flu.»

forces, having been promised assistance by both Italy and Germany, attacked the Spanish people’s duly elected and properly constituted government.

The civil war, as it is called, although, as our Chairman

told you, it is really a war of international" Fascism against Spanish Democracy, that has been raging in Spain for eleven months now, at a cost of something like two hundred thousand lives, is a war that has beendeliberately created and forced upon the Spanish people by lawless elements within the Spanish nation and by outside peoples, with the object of overthrowing the Spanish people’s properly elected Democratic regime. , i

And that war has been made possible by the two leading Fascist nations of Europe, Italy and Germany. The object

of Italy and Germany is to establish in Spain another Fascist»

regime. But that object is only secondary. Hitler’s primary object, and also Mussolini’s, is to gain such prestige, in- fluence and control in Spain as will enable Italy and Ger- many to use Spain’s very rich mineral resources for military purposes; Hitler dreaming the while of defeating Russia in war and seizing the Ukraine, and then later of smashing France and making Germany dominant throughout the con- tinent of Europe.

So blood is being shed in Spain, today to the end that a’ ‘ va.stly greater flood of blood may be shed in Europe tomor-

row. Military despotism is seeking to destroy Spanish De- mocracy now in order that the continent of Europe maybe enslaved a few years hence. It is quite false to say, as is being widely said, that the war in Spain is a war against

Communism. As a matter of fact, Spain had only a small

handful of Communists, relatively speaking, when the war began. There was not a single Comomunist in the Spanish cabinet when the war began, nor for several months after the outbreak of the war. , i I‘

The war in Spain is a war that is being fought in the interest of the control of the many by a few. It is a war of military despotism against humanitarian freedom. It is a war of what is called Fascism against Democracy, and that war has been made possible by the Fascist governments of Italy and of Germany.

Meanwhile, the enlightened Spanish people now know (they have come to know only in recent years, since the influence of the Catholic Church in their higher educational institutions has been largely destroyed) of the wonderful, the glorious civilization Spain knew for nearly eight hun-

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