Spain‘ from attaining a higher standard of living who began 1 this struggle, whichghas been converted into a war of ‘ invasion. 4 j

F ‘(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

r 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 afeudal state f and to attain the standards of justice which other peoples ~

enjoy.

“The peopleof Briltainiachieved this centuries ago and

so did theFrench by their revolution. But even in order to attain such a noble end, we did not resort to violence. It wasour enemies who resorted to violence. Unable to defeat us, theyhad to have recourse to other nations and preferred

to sell % theircountry rather than tolerate its im,prove'me‘nt.l

“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 didlnot 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 l of democracy and that we are serving a desirefor freedom. Our respect for these ideals is shared not only by the l

British people but‘by the people of the wholeworld.

.‘‘We are now undergoing a very grave stage in thelfight 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. Theyéare not a

only attacking us with troops disguised as volunteers,» but also with tremendousquantities of war materials, thus in-

creasing a hundredfold the damage and injury to our

independence.

J “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 i

i tomorrow attack other weak countries in the hope that the

turn of the more powerful countries will come.