Spain from attaining a higher standard of living who began 
this struggle, which has been converted into a war of 
invasion. 

"Spain was a country where only misery thrived. Our 
soldiers have suffered the terrible conditions that were pre-
valent, and, for the majority of them, facing death at the 
front is far less a martyrdom than was their former way of 
living. It was harder to obtain work in order to live than 
to capture positions in battle. The only crime of the Re-
public was that it wanted Spain to cease being a feudal state 
and to attain the standards of justice which other peoples 
enjoy. 

"The people of Britain achieved this centuries ago and 
so did the French by their revolution. But even in order to 
attain such a noble end, we did not resort to violence. It 
was our enemies who resorted to violence. Unable to defeat 
us, they had to have recourse to other nations and preferred 
to sell their country rather than tolerate its improvement. 

"There is only one crime, if any, of which the Spanish 
people may be accused---that of having waited so many 
centuries to put an end to their wretched condition. The 
people of England did not wait so long and for that reason 
they are today in the vanguard of civilization. Faithful to 
their traditions, the British people understand us, encour-
age us and, as far as possible, support us. And this en-
couragement is proof of the fact that we are fighting for 
justice, that we are sacrificing ourselves for the triumph 
of democracy and that we are serving a desire for freedom. 
Our respect for these ideals is shared not only by the 
British people but by the people of the whole world....

"We are now undergoing a very grave stage in the fight 
for our country. Italy and Germany are attempting to 
defeat us in a decisive manner and have launched an un-
masked attack in the hope of crushing us. They are not 
a only attacking us with troops disguised as volunteers, but 
also with tremendous quantities of war materials, thus in-
creasing a hundredfold the damage and injury to our 
independence. 

"In the international robbery organized by Fascism, it is 
now Spain's turn to be the booty. The Fascists are attack-
ing Spain with the same greed with which they attacked 
Ethiopia and later Austria. With equal savagery, they will 
tomorrow attack other weak countries in the hope that the 
turn of the more powerful countries will come.

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