1937-02-03 — Page 18

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THEY FIGHT WITH THE INTERNATIONAL COLUMN

by Geoffrey Cox

FULL-CIRCLE E

ARLY on the grey

morning of Sunday, November 8, the few

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of alarmed Madrid-for to many a rebel break through seemed likely to come at any hour-heard the steady Stubbs Road tramp, tramp of feet march- ing in perfect time, and

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Leader of the first truly International Army since the Crusader:

heavy, khaki uniforms, the Government militias began There Is the Garibahli fighting units; Frenchmen who Hongkong Telegraphi.overcoats with thick woollen to show demoralisation under battalion of Italians, made up had fought in front of Verdun:

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1937.

inview

on

HITLER'S SPEECH World reactions to the speech by Herr Hitler, in which he gave review of his four years' stewardship and touched domestic and world affairs, are what might have been expected, of the tenour and subject-matter of the utterance. None but those who shut their eyes to the facts would dispute the claim by the Fuehrer that he has accomplished what he set out to do four years ago; indeed, he has consolidated the position of Germany and raised her status

£ nation to a point which seemed impossible when he set out on his For this. Herr Hitler infully entitled to claim- credit. But it is impossible to read the speech without thinking that a man of the personality and power of the Reich Leader might, if he so chose, do more towards the appeasement of world conditions than he has

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the incessant machine gunning of refugees who have waited a little Belgian who joined up collars, loose black caps.

and bombing from the air which years in Paris for a chance to because his father and mother Over their shoulders were harrled their retreat over the strike back at. Mussolini, of were Communists, and he had from the Italian been a Communist all his life; slung service rifles of a very Castilian plain, the need for deserters

"unpolitical" a. quite

Italo- these international troops be- Abyssinian army. modern type. At the sides

American who had come from came more plain, and the call

of They provide one. the Connecticut "because I carried steel helmets.

was sent out all over the world

Column's chief leaders-dark, broke and couldn't get a job"; And behind them, rolled lorries for all left wingers with any heavily-built Durratti, friend of four Greeks,

military experincce at all to join Mussolini in pre-war days.

Austrian piled high with machine guns.

veteran of the February fight- From the people who rushed up in Spain.

The British contingent num- ing in 1934. to the pavement edge, fiata The five thousand men who clenched in greeting, voices had assembled by the start of bers eighty. They are the most raised in

almost hysterical November, and who were hurried surprising types of all. shouls of "Salut, Salut" came, from practically every European beau ideal of any public school...

to the Madrid front, were drawn Half of them would be the COMMANDING them all is the Canadian national, General again and again, the same re- country with the exception of tall, curly-haired, cheerful men Kleber, veteran of the Russian mark, "Have the Russians come Scandinavia and Albania, and of twenty or twenty-one whom Civil War, of fighting in Ger- to help us? Can it be true?" from places overseas as far off one would expect to be doing many, and long years in China.

But when I heard a clipped as French Indo-China, Prussian voice shout as the line

swung round the corner "Rechts

* *

**

nothing more political than lead- ing a Rugger scrum. Some even These were the men who were wore their O.T.C. uniform. marched into Madrid that Sun- Um," followed by orders in THERE is the Thaelmann were frein Cambridge diately to the firing line.

Of the University men, the day morning, and taken imme. French and Italian, I knew it. Battalion of German emigres, and London.

And they are the men who was not Russians we were watch- men who had been in concen-

The rest were mainly tough have, to a great degree though ing, but the first truly Interna- tration camps, a group of fair-

haired refugees from the Saar, little ex-soldiers who had fought one must not under-estimate the [tional army since the Crusaders a Catholic worker who so hated in India or who had served with "backs to the wall" determina-

-the International Column.

* **

THE International Column hud been formed and drilled at Barcelona during the previous

the Nazi attitude to his church the Red Armies in China and tion of the Spanish militias- that he had left a job in former men of the LR.A... Germany to join this fight, Communists who had slipped over the frontier in the night..

At their head was Max Beim-

**

kept Franco out of Madrid. At Villawerde on that Sunday night." one International Column soldier was placed with every four representing the Spaniards in the trenches; in the AND

Dominions was one Austra- curly hours of Tuesday morning Germans and British ler, who had escaped from a con- lian with all the wartime the two months. In the early stages centration camp and written a "Aussie's" gift of language, who sections attacked in the Casa de of the Spanish Civil War foreign book about it, and who was was mown down by a machine Campo and drove back the Moors volunteers were enrolled in the killed four weeks ago in the gun as he, alone, covered a re- there; and for weeks they have ordinary Spanish militia, where University City.

treat of his section a few days borne the brunt of the fighting they served in battalions side by

in the University City. Each. side with the rank and file of For political commissar they go.

battalion uses its own language, One could tell of scores of but French and German pre- the hastily formed People's have tall, ascetic-looking Ludwig Army.

Renn, ex-army officer, pacifist others scores of Jews from dominate. and emigre.

Poland, forming one of the best

But as the numbers of these volunteers rose to hundreds, and as the extent of interna- tional Fascist aid to the rebels made it clear that the war was going to be long and waged on modern lines, it was decided to form these foreigners into a unit of their own.

done. His contribution towards internal stability is an almost unparalleled achievement; it is when we come to internationa! affairs that we search in vain for constructive proposals, in Hitler's latest oration, towards settlement of Europe's troubles. From this angle, the speech is distinctly negative in character. It is true that Hitler says Germany is conscious of her task in co-operating loyally In the removal of international problems, but it is clear that he still envianges à Europe divided into opposing blocs, and, in particular, that he will have nothing to do with any settle- ment which includes Russia

As the situation around within its ambit. A policy so Madrid grew more critical, and based must obviously result in

interminable hatred and friction.

With their experience and determination they could form a cadre of shock, troops to meet the Moors and Legionaries and Italian and German tank sec- tions which formed the real striking force of Franco's army.

to

Only by a complete joining of certainty regarding the value of hands for the preservation of signed treaties.. It is true that peace can the future be made Germany always regarded the safe and secure, Herr Hitler | Peace Treaty as being forced on says he cannot build the German her; that consideration docs nation on promises by foreign not apply the Locarno statesmen, but surely all inter-Treaty, a freely-negotiated pact, national agreements rest on but nevertheless denounced by promises and assurances. Hitler Germany. And it is not without says there can be no point in a significance that Herr Hitler, in quarrel between Germany and his latest speech, made no men- France, and he adds that Ger- į tion of a- now understanding to many will respect the neutrality take its place. On the whole, of Belgium and Holland for all the speech, is well described as time. But if he openly declares vague and ambiguous. Nono that he cannot accept other the less, the sincerely-expressed statesmen's promises, how can declaration In favour of peace he expect others to take his at offers a possible starting-point their face value? One of the for new and better.days. The chief troubles in dealing with main essential is that something Germany under the Hitler dofinite in the way of negotiation regime has been cauood by un-ahould be soon begun.

+

SIDE GLANCES By George Clark

"Look in the paper and see what club mamma is playing

bridge this evening,”

A German officers the Rumanian group; the Poles have some French officers; and, most striking of all instances of in- ternational feeling, one Yugo-. Slav section serves with the Italians.

The British section, organised as Lewis gunners, has served until now chiefly with the |Thaelmann Battalion, but is now being reorganised independently under its own commander.

This is better, because, the. two nations of fighting which do not always blend casily-the British their dogged, joking, | take-things-as-they-come atti-.. tude, and the German thoir furious method of frontal attack which has cost the Thaelmann Battallón as heavily in the Uni-.. versity City as it did Hinden- burg's. forces in France.

Whether the efforts of these men and of the Spanish milition will be enough to save Hadrid, in the face of the regular troops: of Germany and Italy which Franco la calling to his aid can- not be predicted. But whatever happens, their name will go. down to history as one of the finest and most courageous body of men ever in arms.

They are the most encourag ing eight, I have ever soon, be [cause they are the first body. of anti-Fascists whom I felt wore not only more just and' more intelligent, but most im portant of all-core 'powerful than a corresponding number of Fascists.