ground. Intellectuals like Ralph Fox interrupted their work and studies 
in the revolutionary struggle and came to give their aid on the battle- 
field. Revolutionary poets like Charles Donnelly came to fight the 
themes they had sung. Doctors and nurses came not from any abstract 
motives of relieving suffering but in order to help human progress by 
aiding those who were fighting the battle of all humanity. 

From twenty-five nations they came; some with military experience, 
some claiming it, but all fighters who valued their principles above 
everything else, who were ready to sacrifice home and family, livelihood 
and even life itself for the cause in which they believed. They stow- 
ed away in boats; they hitch-hiked across continents. Governments 
raised barriers against them. The French border was closed to them. 
But they came. In Spain, in September, they were numbered merely 
in scores. As the menace of a Fascist victory loomed larger, they arriv- 
ed in greater numbers. In October, they were counted in hundreds. 
They could now be organised in their own units. André Marty, veteran 
French revolutionary, undertook the task. 

Outnumbered and outclassed in arms, the militiamen retreated from 
Toledo. Getafe and Carabanchel fell. The Moors were in University 
City. German and Italian planes were bombing, and even machine- 
gunning Madrid... The Non-Intervention Committee was to block- 
ade land and sea frontiers. The pirate ships of Hitler and Mussolini 
menaced the Mediterranean. The French border patrols were guarding 
the mountain-passes of the Pyrenees. Nevertheless, the hundreds of 
Volunteers became thousands. Their first Brigade, organised in forty- 
eight hours, hurriedly equipped – four different types of rifles, three 
different types of machine-guns! — rushed into action in the suburbs 
of Madrid. That was November 1936... The Defence of Madrid is 
already history. 

So began the greatest crusade in history. So, for the first time, the 
forces of International Democracy assembled as allies on the battlefield. 
So, for the first time, they fought side by side, for their own cause. 

So began the International Brigades.

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