Visit 11

As requested, the last time I visited the archive I checked out the Good Fight box hours before actually seeing the film. Another student was using the box when I came in. I asked what folders were interesting since the box was pretty big and I had about an hour and a half to read after walking over from work.

The first interesting thing I looked at was a letter from Clute Wilton's father to the Secretary. His letter began with an impressive opening where he recounts his family's involvement in patriotic wars: a father in the Civil War, a great, great grandfather in the Revolutionary War, two sons in the Great War, and one currently fighting in Spain. The rest of Mr. Wilton's letter serves to connect his son's current fighting in Spain to the values and spirit of those fighting in the other American wars mentioned: "He has asked me to write to you, to ask you in the name of all that is fine and true and great in our American tradition to please give the Spanish government just a fair chance. " He says that his son has informed him that ammunition from America is killing American soldiers in Spain while "we do not permit the real government of Spain to buy ammunition from us." He calls this policy "one of the most inhumane, diabolical, and un-American practices I have ever heard of." I just thought this letter was interesting because it connected Spain's cause with America's in a way that I haven't seen before. And after having seen the movie last night it reminds me of a quote from one of the veterans: "The government wasn't representing the thoughts of the people."

This becomes very disconcerting when studying the American opinion of the Spanish Civil War because, as far I as I can think, this may have been the first time where the government deliberately ignored the will of the people, rendering the premise and the promise of our government to represent the people barren. Vietnam was the first wide-spread instance of this. Was the Spanish Civil War its precursor?

I ask the question because there was a folder that really obscures the answer to the question. The folder was called Franco's Fascism or something like that. I began to read an article called "Life in Nationalist Spain" dated October 1937 from the publication The Commonweal. Reading the first paragraph, I wrote down a quote that I thought was particularly laudatory of the Republican side: "it is not only the courage of his troops that is winning the war but the magnificent organization and cooperation of civilians of all classes." As I continued reading, I realized there was something wrong with my comprehension of the article, for it was turning pro-Franco. I looked at the quote again and picked out "his troops"--Franco's. This shocked me. It was the first of many shocks I would receive reading through the publications in this folder. I remember I was extremely tired when I got into the archive, but my indignation woke me up. I became absorbed in this folder and actually didn't get to look at anything else.

To answer the quote above, we know that Franco's army was not a cooperative coalition of all civilian classes. It was of the upper classes. And the troops weren't even civilian--a good fraction were foreigners. Many outrageous statements followed that were either untrue or scarily close to descriptions of fascism. In fact, there was an entire article with the aim of proving that Franco's Spain was not fascist--but contained several descriptions that fit exactly the fascist model.

This is the worst: "The mission of the new state according to General Franco himself is the establishment of social justice in Spain according to the teachings of the Catholic Church. AS the means necessary to fulfill this mission the state must be organized in the best and most efficient way, it must posses unity and hierarchy, it must be guaranteed stability and independence from party politics ... If there are any rights suppressed it will be the 'rights' of irresponsible agitators to incite mobs to burn and to loot." Two things particularly stand out: 1) "independence from party politics"--this statement effectively categorizes Franco's state exactly in place with the rest of the single-party states of that time and the rest of the twentieth century. 2) The fact that the author feels the need to mention and justify "rights suppressed"--"if there are any"--sends a signal to the discerning reader that this action is much more sinister than the defensive author aims to let on.

These were just a couple of examples of unsettling statements found in these publications. It was extremely interesting to me to find these papers because I now wonder if a large segment of the population believed these articles and helped to cancel out the voice of the pro-Republican activists.