Orwell in Spain

by George Orwell

  Once again, let me say how sorry I am about this whole business, but I have got to do what little I can to get justice for people who have been imprisoned without trial and libelled in the press, and one way of doing so is to draw attention to the pro-Communist censorship that undoubtedly exists. I would keep silent about the whole affair if I thought it would help the Spanish Government (as a matter of fact, before we left Spain some of the imprisoned people asked us not to attempt any publicity abroad because it might tend to discredit the Government), but I doubt whether it helps in the long run to cover things up as has been done in England. If the charges of espionage etc. that were made against us in the Communist papers had been given a proper examination at the time in the foreign press, it would have been seen that they were nonsense and the whole business might have been forgotten. As it was, the rubbish about a Trotsky-Fascist plot was widely circulated and no denial of it was published except in very obscure papers and, very half-heartedly, in the Herald and Manchester Guardian. The result was that there was no protest from abroad and all these thousands of people have stayed in prison, and a number have been murdered, the effect being to spread hatred and dissension all through the Socialist movement.

  I am sending back the books you gave me to review. I think it would be better if I did not write for you again. I am terribly sorry about this whole affair, but I have got to stand by my friends, which may involve attacking the New Statesman when I think they are covering up important issues.

  Yours sincerely

  Handwritten on a separate sheet is a note by Orwell which, because there is no salutation, was almost certainly sent to Raymond Mortimer with the typewritten letter above. Orwell enclosed the letter from H. N. Brailsford which he said Spender had. Brailsford’s letter here follows this addendum.

  I add this letter from H. N. Brailsford2 because I think it is of interest as showing how stories get made up. In the New Statesman he spoke of P.O.U.M. adherents during the Barcelona fighting attacking the Government with stolen tanks & guns. I wrote & asked where he learned this, and it appears from his answer:

  a. That he accepted Antonov-Ovseenko’s statements about the Friends of Durruti, though obviously no Russian dare speak otherwise than unfavourably about a ‘Trotskyist’ organisation.

  b. That on the same authority he assumed that the F. of D. was ‘acting with’ the P.O.U.M.

  c. That he added this onto some statements in Inprecor3 & elsewhere & so produced the story about guns in the streets of Barcelona.

  Meanwhile it is always possible that guns were stolen, only for use at the front, not in Barcelona. Every unit was constantly stealing weapons from others, when it could, owing to the general shortage & in one case (the P.O.U.M.) because we were systematically starved of weapons & at times were not far from unarmed. About April 2 batteries of Russian guns did arrive, & conceivably they were stolen ones, as no Russian weapons had been allowed to get to us till then.

  Raymond Mortimer quickly sent Orwell a handwritten note saying, ‘Dear Orwell, Please accept my humble apologies. I did not know Kingsley Martin had written to you in those terms. My own reasons for refusing the review were those that I gave. I should be sorry for you not to write for us, and I should like to convince you from past reviews that there is no premium here on Stalinist orthodoxy.’On 10 February, Kingsley Martin wrote to Orwell: ‘Raymond Mortimer has shown me your letter. We certainly owe you an apology in regard to the letter about The Spanish Cockpit. There is a good deal else in your letter which suggests some misunderstanding and which, I think, would be better discussed than written about. Could you make it convenient to come and see me some time next week? I shall be available on Monday afternoon, or almost any time on Tuesday’ It is not known whether Orwell accepted Martin’s invitation, but he probably did; his letter to Moore of about 12 February (425) indicates that he expected to be in London on that Tuesday, 15 February. Orwell’s review of Galsworthy’s Glimpses and Reflections was published in the New Statesman on 12 March 1938 (see 430), and he contributed reviews to the journal from July 1940 to August 1943. However, as is recorded in conversation with friends, he never forgave Martin for his ‘line’ on the Spanish Civil War. See Crick, 340–42.

  1. John McGovern (1887–1963), ILP MP, 1930–47; Labour MP, 1947–59, led a hunger march from Glasgow to London in 1934. Félicien Challaye, French left-wing politician, member of the committee of La Ligue des Droits des Hommes, a liberal, anti-Fascist movement to protect civil liberty throughout the world. He resigned in November 1937, with seven others, in protest against what they interpreted as the movement’s cowardly subservience to Stalinist tyranny.

  2. The letter from Brailsford of 17 December, printed above.

  3. For Orwell’s references to Inprecor in Homage to Catalonia, see pp. 200 and 202–4 [V/228 and 231–3].

  [434]

  To Stephen Spender

  2 April 1938 Handwritten

  Jellicoe Ward, Preston Hall, Aylesford, Kent

  Dear Spender,

  I hope things go well with you. I really wrote to say I hoped you’d read my Spanish book (title Homage to Catalonia) when it comes out, which should be shortly. I have been afraid that having read those two chapters1you would carry away the impression that the whole book was Trotskyist propaganda, whereas actually about half of it or less is controversial. I hate writing that kind of stuff and I am much more interested in my own experiences, but unfortunately in this bloody period we are living in one’s only experiences are being mixed up in controversies, intrigues etc. I sometimes feel as if I hadn’t been properly alive since the beginning of 1937. I remember on sentry-go in the trenches near Alcubierre I used to say Hopkins’s poem ‘Felix Randal’, I expect you know it, over and over to myself to pass the time away in that bloody cold, & that was about the last occasion when I had any feeling for poetry. Since then it’s gone right out of my head. I don’t know that I can give you a copy of my book because I’ve already had to order about 10 extra ones and it’s so damned expensive, but you can always get it out of the library.

  I have been in this place about 3 weeks. I am afraid from what they say it is TB. all right but evidently a very old lesion and not serious. They say I am to stay in bed and rest completely for about 3 months and then I shall probably be O.K. It means I can’t work and is rather a bore, but perhaps is all for the best.

  The way things are going in Spain simply desolates me. All those towns & villages I knew smashed about, & I suppose the wretched peasants who used to be so decent to us being chased to & fro & their landlords put back onto them. I wonder if we shall ever be able to go back to Spain if Franco wins. I suppose it would mean getting a new passport anyway. I notice that you and I are both on the board of sponsors or whatever it is called of the S.I.A.2 So also is Nancy Cunard, all rather comic because it was she who previously sent me that bloody rot which was afterwards published in book form (called Authors Take Sides). I sent back a very angry reply in which I’m afraid I mentioned you uncomplimentarily, not knowing you personally at that time. However I’m all for this S.I.A. business if they are really doing anything to supply food etc., not like that damned rubbish of signing manifestos to say how wicked it all is.

  Write some time if you get time. I’d like to meet again when I get out of here. Perhaps you will be able to come and stay with us some time.

  Yours

  Eric Blair

  1. Probably what are now Appendixes I and II (pp. 169–215, above).

  2. Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista, subtitled, on its letterhead, ‘International AntiFascist Solidarity’. Other sponsors included W. H. Auden, Havelock Ellis, Sidonie Goossens, Laurence Housman, C. E. M. Joad, Miles Malleson, John Cowper, Llewelyn Powys, Herbert Read, Reginald Reynolds and Rebecca West. Ethel Mannin (see 575) was the Honorary Treasurer; Emma Goldman, the Honorary Secretary. Goldman wrote to Eileen (as ‘Miss Blair’) on 14 April 1938 thanking her for her kind contribution and for help in distributing fifty of SIA’s folders
and bulletins. She also sent wishes for Orwell’s recovery. The periodical Spain and the World for 8 April 1938 advertised, with Reg Groves’s But We Shall Live Again (on Chartism) and Rudolf Rocker’s Anarcho-Syndicalism, Ethel Mannin’s Women and the Revolution, the last advertised as ‘Biographies of great women rebels from Charlotte Corday to Emma Goldman, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Mme Sun Yat Sen and Maria Spridonova.’ For Rudolf Rocker’s Anarcho-Syndicalism, there was a commendation by Orwell: ‘Of great value. It will do something towards filling a great gap in political consciousness.’ See Nicolas Walter, ‘Orwell and the Anarchists’, Freedom, 42, no. 2, 30 January 1981; Crick, 351.

  [436]

  To Geoffrey Gorer

  18 April 1938 Handwritten

  Homage to Catalonia was published on 25 April 1938 (see 438), but, as is customary, review copies had been sent out in advance. On a Saturday before Orwell’s letter to Gorer, probably 16 April, Gorer sent him a short note to say how ‘absolutely first-rate’ he thought Homage to Catalonia, as well as a carbon copy of his review for Time and Tide, ‘in case they object to its inordinate length’, and so that Orwell could let him know before the proof arrived if there were any errors. The review appeared on 30 April.

  Jellicoe Pavilion, Preston Hall, Aylesford, Kent

  Dear Geoffrey,

  I must write to thank you for your marvellous review. I kept pinching myself to make sure I was awake, but I shall also have to pinch myself if T. & T. print it – I’m afraid they’ll think it’s too long & laudatory. I don’t think they’ll bother about the subject-matter, as they’ve been very good about the Spanish war. But even if they cut it, thanks ever so for the intention. There were just one or two points. One is that you say the fighting in Barcelona was started by the Assault Guards. Actually it was Civil Guards.1 There weren’t any Assault Guards there then, & there is a difference, because the Civil Guards are the old Spanish Gendarmerie dating from the early 19th century & in reality a more or less pro-Fascist body, ie. they have always joined the Fascists where it was possible. The Assault Guards are a new formation dating from the Republic of 1931, pro-Republican & not hated by the working people to the same extent. The other is that if you are obliged to shorten or otherwise alter the review, it doesn’t particularly matter to insist, as you do now, that I only took part in the Barcelona fighting to the extent of doing sentry. I did, as it happens, but if I had been ordered to actually fight I would have done so, because in the existing chaos there didn’t seem anything one could do except obey one’s own party & immediate military superiors. But I’m so glad you liked the book. Various people seem to have received review copies, but I haven’t had any myself yet & am wondering uneasily what the dust-jacket is like. Warburg talked of decorating it with the Catalan colours, which are easily mistaken for a. the Spanish royalist colours or b. the M.C.C.2

  Hope all goes well with you. I am much better, in fact I really doubt whether there is anything wrong with me.3 Eileen is battling with the chickens etc. alone but comes down once a fortnight.

  Yours

  Eric Blair

  1. Orwell was wrong about this. He was later to ask that if a second edition of Homage to Catalonia were ever published – there was one English edition in his lifetime; the US and French editions did not appear until after his death – this error should be rectified. The correction has been made in the Complete Works edition; see ‘A Note on the Text’, pp. 29–30 and 198, above.

  2. Marylebone Cricket Club, the then ruling cricket authority. Its tie has broad red and yellow stripes.

  3. According to Orwell’s blood sedimentation test on 27 April (and on 17 May), his disease was ‘moderately active’. It was not until 4 July that it became ‘quiescent’. It is never shown as normal.

  [439]

  ‘Notes* on the Spanish Militias

  These notes may have been written when Orwell was working on Homage to Catalonia, but more probably after its publication. The watermark of the paper on which they are typed is the same as that of letters to Lady Rees, 23 February 1939, and Herbert Read, 5 March 1939, and different from that of the letter to Read of 4 January 1939 and all earlier letters from Morocco. The ink in which Orwell wrote the footnotes and the few emendations (included here without notice) is similar to that of the letter to Lady Rees and one to Geoffrey Gorer, 20 January 1939, but is different from that of the letters to Read of4January and s March. It is possible, therefore, that they were typed early in 1939, but they could have been written earlier. Gorer, in a letter to Sonia Orwell,1 4 July 1967, guessed their date of composition as summer 1940, after Dunkirk, for someone at the War Office interested in the experience of militias as resistance fighters.2 (These letters are not included in this selection.)

  I joined the POUM militia at the end of 1936. The circumstances of my joining this militia rather than any other were the following. I had intended going to Spain to gather materials for newspaper articles etc., and had also some vague idea of fighting if it seemed worth while, but was doubtful about this owing to my poor health and comparatively small military experience. Just before I started someone told me I should not be able to cross the frontier unless I had papers from some leftwing organisation (this was untrue at that time although party cards etc. undoubtedly made it easier). I applied to John Strachey who took me to see Pollitt. P after questioning me evidently decided that I was politically unreliable and refused to help me, also tried to frighten me out of going by talking a lot about Anarchist terrorism. Finally he asked whether I would undertake to join the International Brigade. I said I could not undertake to join anything until I had seen what was happening. He then refused to help me but advised me to get a safe-conduct from the Spanish Embassy in Paris, which I did. Just before leaving England I also rang up the I.L.P., with which I had some slight connections, mainly personal, and asked them to give me some kind of recommendation. They sent me to Paris a letter addressed to John McNair at Barcelona. When I crossed the frontier the passport people and others, at that time Anarchists, did not pay much attention to my safe-conduct but seemed impressed by the letter with I. L. P. heading, which they evidently knew by sight. It was this that made me decide to produce my letter to McNair (whom I did not know) and through this that I joined the P.O.U.M. militia. After one glimpse of the troops in Spain I saw that I had relatively a lot of training as a soldier and decided to join the militia. At that time I was only rather dimly aware of the differences between the political parties, which had been covered up in the English leftwing press. Had I had a complete understanding of the situation I should probably have joined the CNT militia.

  At this time the militias, though theoretically being recast on an ordinary army basis, were still organised in columna, centuria, seccion, the centuria of about 100 men more or less centring round some individual and often being called ‘So-and-so’s bandera’.3 The commander of the centuria ranked more or less as captain, but below that there was no well-defined rank except corporal and private. People wore stripes etc. of rank in Barcelona but it was ‘not done’ to wear them at the front. Theoretically promotion was by election, but actually the officers and NCOs were appointed from above. As I shall point out later this does not in practice make much difference. One peculiar feature however was that a man could choose which section he should belong to and as a rule could also change to another bandera if he wanted to. At that time men were being sent into the line with only a few days’ training and that of a parade-ground kind, and in many cases without ever having fired a rifle. I had brought with me ordinary British Army ideas and was appalled by the lack of discipline. It is [of] course always difficult to get recruits to obey orders and becomes much more so when they find themselves thrust into trenches and having to put up with cold etc. which they are not accustomed to. If they have not had a chance to familiarise themselves with firearms they are often much more afraid of bullets than they need be and this is an added source of indiscipline. (Incidentally a lot of harm was done by the lies published in
the leftwing papers to the effect that the Fascists were using explosive bullets. So far as I know there is no such thing as an explosive bullet,4 and certainly the Fascists weren’t using them.) At the beginning one had to get orders obeyed (a) by appealing to party loyalty and (b) by force of personality, and for the first week or two I made myself thoroughly unpopular. After about a week a man flatly refused to go to a certain place which he declared was exposed to fire, and I made him do so by force – always a mistake, of course, and doubly so with a Spaniard. I was immediately surrounded by a ring of men calling me a Fascist. There was a tremendous argument, however most of the men took my side and I found that people rather competed to join my section. After this, for some weeks or months, both among the Spaniards and the few English who were on this front, this kind of thing recurred over and over again. Ie. indiscipline, arguments as to what was justifiable and what was ‘revolutionary’, but in general a consensus of opinion that one must have strict discipline combined with social equality. There was always a lot of argument as to whether it was justifiable to shoot men for desertion and disobedience, and in general people agreed that it was, though some would never do so. Much later, about March, near Huesca, some 200 CNT troops suddenly decided to walk out of the line. One could hardly blame them as they had been there about five months, but obviously such a thing could not be allowed and there was a call for some POUM troops to go and stop them. I volunteered though not feeling very happy about it. Fortunately they were persuaded to go back by their political delegates or somebody, so it never came to violence. There was a lot of argument about this, but again the majority agreed that it would be justifiable to use one’s rifle against men doing this if necessary. Throughout this period, ie. January-April 1937 the gradual improvement in discipline was brought about almost entirely by ‘diffusion of revolutionary consciousness’, ie. endless arguments and explanations as to why such and such a thing was necessary. Everyone was fanatically keen on keeping social equality between officers and men, no military titles and no differences of food etc., and this was often carried to lengths that were rather ridiculous, though they seemed less ridiculous in the line where minute differences of comfort were very appreciable. When the militias were theoretically incorporated in the Popular Army5 all officers were expected to pay their extra pay ie. anything over 10 pesetas a day, into the Party funds, and everyone agreed to do so, though whether this actually happened I don’t know, because I am not certain whether anyone actually began drawing extra pay before the POUM militia was redistributed. Punishments for disobedience were, however, being used even at the time when I first reached the front. It is extremely difficult to punish men who are already in the front line, because short of killing them it is hard to make them more uncomfortable than they are already. The usual punishment was double hours of sentry-go – very unsatisfactory because everyone is already short of sleep. Occasionally men were shot. One man who attempted to cross to the Fascist lines and was clearly a spy was shot. Another caught stealing from other militiamen was sent back supposedly to be shot, though I don’t think he actually was. Courts martial were supposed to consist of one officer, one NCO and one militiaman, though I never saw one in action.