We Saw Spain Die

by Preston Paul

  The journalist in question was H. Edward Knoblaugh, the book Correspondent in Spain, and what he said highly damaging. Everything about Knoblaugh suggested a considerable political volatility and moral ambivalence. Other correspondents nicknamed him ‘Doaks’.

  In the first week of February 1937, Knoblaugh seemed to be relishing the likely capture of Málaga as a good story. The staff of the press office were reluctant to contemplate the consequences if the Andalusian port were to fall to the rebels and their Italian allies. One of their number, the louche Basil Murray, son of the Oxford classicist Gilbert Murray, went to find out for himself. Diminutive, perpetually disgruntled and often drunk, in Kate Mangan’s opinion, he was ‘a bit of a failure. He wore his hair long at the back, like Lloyd George, and was very sensitive. He had bright, dewy eyes like a stricken deer’. Murray was satirized by Evelyn Waugh (along with Peter Rodd, the husband of Nancy Mitford) as ‘Basil Seal’ in his novels Black Mischief (1932) and Put Out More Flags (1942). He had little stomach for war reporting. He returned from Málaga in a state of panic: ‘It’s too ghastly, that town is lost already. The bombardments are incessant and frightful. The morale of the people has broken under them. The cathedral is full of poor women with babies, camping, who have fled from the villages. You can’t imagine the horror of it.’ His colleagues shrugged him off as hysterical and his report went unpublished. When the Italians entered Málaga on 7 February, the flight of terrified refugees towards Almería witnessed one of the most tragic episodes of the war. Thousands of women, children and the elderly were bombarded from warships and strafed by Italian and German aircraft. The entire Republican zone was traumatized and the press office was not immune. Coco Robles wept uncontrollably and even Constancia de la Mora, who had tried to keep her emotions in check, cried in front of Kate Mangan.

  Morale in the office had not been helped by the arrival of one of the last people to escape Málaga, the beautiful fresh-faced, brown-eyed young Norwegian journalist, Gerda Grepp, who later to have an affair with Louis Fischer. She had been sent to the town on her first assignment and become friends there with Arthur Koestler and local residents, ranging from anarchists to the English zoologist Sir Peter Chalmers-Mitchell. Now she arrived in a state of collapse and when news of the capture of the town came in ‘she nearly went demented’. She had begged Koestler to leave with her but he had stayed on in the hope of reporting on the expected atrocities. Grepp was inconsolable, convinced that all the people she had met in Málaga would be murdered. She plunged into the darkest of Scandinavian depressions.76

  Edward Knoblaugh was furious that he had not been immediately given a car to go and view the situation for himself. He later took his revenge on ‘Poppy’ and others in his book:

  A large bundle of material from the Ministry of Propaganda was delivered to my Valencia office twice each day. I rarely used any of this material without checking it carefully. Sometimes it was impossible to check. One of the articles I did use typifies the high degree of skill the propaganda machine achieved within the space of a few short months. This was a story written by Milly Bennett, one of the talented young American writers on the government payroll, describing the evacuation of Malaga. My office had urgently requested coverage on the Malaga situation, but the government, denying there was any possibility of Malaga’s falling, was not furnishing cars to correspondents to disprove its contention. The story, written by the Ministry of Propaganda employee, a gifted young woman fresh from seven years’ training in Russia, was a ‘ghosted interview’ quoting Dr. Norman Bethune, Canadian head of a blood-transfusion unit working in Loyalist Spain, on the experiences she attributed to him among the refugees fleeing Malaga. Her well written ‘interview’ told of the ‘inconceivable ferocity of the barbarian invaders’, the ‘innumerable scenes of horror created by the foreigners’ and the ‘terrible tragedy of these countless thousands forced to flee their homes’. It did not mention, of course, that the ones who did the ‘forcing’ were the Loyalists themselves. As happened later in Bilbao, many who did not want to leave were executed as ‘counter-revolutionaries’. Even if it had mentioned this, I wouldn’t have been able to send it. I had no doubt but that there was much suffering among the hungry Malaguenans struggling eastward along the highway toward Almeria. I had seen something of the hardships undergone by the refugees in other parts of Spain. I had no way of getting there to cover the story myself, so I used this prepared article, trimming out some of the more obvious propaganda with which the story was interlarded but letting it run pretty full.77

  In fact, the text by Milly, to which Knoblaugh referred, was entirely accurate. After the war, she saw his book and wrote to him that she thought his insinuations about her being trained in Russia to be ‘libellous, lowdown and mean’. In his remarkably insensitive reply, he had the audacity, or perhaps the obtuseness, to deny that it was meant to be ‘a crack’ at her or contained any ‘nastiness’: ‘I think you are a fine newspaper woman and a swell pal, and certainly do not want you to feel that I went out of my way to take a slam at you.’ To expect her not to be offended by his damaging statement that she had received ‘seven years’ training in Russia’ and was thus a Soviet agent suggested either that he was very naïve or expected her to be.78 He would display similar insensitivity in his dealings with Jay Allen.

  The callous cynicism with which Knoblaugh viewed the plight of the refugees from Málaga contrasted with the attitude of Lawrence Fernsworth. He went with Kate Mangan to cover the retreat and was deeply moved by the uncomplaining distress of the refugees he interviewed in Almería.79 T. C. Worsley, who had been the driver of Bethune’s ambulance during the retreat from Málaga, met Fernsworth shortly after his return to Valencia. He described him as grey-haired, wearing pince-nez and a ‘Conservative democrat of the old school, who had become a staunch defender of the new Republic’. Fernsworth was anxious for Worsley to describe exactly what he had seen on the road from Málaga to Almeria. His reports, based on the interviews, had been published in The Times on 17 and 24 February, but had then been denied by the paper’s correspondent with the rebels. The denial was shown to Fernsworth before printing and, when printed on 3 March, was accompanied by a statement from him that he had interviewed refugees on the road to Almería, in hospitals, in refugee camps and in barracks, and that it was ‘beyond belief that they should all be engaged in a conspiracy to concoct the story’. In the hope of strengthening the point still further, Fernsworth now asked Worsley and Bethune to give him a signed statement of what they had seen. This they did, but nothing further was published by The Times.80

  Not everyone in the office was as efficient as Milly Bennett. Yet, interestingly, in a letter to Kitty Bowler, Elizabeth Deeble wrote that Kitty would have been even better at the job in the press office than Milly. The scale of work expected from an employee of the press and propaganda can be deduced from Deeble’s letter. As well as her own journalistic work for the Manchester Guardian and the Washington Post, she was working in Barcelona as Liston Oak’s equivalent in the Catalan Comissariat de Propaganda with Jaume Miravitlles. As head of the English-language section there, she was

  editor (and write practically all of it) of English bulletin of propaganda under Miravitlles (laddie is well-named ‘marvels’ and does them), do most and supervise the rest of English translations for him, Companys, etc., translate into Spanish all letters that come in English, and translate the Spanish or Catalan replies back again into English, interpret for all English and American visitors, represent Agence Espagne here, help on religious bulletin, am trying to write a book on Spain in the few free seconds I have, keep track of all the English and most of the French press as well as the Spanish every day, and now and then march in a parade or have my photo taken for the good of the cause.

  All this was recounted without complaint: ‘Wish I could get along without sleep or without food, but find it impossible. As it is, I write some 5000 to 6000 words a day in various languages, some of it original, and find time to rush
about doing other things as well.’81

  In Valencia, Liston Oak certainly did not work on that scale. Indeed, he was regularly absent from his office and, when he was there, was notorious for his lack of diplomatic skills with visiting writers. For instance, he made a hash of relations with W. H. Auden, who had arrived in the belief that he could help the cause of the Republic by working in the press and propaganda office. Oak adopted a ‘violently hostile attitude’ out of sheer jealousy. Rubio commissioned Auden to translate a speech by Azaña, which he did with such elegance and imagination, according to Kate Mangan, as to improve upon the original. Eventually, Auden became exasperated with the politics and intrigue in Valencia and volunteered for the front as a stretcher-bearer.82

  Liston Oak was involved peripherally in the scandal surrounding the death of José Robles Pazos and in the consequent fall-out. It was almost certainly Oak who was the first person to tell Coco Robles that he had heard that his father was dead. That was on 9 April, the day after John Dos Passos arrived in Valencia and visited the press office to get safe-conducts and make travel arrangements for his trip to Madrid. They must have known each other before, but the renewal of their acquaintance now would play some role in Dos Passos’ drift into anti-Communism. Within three weeks, Oak would be in Barcelona pleading with Dos Passos to help him get out of Spain. The reason for his ostensible panic was that he had been increasingly indiscreet about his contacts with the POUM. Certainly, links with an organization regarded by the Russians as Trotskyist would do nothing to enhance his position as an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  However, job security was probably not Liston Oak’s main priority. According to Kate Mangan, Oak had already shown a desire to get out of Valencia: ‘Liston was beginning to be a bit restless in his post, he was losing interest and discharging his duties more and more perfunctorily. He complained increasingly of his rheumatism. He said his health would not stand the damp climate in Valencia.’ He went briefly to Madrid and talked vaguely of starting a bureau there. However, finding the besieged capital too dangerous, he came back to Valencia, but he soon left for Barcelona, claiming that it was merely for a visit. Constancia de la Mora pointed out that the climate there was even damper and cooler. However, Kate felt that Liston would be more at home in Catalonia, because of his sympathy with the POUM. He never formally resigned his post at the press office. Rubio Hidalgo thought highly of Oak and took it for granted that he would soon be back. The Valencia office continued to send him copies of their press releases and commissioned him to write articles on the Catalan economic situation. When he failed to respond to any of their communications and no articles materialized, ‘at last we realized that he had deserted his post’. Milly Bennett commented: ‘It’s just like him to leave a job as soon as he has got it started. He has been a failure all his life.’83

  The departure of Liston Oak hardly affected the functioning of the press office. The reorganization set off by Fischer’s report on the Republic’s propaganda deficit was still six months in the future. The late spring did, however, see one of the denizens of the office meet an unfortunate end. Since his marriage had broken up, Basil Murray had begun to drink. Having been persuaded not to join the International Brigades, he had devoted himself to a quest for romance, but every woman on whom he cast eyes turned him down. He became morose and, according to Delmer, ‘what had once been charming eccentricity developed into a phobic moodiness and mad romantic exaltation’. Constancia de la Mora could not ‘find much use for this disturbed and disturbing young man, who had come to Spain to play the part of Byron, and who could not be relied on to turn up at the office and play the part of a hack’. After losing his job at the press office, he joined the International News Service of William Randolph Hearst. He did not last long. He was amused by the fact that, in the square, there was a performing goat which balanced, with all four legs together, on top of a pole. His frequent mentions of the goat seemed a gratuitous frivolity to his employers and he was fired.

  Unemployed, he drank more and his life became more aimless. Then he fell in love with a mysterious reporter. According to Delmer, she was called Mary Mulliner and appears in Kate Mangan’s memoir as ‘Geraldine O’Brien’. Kate recalled that she ‘behaved so much like a spy that, in my opinion, it was impossible that she could have been one. If she was a spy I could not guess which side employed her’. Cockburn, who was working for the security service as some kind of counterespionage agent devoted to vetting Anglo-Saxon visitors, had no doubts: ‘had she had the words “I am a Nazi spy” printed on her hat, that could hardly have made her position clearer than it was’. Whatever else she was up to, the woman in question toyed with Basil, ‘poor, dear, limp rag that he was’, trying to make him jealous of other men. Then, suddenly she fled Valencia, heading, according to Cockburn, ‘for Berlin, in the company of a high-ranking officer of the International Brigade, who proved also to be an agent of the enemy’. Basil inevitably became more gloomy than ever.

  To distract Basil, Ed Knoblaugh took him drinking in the red light district of the port. At a street circus, Basil was entranced to see swinging on a trapeze ‘a fine buxom she-ape with all the indications of her sex emphatically developed’. He offered to buy the ape and the reluctant owner was forced into selling by some watching militiamen. They, Basil, Knoblaugh and the ape then went off on a bar-crawl which ended at the Hotel Victoria. The Manager refused entry until, backed by the drunken militiamen, Basil successfully argued that this was intolerable discrimination: ‘What about all the other apes in the hotel?’ Knoblaugh told Delmer that the last he saw of Basil was ‘when he turned on the water for his bath. “And now my poppet”, he was saying as I closed the door, “you shall have a lovely warm bath with plenty of lovely lavender soap. Do you like soap, oh Queen of my heart?”’ After a couple of days, there was no sign of Basil so Knoblaugh went back to the hotel. In the room, he found mayhem, the ape huddled in a nest of blankets and, a feverish Basil, both coughing helplessly. He had caught a virulent form of pneumonia from the ape. His enemies spread a rumour that it was a result of intimate relations with the ape; others that he had fallen into a drunken stupor and in an effort to rouse him, the bored ape had bitten him. Patience Darton arranged for him to be transferred to a British hospital ship. Basil recovered sufficiently to send proposals of marriage to several eligible girls in London, but died before reaching England.84

  Distress over the fate of individuals was overshadowed by preoccupation with the progress of the war. The summer and the early autumn of 1937 saw some short-lived triumphs for the Republic, such as the initial successes at Brunete and Belchite, but also saw the disastrous loss of the north. Despite the gradual erosion of territory, morale remained high in Valencia. The move of the press office to Barcelona, along with the rest of the government, coincided with a reorganization of Republican resources, which seemed to bear fruit with the initial assault on Teruel in mid-December 1937 and its capture on 8 January 1938. In the first twelve days of the encounter, with Hemingway, Tom Delmer and Robert Capa, Herbert Matthews would drive each day from Valencia to the battle-front in bitterly cold conditions. They drove nearly three thousand miles, and produced scoop after scoop, beating the other correspondents by anything up to four days. On 17 December 1937, Hemingway, Delmer and Matthews entered Teruel with the Republican attackers. They then drove back to Valencia. Matthews recalled later: ‘after twenty hours on the go, I sat down at midnight, writing until four in the morning. It was the best story I got in the Spanish Civil War.’

  Despite writing what he considered the best reporting of his life, Matthews found his piece brutally cut and buried on the inside pages of the New York Times, once again the victim of the pro-Catholic ‘bull-pen’. They reprimanded him for the length of the piece. In contrast, the paper printed a vivid, but entirely faked, description by William Carney of the retaking of the city and the rescue of the besieged rebel garrison. Not for the first time, Carney, safely ensconced in Zaragoza, had parrot
ed, and then embellished, rebel press handouts that had overconfidently announced the recapture of the city. In contrast, Matthews had made the hazardous journey through snow and ice to Teruel and found it still in Republican hands. His vivid account utterly discredited what had been submitted by Carney. Nevertheless, the managing editor, Jimmy ‘Dressy’ James, issued Carney with no more than the most gentle reprimand.85

  Hemingway was furious. When Matthews’ book, Two Wars and More to Come, was due to come out some months later, he sent a telegram to the publishers:

  Herbert Matthews is the straightest the ablest and the bravest war correspondent writing today stop he has seen the truth where it was very dangerous to see and in this book he brings that rarest commodity to you stop in a world where faking now is far more successful than the truth he stands like a gaunt lighthouse of honesty stop and when the fakers are all dead they will read Matthews in the schools to find out what really happened stop I hope his office will keep some uncut copies of his dispatches in case he dies.86

  The eventual rebel recapture of Teruel on 21 February opened the way to a massive rebel advance which reached the sea on 15 April and thus split the Republican zone in two. The end was in sight but Negrín was determined to fight on, refusing to believe that the democracies could go on being blind to the Axis threat. His optimism and commitment were shared by the majority of correspondents. Even when the situation grew ever more bleak for the Republic, there was no tightening of the censorship nor of working conditions for journalists beyond the hardships that they had to share with the rest of the population. In Barcelona, there was little food, no hot water for bathing, little by way of public transport and growing shortages of essential drugs.87 Bombing raids on the Catalan capital were ever more intense and Franco’s growing numerical superiority made visits to the front ever more dangerous.