motives in the memory reflects the image of the War itself As you May see it in Spain today. It is inescapable still but it is fading fast and already its conflicts Are becoming Indis Tinct its edges frayed and its passions jumbled in the judg ment. Its physical scars Are disappearing. The Alhambra at to Ledo defended with such bit Ter heroism by the nationalists is still half ruined but is. Being respectfully restored. The ravaged Northern outskirts of Madrid where Franco s forces were halted almost with in sight of the puerto Del sol have been overlaid with the monumental buildings of the University City. The thousands of ravaged and looted churches have mostly been patched up and strike the visitor Only by their unexpected austerity denuded As they Are of Gilt Glit Ter and Reli quaries the anarchists especially cherished baroque we Are told because it Burnt so the battered quarters of the front line towns have mostly been rebuilt in the hefty monolithic style de Rived i like to fancy from inca masonry and Pueblo Indian sociology so dear to contemporary Spanish architects. You could drive through Spain for a couple of months i think without noticing any relics of the War a calamity so horrific that about one spaniard in every 60, so the latest estimates suppose died a violent death in the course of except of course the memorials. They say that for years Franco s government deliberately sustained the awful me Mories of the War to remind the people who had won and emphasize the nation s Over Riding need for order. Certainly the formal monuments of the conflict if a Little crumbly nowadays Are still ubiquitous. Virtually every Spanish Church has its list of fallen some of both sides some i. Suspect Only of fee victorious sur mounted always by a Black cross., the name of Jose an Tonio Primo de Rivera founder of the falange and the Mystic slogan which the fal ingists borrowed from the nazis. Virtually every Spanish City has its sculptured sym Bolisus Brave with Marble allegories aphorisms and veiled Angels. Along the Ridge from the escorial Gen. Franco has excavated his monumental Ca thedral ostensibly a Monument to All the dead actually one cannot help thinking a Colos Sal Monument to himself a Nightmare Hall of exquisite workmanship where the Organ thunders All Day Long in the bowels of the Hills and where one Day we May expect to see the Caudillo entombed before the High altar. Here and there too As you wander these haunting land scapes you will come across More intimate reminders of the War. Sometimes it is Only a stretch of country Bleak and scrubby that suggests to you some half forgotten passage of Hemingway a or brings to life a footnote of or. Hugh Tho Mas s Superb history. Some times it is the forlorn Rem Nant of a Bridge Long replaced by a spanking substitute but still evoking the smell of the Gunpowder or the shadows of crouching hurrying figures in the undergrowth. Sometimes it is a Row of Little crosses be Side the Road or the lonely grave All alone in the plateau of some Young German from the Condor legion. Sometimes it is the scene of some transcendental event of the War the grim bullring of Badajoz for instance where several Hundred men were massacred in August 1936, or the Little group of huts beneath the Cork Oaks Down the Road from Salamanca where general fran co assumed supreme command of the nationalist cause. Lost crusade there is a terrible pathos to them All but time paradoxically aided by despotism is softening the Impact. There is always a queer moment of hesitation if you ask a spaniard which Side his town was on sometimes even a Swift glance Over the shoulder to see who might be listening but the answer nearly always turns out to be Franco a of sometimes a Man May say darkly the sometimes you May fancy the ghost of a Wink. In Catalonia you will of ten be answered with oaths of ebullient Republican Defiance. Mostly though i get the feel ing that those who were not on Gen. Franco s Side Are be ginning to convince themselves that they were. It is As though the old Pas Sions Are no longer Worth the Effort of summoning. It is As though the spaniards have been so numbed by 20 years of ceaseless indoctrination that the very meaning of the War like the origin of Lorca s death has. Been smudged. For Many spaniards at the time it was the last of the crusades against Antichrist. For others it was a stride towards the communist millennium. For Many More it was a towering symbolic conflict of ideas and values. But two decades have passed and for most spaniards today it has apparently been soothed or blunted into something that is better not Dis cussed. Gloomy shrine in a Way this is degrading for it is the victors who have made it so by dulling the curiosity of this people and training them into docility. In a Way though it is merciful for what Spain has needed More than anything after a Century of dismal uncertainty and acrimony has been a period of peace. I would be striking a pose i think if i pretended to wish that Gen. Franco had not won the War the alternative was not lib eral democracy Only another kind of dictatorship and if the conquering nationalists have never encouraged their subjects to forgive at least they have enabled most of them it seems to forget. It works both ways too. An other celebrated victim of the Spanish civil War was Jose Antonio himself who was shot in prison in Alicante. It is easier to find his grave than it is to find Lorca a for the prison Yard where they killed him has been turned into a National Monument his cell is there for All to see and a de Vout member of the falange is All too anxious to show you around. I do not believe though that very Many spaniards make the pilgrimage to this gloomy shrine. Few people in the Street can Tell you where it is and even the Alicante policemen Are often stumped. In Spain Justice sometimes cheats but oblivion it seems is Blind fold. Copyright 1963, by arrangement. Bit dispose others to make the with the guardian Manchester most of differences to cultivate t Ondon special the economist Moscow s split with peking when we come to look Back upon it in old age May perhaps stand out bold and Clear As an event that forced us to tear up our Well thumbed notebooks and think up a fresh set of rules of action to face a new Outlook in world politics. Such an event occurs now and then. Some centuries have seen it happen Only once or twice. The 20th Century is More favored if that is the right word our lifetimes have seen the revolutionary events crowd so thick that the men who make world politics find it hard to adjust their ideas fast enough to Cope and so Are too often left boxing with shadows from the past. One trouble is that the real moments of decision can be at the moment they occur not Only hard to assess but hard to identify As events at All. The soviet chinese breach has been opening up gradually Over at least the last five years. Long after it became serious the West could still cling to the notion that peking was a russian agent or puppet for whose actions it was Safe to hold Moscow responsible. Red split but each stage of disclosure As the disputants Bare their breasts and raise the voice of righteous indignation a tone higher reveals that past Reti Cence has concealed a higher pitch of acrimony than most outsiders thought. By now with the chinese letter of june 14th, so doggedly publicized against russian protests the soviet reply published in pravda just a month later and the subsequent flow of recrimination and self justification when Ever and wherever the communist ceremonial Calendar has offered an Opportunity it All looks and sounds a very open quarrel indeed. And yet no outsider knows what really happened in the talks Between the soviet and chinese parties that ended on july 20th with a Friendly dinner and a tight lipped com Munique. Who said what what Hap pens next it is Plain that the friends Are no longer friends but Are the allies still allies Gen. De Gaulle Odd Man out Mao tse Tunc bizarre coincidence distinctness As a Means of importance. Thus a parallel Between France s position of Odd Man out in the Atlantic Alliance and China s far out position in the communist system should be drawn if at All with a Cau Tion. General de Gaulle likes to make the most of France s differences with the . And where relevant with Britain but v behind the ostentatious Parade of differences there is As we All know a Large Field of solid ground where Outlook traditions and interests substantially coincide. Deep Gulf it. It did however Lead him to Muse on the persistence of the terrible threat which the nuclear armaments of the two rivals hold Over the world and above All Over the Peoples that have not got France he added was begin Ning to have the Means in a certain measure to free it self from this permanent Ter no admission Many alliances on the theme Alliance there Are Many variations to be played As general de Gaulle s recent press Confer ence once More reminded the West if it needed reminding. There Are alliances that apply in some parts of the world and not in others or in one set of circumstances and not in another there Are alliances with formal reservations and others with mental reservations and a pair of allies May have different inconsistent views Public or private of what their relationship implies. Some leaders Are adept at papering Over the differences until optically but not Al ways substantially they Dis appear. Temperament and a Between China and Russia by contrast the real differences race society culture geographical and strategic fac tors traditional National inter est Are enormous what these two share is confined to a communist system of government and a common hostility to the United states. The Case is one that Calls for papering Over leaders of both might petted to play their differences Down and their common interests up. But if that was Ever attempted it has broken Down. In the main the chinese have forced the Pace of the quarrel and dragged the differences into the open. Here temperament May have played a part but the chinese Lead ers As men Are not really sufficiently known to make a judgment or the harsh Ness of the breach May merely express perhaps even under state an inexorable conflict of real interests. To return Cone Hopes with out offence to the comparison with France the conflict be tween the interests of the French nation and those of the american and British nations exists mainly in the minds of Gen. De Gaulle and of those frenchmen who think with him. All the same there is a faintly bizarre coincidence of French and chinese reactions to the nuclear test ban treaty solemnly signed last week. General de Gaulle saw no thing against the treaty so Long As nobody expected France to pay any attention to in Short if general de Gaulle was aware that . Nuclear weapons Are less of a threat to France than soviet nuclear weapons Ace he was not go ing to admit it. He went on to say As he has said before that if the nuclear Powers were to decide to get rid of their stocks of nuclear arms France would join them and to foreshadow a West to because initiative this year to get a evolutionary while to discuss disarmament in mis Tolje other is All vehicles because the biggest single improvement of the Khrushchev tera has be ii the formal burial of the doctrine Wirthe inevitability of War. This is the first and biggest ground on which the take Issue with the russians. By itself it is the West the old fashioned West that is to feel i the signs of this identification of interest Between rus-1 sians and other Peoples of european Stock May have come quicker than most people thought but with them appears the threat of a world whipped up and organized into a White and a non White Block a world in which communism and communists orthodoxy might Speed ily become irrelevant. While it is still a Cloud on the rim of the sky the West has to appraise this menace by the Side of other More familiar threats that will not necessarily disappear and see wha t course it can Best pursue. Doctrine against doctrine Khrushchev san is obviously vastly to be preferred by the groping Southern Rhodesia empty shop windows reflect fears Salisbury Southern rho Desia special owns the Uncertain future and economic depression which face a Southern Rhodesia about to go it alone under White minority Rule Are reflected i the dozens of empty shop windows and hundreds of empty offices in Salisbury s modern sky scrape red business Centre. To let notices Are nearly As ubiquitous As traffic signs. At least 40 people a Day Are Leav ing for federation of Rhodesia and Nyasa land with most of them from Southern Rhodesia. A Butcher told me thirty five customers in two months have closed then accounts. They were All off to South Africa or a grocer said my Arm is getting tired shaking hands with customers saying goodbye for last week a newspaper car ried the headline land goes for the Price of a pair of telling of or. Parsons a Salisbury second hand dealer who has bought three acres of land in an Artisan Type sub Urb for the Munici pal valuation was or. Parsons said i be bought nearly 30 acres of residential land for about an acre on average. It does t please me. It worries though this Purchase is an extreme Case it worries a lot of other people As Well and no one More than property owners in the pleasant Salis Bury suburb of Mabel reign. For a House in this Artisan to White Collar and hitherto All White suburb has been sold to an Indian. As soon As the Sale became known 80 Resi dents warned at a protest meeting that racial strife might occur if the Indian and his family moved into the House. Intolerable the Mabel reign residents association sent canvassers out to get at least of the residents to sign a Peti Tion demanding that the government protect Only 000 Worth of property. The association s chairman British born or d. K. Hine explained that it was fear of property devaluation which worried residents. There was nothing racial in the objections but the minute you have one As Ian in Here before you know it you have an All asian suburb in no time. I lived in India for years and i. Have lived next to asians in Nyasa land and i can Tell you it s in what upset Many residents was the discovery that there is in Southern Rhodesia no be Gal Barrier to an Indian s acquiring land in the same Way As Whites. The country is divided under its racially discriminatory land apportionment act into limited farming and Peri Urban areas reserved for Afri cans and the Choice Rural and Urban areas in which no Black Man May even let alone buy land. But in creating this Black White checker Board Rhodesia s White Legislatures had allowed the Small Indian and coloured half blood communities onto the White Side. Hence the Mabel reign protest meeting which resolved to resist by All constitutional Means the Purchase or letting of properties by asians in the area. Friendly reception but a reaction began to set in. Other letters and press interviews stressed that Only 10 per cent residents were up in arms. A woman resident claimed that the majority were completely apathetic and that she and some others welcomed decent neighbors of any color. She signed herself one of the other 90 per when the Indian purchaser or. Purgat moved in last week with his wife and five children he was Able to re port a cordial and Friendly reception by Many residents. Two people invited us for dinner and asked if we could let our children go to their Homes if they wanted play the present Southern rhodesian government though determined to maintain Legisla Tion which guarantees White supremacy is precluded by the country s Constitution and its own program from enact ing fresh discrimination. So if someone is prepared to sell to an Indian that s that. The fears of the protesters Are of course understand Able. Most of them Are Small men owning Little beyond their motorcars and houses and if the latter were to depreciate it would be a sad Day for them. Most Are fairly recent Immi Grants mainly British or South african and whilst they emphatically support White Rule they did t create the system they found on arrival. Today they feel they have a vested interest in the maintenance of White privilege and in the Short term they Are right. That is Why they support the cur rent demand for giving White ruled Southern Rhodesia in dependence. Copyright observer foreign service is greatest. Compare the chinese. They have minced words less than Gen. De Gaulle to peking the test ban treaty is a an attempt by the three Powers to consolidate their nuclear monopoly. to the China peace committee speaking on july 26th through the Mouth of its chairman Kuo Mojo to give the Assur Ance that China was on the path to the Possession of nuclear weapons of its own. One better it will not be Long now be fore the attempt to control the destiny of people made by a Small number of countries with their monopoly of nuclear Wea Pons will be thwarted. Peking also went one better than Paris i its counter proposal calling for a vast sum Mit conference to resolve upon the prohibition and destruction of All nuclear weapons. More propaganda than poli tics no doubt. Still there Are these two resemblances in the French and chinese reactions to the test ban agreement both put ally and antagonist on one footing the footing of a club of nuclear haves that collectively terror izes and blackmails the have not and each proposes a form of disarmament that would bring these big Fellows Down nearer to their own level of equipment. There Are parallel ends As is dear from the Calm with which the rest of the world can France be coming a nuclear Power a Calm that few i either Camp could bring to the Case of China. Racist Drift probably this applies to the russians themselves. Through then latest utterances about the China dispute runs a thread of alarm at something they see As not merely a nationalist aberration but a Drift into deep racial hostility. When they re proach the chinese with talking of an East wind prevailing Over a West wind instead of one class prevailing Over another they Are admitting that i this new division they ground enough for wanting the View to prevail in the controversy. Still menace but not Only does Russia remain the present menace to the West in terms of present Power. Merely to Back Russia against China would not in any event solve much. Plainly the russians Are not going to con Vert or subvert the chinese they May manage to increase China s isolation but a nation of 700 million with a Reso Lute and effective leadership is not going to be put Down merely by being isolated. After a greater or less display of patience the chinese will fight Back. Their attempts to win the non White world to their Side can very Likely be Defeated because they Are a tradition Al master race themselves be cause their ruling group takes Little trouble to understand other Peoples or to know the rest of the world because the idea that War is inevitable is the last idea that the non aligned nations Are disposed by their position to accept and we must Hope because the developed White countries will intelligently help the non White world to its feet. Unconquerable assuming All this and even making the further bold As sumption that disputes Over territorial Power along China s land and sea frontiers can be kept in controllable Bounds it remains True that some kind of dealings with these 700 Mil lion people Are going to be necessary. China is a country that can be Defeated but cannot for practical be conquered. The failure of. Russia s at tempt to win China May be taken As proof that the . Policy of isolating China was the Only one to be pursued but this is not much Comfort since the. Russians Are being Lump the policy can hardly be de in with the West and that claimed to have done the chinese have begun to As the cd iria problem May have Pire to Lead the East against among others themselves. Or. Khrushchev confirmed it in his plea to the african leaders after their Addis Ababa Confer ence. What is especially dangerous Here is the attempt to oppose people of one color to people West will have to take up the of another africans to search. Latin americans or asians to europeans. None of this is any reason for no solution. Redoubled Isola Tion leading to an eventual breakout and War May be the Only thing that can happen. But before Drifting into it it is necessary to look for an alternative to isolation. The russians having failed the copyright 1963 the economist lid. London a ;