Text Books in the Trenches I ---Hazen Sise, December 30th, 193

AM A CANADIAN speaking from Madrid. I am here trying 'l0 I make myself useful to the Spanish folk, because I believe their

cause to be desperately important for all of us. Not only 18 it important when measured against those ideals of Democracy for which our forefathers fought and died; but it has a more urgent practical importance. If Fascism is allowed to prevail in Spain there are many of you listening tonight whose lives will be thereby affected in none too comfortable manner.

If you were to have to see the blood and destruction on the pave- ments of Madrid you would realize what Fascist aggression really means. And you would perhaps form the opinion that Hitler was not simply da.y-dreaming when he wrote “Mein Kampf”.

For myself, I have come to the sober realization that life for me would be intolerable in a world dominated by the repressive phil- osophy of Fascism and so I am here to do what I can.

Somewhere in Spain

Tonight I want to describe for you a Christmas night in the front line “somewhere in the Sierra de Guadaramma”. This lovely, snow-clad range of mountains closes the View like a theatre backdrop if one looks north-west from Madrid. On a clear day these peaks seem to rise up at the end of the street; actually they are about 35 miles away.

On Christmas afternoon we visited the Escorial, that massive granite pile, half palace, half monastery—--cut off from the likes and aspirations of the people. As we stood admiring this imposing building in the setting sun we heard in the distance the rumble of Franco_’s guns bombarding Madrid.

We afterwards found that these shells fell in the centre of the city far from any military objective and, of course, a number of people were killed. A

Remember this when you next hear Franco described as the true champion of the Spanish people and of the Christian church. On the Anniversary. of the day Christ was born Franco murdered a number of non-combatants, just ordinary people like you or me--~ people he claims to be liberating from the horrors of Bolshevism-- with shells fired from German or Italian guns. Think it over and see if it makes sense.

We drove away from the Escorial. We were most courteously received and the commandante of an adjacent sector of the front line was sent for. Commandante corresponds to the rank of ‘major. In about twenty minutes he arrived_———-an absurdly young man with a strong, handsome, passionate face, fringed with beard. With him was his wife, bareheaded, a cape flungover her shoulders. She had that soft beauty of the women in early nineteenth century prints, and, as we discovered later, was but fifteen years old. The commandante was twenty-four. This is certainly a young man’s war---at least on the Government side. Think that fact over too.