But Albares. It was a tiny village but it had fields of
grass and large trees. You could walk in the grass and forget
about the war- We had our wall paper. After our boys had
volunteered to help the farmers with their harvest an article
appeared in our newspaper, The Maple Leaf, pointing out the
similarity between the problems of the farmers in Spain and
farmers in Canada. Agriculture is more backward in Spain
than in our country but the problems of debt, drought and
rent were similar although now the Spanish farmer didn’t have
to worry about debts and rent. And the agricultural policy
of the government, building huge irrigation works, would soon
solve the problem of drought.

Field Day
BRYCE COLEMAN of Vancouver wrote that article. Jack

Steele wrote one article condemning our government fo-r toler»
ating and agreeing to the N on?Intervention Committee when al»
lowing shipments of war materials to the fascist countries fin»
ally to be used against the people of Spain.

They were a glorious three weeks. The weather was
marvelous. We would go swimming in a little creek near the
village and all the boys were bronzed by the sun. One day
we organized a field day for the village. We had threerlegged
races, prizes and a beautyicontest. Probably the first beauty
contest ever held in that village. The villagers made cakes and
the mayor declared an official holiday. It was Nortamericano
Day. The mayor thanked the boys for their aid in bringing
in the harvest and the Spanish lessons which appeared daily
in our Brigade paper came in handy. We danced with the vil»
lage girls to the tune of old jazz records and it felt funny

listening to someone singing “Let me call you sweetheart” in

Spanish.
One of the boys prepared a speech in Spanish. Spaniards

are very polite so they didn’t laugh. Heexplained why we
had come, that we were here not only to help them but to help.

__.15___