Spanish Republic in Exile

Addresses the Following

Commentary to the Governments

Democratic Countries

h
Alvaro de Albornoz

Published by the

Spanish Weekly Newspaper

The Government o� the Spanish Republic

in Exile Addresses the Following

Commentary to the Governments

and the Public Opinion o� the

Democratic Countries

The Government of the Spanish Republic in
exile, untouched by the struggles of factions
and parties into which humanity is divided, as
were the villages in ancient times under their
belfries, the unity of old Christian community
having been destroyed and all ecumenical
sentiment lost, addresses itself to the Govern-
ments and to the public opinion of all demo-
cratic countries of the world, exposing once
more the grave injustice of which the Spanish
people continues to be the victim. With the
authority that moral right and moral force,
purified by misfortune, imparts, the Spanish
Republican Government which represents a
legality overthrown by a criminal foreign in-
tervention, as well as a people abandoned to
the rigours of tyranny by the lack of solidarity
of the democracies, this government feels able
to judge objectively and impartially the diffi-
cult and dangerous situation into which the
Spanish problem has been put by the latest
evolution of international politics. With this in

view, we submit the following considerations
�perhaps more important from the point of
view of the chronicle than because of the action
in itself�of

Secretary of State Dean Acheson's
Letter to Senator Tom Connolly

Political feelings seized at once on the afore-
said document, either praising it or discredit-
ing it, according to the tendency of the inter-
national forces in disagreement. And frivolity
merrily joined the scandal and stridency that
are always to be found in a passionate political
discussion. Madrid�the official Madrid�was
more prudent and cautious in its assertions.
The contradictions in the document were obvi-
ous at the first glance. The clever pen of the
writer did not disguise the reserves, with which
he proposed to neutralize the concessions, in-
tended to produce the greatest enthusiasm
among the partisans of the Spanish dictator-
ship. The document is directed both to Repub-
licans and Democrats�though addressed to a
Democrat�so as to avoid the disputes that
generally hinder negotiations, and to reduce
opposition by the Senate to the projects of the
Government. This is an attempt to please par-
liamentary tourists, who show in Washington
a Spain seen superficially and the exporters,
who keep their wares heaped ready on the

quays of New York. In short, Dean Acheson's
letter to Senator Tom Connally seems to be a
manoeuvre, a trick of interior politics rather
than an act of decisive international import-
ance. In any case, the document of the Secre-
tary of State Dean Acheson justifies the alarm
that it has produced and must be considered
in its full gravity, because of the risk in as far
as it is clear, because of the possibility of mis-
interpretation in its ambiguity, for the backing
it implies, even in its most dubious expressions
to the bankrupt Franco Regime, and for the
encouragement it can bring to the defenders of
Fascism in Europe or America.

Value and Efficiency of the U. N.
Decision of 1946

In the resolution adopted by the Assembly
of the United Nations on the 1st of December
1946, we find the last of a series of declarations
inspired by the Atlantic Charter of August
1941. In this unforgettable�though apparent-
ly forgotten�document, published when the
soldiers of Hitler trampled all Europe under
their boots, the restoration of full sovereignty
and free exercise of government to all those
who had been deprived of them by force was
promised. The declarations of the United Na-
tions of the 1st of January 1942 and the Tehe-
ran Conference of December 1943 were followed
by the transcendental declaration of Yalta in

1945. In this the three great democratic Pow-
ers, Great Britain, United States and Russia,
engaged themselves to help the peoples of libe-
rated Europe, and the old satellite States of
the Axis, among which without any doubt was
Spain, to settle democratically their most urgent
political and economic problems, and to restore
the sovereign rights and self-government, to
the benefit of those peoples who had been so
brutally deprived of them by the aggressive
powers. The case of Spain was obvious. Her
republican institutions, and with them all her
liberties, had been destroyed by the arms of
Hitler and Mussolini, in the service of the
rebels against the legitimate regime of their
country, as was solemnly declared later by the
United Nations themselves. This inspired the
resolution of San Francisco in June 1946, in
which it is stated that the Charter of the
United Nations is inapplicable to "States whose
regimes have been established with the help of
the military forces of the countries that fought
against the United Nations, as long as these
regimes remain in power." Later comes the
Potsdam resolution at the end of August of the
same year, signed by the United States, Russia
and Great Britain, in which these three Gov-
ernments affirm that "they will not back the
admittance to the United Nations of the Fran-
quist Government" "which having been estab-
lished by the help of the Axis Powers does
not possess, owing to its origin, its nature and
its close association with the aggressive powers,
the necessary qualifications for admittance to

this organization." And the London Assembly
of February 1946 reiterates the San Francisco
and Potsdam declarations. So, the resolution of
the United Nations of the 12th of December
1946 is not an improvisation or a surprise,
owing to momentary circumstances; it is still
less the result of a manoeuvre in the interior of
an organization which was not yet divided into
two blocks, nor was yet the scene of the hard
struggle of the cold war. It is logical in its
political principles, and necessary because of
the moral premises of a whole series of previ-
ous declarations and resolutions, which have
the value and prestige of acts of the most im-
portant Governments and of the highest inter-
national Organization. To derogate this resolu-
tion or to suppress it, would be to erase from
history the war for democracy and liberty of
the peoples, and to forget the millions of dead
and the horrible cruelties, whose first victims
were the Spanish people. And to consider it as
a casual mistake continued absentmindedly or
carelessly would prove before the world that
the highest diplomacy is but a comedy.

Convention in diplomacy, however liberal
this diplomacy may be, has an insurmountable
limit, and this is the respect to the evidence of
facts. And this limit that even the diplomacy of
the most powerful State cannot transgress
though it desires to do so, is transgressed when
it is said that the resolution of the United Na-
tions of December 1946 served only to invigor-
ate the Franquist Regime, and to unite around
the Dictator, with the bonds of patriotic love

for Spain, the great majority of the people.
If the first were true, all the organs of propa-
ganda of the Spanish Fascist State would ask
for the prolongation of the international boy-
cott against Franco. Instead of this they attack
violently, in the usual way of Falangist dema-
gogy, the U. N. resolution, its promoters and
the countries represented by them. And as to
the second, if it is perfectly possible that a
people may be grouped around a dictator when
the independence of the country is threatened,
or the honour of the country has been gravely
insulted, the attacks against tyranny that are
produced outside the country comfort the public
opinion inside it, and its appreciation is shown
within the strict limits allowed by police vigil-
ance. A proof of this is offered by the extra-
ordinary sympathy that Mexico finds in Spain,
the Mexico of C�rdenas, Avila Camacho and
Alem�n. The silhouette of an artist, the begin-
ning of a dance or the prelude of a Mexican
song, are enough to produce an outburst of en-
thusiasm in a cinema or a theatre. This is sheer
love and gratitude for the country in which
parents, brothers, husbands and sons live free,
under the protection of a State that affirms
the principles that so many others forget, and
practices the democratic solidarity that so
many others ignore, refusing to recognise the
spurious regime that oppresses and dishonours
Spain.

If the resolution of the United Nations of
December 1946 was not so efficacious as it
should have been, it is not the fault of the

Spanish people, nor can it be attributed to any
peculiar psychological quality of the Spaniards ;
it is the fault, on the contrary, of the Interna-
tional Organization that gave birth to the re-
solution. The Security Council did not observe
the recommendations made by the Assembly,
because these recommendations were not lim-
ited to the withdrawal of Ambassadors and
Plenipotentiary Ministers in Madrid but, be-
sides excluding Franquist Spain from all inter-
national organisations established by the
United Nations or having connections with
them, as well as from conferences and other
activities until a new and acceptable Govern-
ment be created in Spain, the Security Council
was in charge of the adoption of the necessary
measures to put an end to this situation, if,
within a reasonable delay, a Government had
not been constituted in Spain to guarantee the
basic rights, calling the people to free elections.
But the Council remained inactive, though the
tyranny continued to manifest itself with more
and more energy, as we can see by many
statistics and figures. Nor did the Assembly
do anything despite some eminent voices that
were heard at the tribune. On the contrary, a
few small States, some of them territorially
small and some small by their moral authority,
were permitted to ignore the resolution of
December 1946, sending to Franco as a present,
the Ambassadors and representatives of their
more or less insignificant dictators, since it
was impossible to send the representatives of
the peoples themselves. And so�while Franco,

the little man born in the laboratory of Hitler
and Mussolini, and destroyer of Free Masons,
since he cannot destroy Empires, laughs at the
giants of Democracy, who desire above all to
be pardoned for having vanquished Nazism and
Fascism�we come to the advertisement of
bargains in Fascism in the liquidation of the
most terrible international bankruptcy.

Lack of Similarity Between the Case
of Russia and that of Franco Spain

The argument that, if diplomatic relations
are being maintained with Soviet Russia and
the States under her influence, there is no
reason why they should not be maintained with
Franquist Spain, is a misconception. Not tak-
ing into account any comparison between these
two Regimes, the Soviet Regime, either laudable
or blameworthy, is not the result of foreign in-
tervention, but of a great historical surge of
the Russian people, which is a real national
fact. Soviet Russia has existed since 1917, and
the Italy of Mussolini was one of the first
States to recognise her. The European Demo-
cracies, even when ruled by conservative
statesmen, have made pacts with her, without
considering this nation as a foreigner in con-
tinental life. But, above all, Soviet Russia was
an ally of Great Britain and the United States
in the fight against the Axis Powers. To say
up to what point the Soviet effort contributed
to the common victory is something that is to
be judged by the technicians. But the Russian

heroism, of which evidence is attested by mil-
lions of dead, belongs to Universal History, in
whose chronicles the names of Roosevelt, Chur-
chill and Stalin are joined in memorable con-
ferences and meetings.

And the States that are to-day contemptu-
ously named satellites of Russia, and of whose
regimes we shall not speak now, were then in
the great constellation opposed to the Total-
itarian one, and rotated indistinctly around
the great stars of the democratic sky. Poland,
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia had in London
their Governments in exile. And the leaders
who, in the invaded countries were fighting
for the national independence, were not asked
for their political identity ; they were, far from
that, applauded and exalted as heroes, and no
committee had been constituted to investigate
on the day of victory the documentation of the
liberators.

The Spain of Franco was on the contrary an
ally of Hitler and Mussolini. She attained the
heights of insolence in her manifestations of
solidarity with the aggressive powers. She con-
gratulated victorious Hitler, sending him dis-
patches in which enthusiasm was adulterated
by flattery and servility. She rejoiced at the
fall of Paris with ignoble gaiety. She created
obstacles and difficulties in Morocco, trying
to appropriate Tangiers, and she supplied the
German and Italian submarines in the Mediter-
ranean and in the Atlantic. She sent to Russia
the Blue Legion to prove her material partici-
pation in the war. She submitted the Spanish

people to the most cruel privations to the profit
of the totalitarian fighters. And where arms
could not reach she used insult and impudence.
All the ineptitudes that a miscomprehension
of the Anglosaxon character suggested to the
minds of the latin countries were compiled in
articles and pamphlets. The English Revolution
was reviled, emphasizing its hypocritically
puritan and tyrannically anticatholic charac-
ter. The United States were the object of the
coarsest insults. The materialistic or inferior
sense of their civilisation was studied in the
syllabus of secondary school education. Another
subject was the financial immorality of that
great Republic. Probably the casual tourists
from Washington, and the farmers of Florida
and Texas, who now feel tendernes before the
agony of the dictator are not aware of this.
If they had been informed they would not have
been deceived by guile.

The United States and the European
Democracy

Europe is no longer the material power it
was some time ago, but she continues to be the
spiritual basis of the contemporary world.
Politically, present Europe is the point of con-
fluence of three movements which still exist:
British liberalism, French democracy and a
new conception of history brought in by the
German philosophy. It is a civilisation born
from the Renaissance, from the Reform and
from the Revolution. Spain and Italy, who had

been dormant for centuries, contribute to the
reforming movement of the world, with the
deep gestation of the democratic ideals flour-
ishing in the century of Castelar and Mazzini.
And it is this civilisation, in whose bosom the
political and social doctrines which prevailed
in the last century were elaborated, that op-
posed an insurmountable obstacle to the dark
and tumultuous forces that threw themselves,
with Hitler and Mussolini, under the arms of
Gothic barbarity to the assault of the modern
conscience.

The same civilisation against which the
weapons of the great dictators blunted them-
selves, rejects the dwarf who continues, to the
scandal of universal opinion, to rule the des-
tinies of Spain. From Churchill to Stalin all
the votes of first quality are opposed to the
abominable dictatorship which enslaves the
Spanish people. All parties are hostile to Fran-
co, not only the communists, but the moderate
socialists, the bourgeois republicans, the
christian democrats. All the governments, from
the monarchies of the North, purified by puri-
tan moral and enlivened by socialist humanism,
to the popular democracies of the Centre and
the South, consider the Franquist Regime as a
monstrous survival. Even the Vatican, sensi-
tive to the opinion prevailing in Italy, tries to
drive away the sinister personage that hovers
about it, like a spectre. All Europe rejects, as
a foreign body, not only foreign to its political,
moral, cultural and spiritual life, but belonging
to an extinguished geological period, the dan-

gerous fossil that the victorious allies have
forgotten beyond the Pyrenees.

It is not only the outcast of a civilisation,
the repugnance of a culture and the hostility of
a political and social system. It is also the alarm
of great and grave interests that consider
themselves engaged. England knows what bit-
ter enmity to the British spirit and what irre-
ductible opposition are to be found in the bosom
of the Spanish reaction, of which Franco is
the most typical representative. France needs
to be sure she will not be stabbed on the back
in the Pyrenees as she was in the Alps. Italy
does not forget that the shade of Franco is
the phantom of Mussolini, in the same way as
the restoration of the Bourbons in Spain might
signify the restoration of the house of Savoy.
Any organisation of Europe is impossible if it
adds to the democratic head a quarrelsome
fascist tail. Continental unity on the basis of
France and Germany requires firmness and
security in the counterforts of the Mediterra-
nean as well as in those of Scandinavia. The
Latin Federation needs an equilateral triangle,
which cannot be constituted by two republican
democracies and a fascist dictatorship. Even
the pacts in vigour from Benelux to North
Atlantic, held together none too securely by the
Marshall Plan, would be split by the distrust
and suspicious fear that a foreign and trouble-
some element would inspire. And for the mili-
tary cooperation, Franco's sword, this traitor
to his creators in misfortune and death, would

be Damocle's sword on the heads of the soldiers
of liberty.

Poverty can bring Spain momentarily to a
subordinate position, unsuited to her genius
and prestige. But soaring above the emergency
is the undying soul of the people. And it is
the soul of Europe that the United States must
conquer, though at the same time they patch
her crippled economy. The noble and fruitful
collaboration does not come to life because of
need but because of free design. Its inspiration
cannot be necessity but idealism.

The Rendezvous with Destiny

The United States were, at their birth, the
hope of the world. The Philadelphia declara-
tion, formulated under religious auspices was
like the revealing of a new gospel to all men.
The representatives of the young Republic were
welcomed to the France of Rousseau and Vol-
taire as the new prophets of the human kind.
The simple words of Franklin were listened to
in Paris�the Paris that was approaching the
days of the revolution�as sacred answers of
the oracle. The courageous and peaceful Wash-
ington�the Cincinnatus of the new Continent
�acquired in the days of the war the propor-
tions of an homeric hero. Jefferson, the clever-
est and most powerful statesman of all the
history of the United States, according to Mur-
ray Butler, proclaimed his solidarity with the
French revolution. When this broke out, demo-
cratic societies to defend it were constituted

in all the territory of the United States, and
that of Charleston was considered as a branch
by the club of the Jacobins. When after the
Napoleonic war and the reactionary movement
of the Holy Alliance, the revolution sprang up
again in Europe, the American republicans
stretched out their hands towards those of the
old Continent. In 1846, the National Conven-
tion of the Democratic Party expressed their
sympathies with the new French Republic;
and some time later the Secretary of State,
Daniel Webster, affirmed in a note addressed
to the Austrian Government, the right of the
American people to feel the deepest interest
in the nations that were fighting for a regime
similar to that of the United States. In 1850,
President Fillmore, with the authorisation of
the Congress, sent to Turkey a man-of-war to
carry to the United States the Hungarian
patriot Kossuth, exiled from his country. In
this democratic and humane tradition is forged
the heroic soul of Lincoln, liberator of the
slaves and this very tradition is the soil for the
roots of the thought, both profoundly Amer-
ican and universal, of Wilson and Franklin D.
Roosevelt. In the allusion to the appointment
with destiny of which the latter spoke, when
he felt himself called upon to intervene at the
head of his people in the most tragic conflict
of all history, there is the emotion that one
feels on the threshold of mystery, with the pre-
monition of being before something decisive
and irreparable.
The United States were above all the great

example of America; the masters, the guides
of the Continent. The liberators turned towards
Washington looking for the invincible sword,
now an immortal trophy, asking for military
inspiration. The Constitution of the United
States is adopted by all the peoples who achieve
their independence. All of them are constituted
as federations in order to dispense with the
unitarian and centralist spirit of the old
metropolis. From the pampas and the jungle
the Capitol is looked to as a star that cannot
suffer any eclipse. But the march of liberated
peoples towards democracy is slow, difficult
and painful . . . The colonial yoke still exists in
the spirit of the people, even on the wild moun-
tains and in the immense deserts. The old
despotism, without the greatness of historical
monarchies, springs up again in these tyrants
with the spirit of foremen and slave-traders.
Interior wars follow one another and the soul
of Rosas, Francia and Garcia Moreno, lives in
successive reincarnations. All this is the in-
heritance of a past of rebellion and slavery that
arms could not destroy spiritually with the
same ease as that with which they destroyed
the material links of administration and gov-
ernment.

The United States, masters of America, cope
with a grave situation. The spectacle of their
universal hegemony can but suffer, confronted
with the spectable of the iberoamerican dicta-
torships, influenced by them economically, but
refractory to their political mastery. It is very
important to bring democracy to China and

Japan and the Middle East and the negroes of
Africa, but it is much more important for it
to be established first in South and Central
America. It is right that they should be con-
cerned by the progress of totalitarian regimes
everywhere, beyond the Atlantic and beyond
the Pacific, in the Asiatic Steppes or in the
islands of the Pacific Ocean, but it is much
more serious in their own continent, almost at
the gates of the Capitol, almost within view
of the White House. For democracy all dictator-
ships are equally inadmissible. And from the
spiritual point of view, the nearer they are the
more dangerous they can be. The dictatorships
of America oppose themselves to the moral
unity of the hemisphere, and hinder demo-
cratic continental solidarity. It is a singular
method of bringing about the disappearance of
these dictatorships, relics of old Spain, trying
to imitate the Franquist Regime, to save Fran-
co from bankruptcy and disaster, and to pre-
sent him, rehabilitated, to the contemplation of
the peoples of America.

There were in fact simple apologues and
edifying parables in the speeches of Franklin
Roosevelt expressing the profound emotion be-
fore the appointment with destity. And every
morning the emotion is renewed before the
magnitude of the world events that are devel-
oping. The world is going mad, and there are
before us only presentiments, prophecies and
augurs; we wait on the threshold of mystery
with apprehension and anxiety. It would be
terrible indeed that the sacred appointment

"i-ith destiny should become a sordid and long-
drawn-out dialogue with the Spanish dictator,
under the sceptical and ironic regard of Chiang
Kai-Shek.

The Equivocation of Diplomatic
Relations

The problem that the letter of the Secretary
of State, Dean Acheson, puts before the United
Nations is not, as has been erroneously stated,
whether or not to recognise the Franquist
Regime; the United States recognised it al-
ready on the 3rd of April 1939, following the
deplorable example of England and France,
who had done so on the 27th of February ; they
recognised him without any reserve, without
taking into account the dangerous situation
which arose, without adopting any preventive
measure to guard against the reprisals of the
vanquishers, which were, as is well known,
extremely cruel. Nor is it a problem concern-
ing the recognition of the governments de facto,
and that is why it is useless to speak of the
Estrada Doctrine, which in any case is little
understood ; nor must we discuss now whether
it is right or not to maintain normal diplomatic
relations with governments whose ideological
significance is condemned, or whose behaviour
is contrary to the elementary human rights
and merits universal execration. By using these
means of circumvallation they try to present
this problem under a false light, which makes
a cynical and scandalous camouflage possible.

The initiative of recognising Franco in 1939
was taken by the pusillanimous and reaction-
ary Chamberlain, whose policy of opening the
umbrella before it rains is so much like that
of the ostrich. France was weak enough to back
the British attitude�though both recognitions
were made on the same day�and the United
States followed, after a considerable lapse of
time, the two great European democracies. It
was the moment of pacification at any cost;
fear taking place of reason of State; the con-
fusion of panic; the slippery slope of Munich.
But when war broke out, Franco hastened to
proclaim his solidarity with the Powers of the
Axis; here we find the material and moral
weakness of Spain as an ally of Hitler and
Mussolini ; they exchange congratulations and
greetings, since they cannot exchange arms.
The Fascist foxes, unable to turn themselves
into lions, applaud the German eagles. The
panorama has changed. The possible collabo-
rator, who had been masquerading under a
hypocritical neutrality, is really an enemy.
Then, with intervals that mark the slow steps
of victory, come the Atlantic Charter, the
Declaration of the United Nations, Teheran,
Yalta . . . The Spanish Republicans follow,
with anxiety from their prisons and intern-
ment camps, the march of the soldiers of liber-
ty at the side of whom fight the compatriots
who succeeeded in escaping from the dungeon
or the hangman. And after the victory, without
the apprehension of an uncertain struggle, we
hear the victorious peal of the bells of San

Francisco, Potsdam . . . After that, London,
New York . . .

And this is the question. This has nothing to
do with disquisitions on International Law.
The point is to know whether the U.N.O. can
nullify all these declarations and all these acts,
intoning a shameful mea culpa ; making a pub-
lic recantation ; dragging themselves to Canosa,
like the German Emperor; marching in a pro-
cession under the caudine forks, exciting the
amazement of the world.

We hope that it will be otherwise. The shade
of Chamberlain "the peace-maker" must not
win the battle. The honour of the democracies
of Europe is engaged, to which are joined the
newly constituted democracies in Asia, as well
as all the free countries represented at the
U. N. There are, above all, the American demo-
cracies, which, by their repudiation of the
fascism of their mother country, defend their
liberty and their soul. Mexico, whose interna-
tional tradition has the illustrious lineage of
Francisco de Vitoria, who inspires the doctrine
of Estrada, the great democrat and unforget-
table friend of the Spanish Republic. Guate-
mala, that has dispersed the ashes of the dicta-
torship. Panama, whose representative at the
U.N. offered us an impressive lesson of law.
Cuba, in whose fight for liberty competed
soldiers and poets. Chile, endowed with so
strong and active a political spirit that she is
an example in the continent of moderation to
the most extreme currents of advance as well
as to reaction. The Uruguay of Battle Ordonez,

that extraordinary statesman, who turned his
country into a model democracy. Some of these
democracies can be proud of having the most
progressive institutions, and all of them share
the ideal, forged by the sword of the Liberator
and the muse of Marti; this ideal is also that
of the peoples oppressed by a new form of
colonial yoke. At the U.N. it is always the voice
of an American democracy that defends the
noblest cause, or that proposes the most just
solution, or that urges concord and fraternity.
And when they close the way to Franco, the
American democracies continue the secular
fight for the spiritual independence of the
countries, free from the old domination, whose
symbol is the Spanish Dictator.

Economic Assistance to Spain
and Subsidy to Franco

Not a Spaniard would be opposed on political
grounds, and still less on sectarian grounds, to
the collaboration that is required for the eco-
nomic restoration of the country, destroyed
and impoverished by a criminal rebellion that
has reduced by more than a million men the
working class population, and has thrown into
exile the best of the scientific and technical
elements of the country. Not one among us
follows the catastrophic conception that makes
of misery the lever of the historic movements,
nor do we mistake the civil virtues for the hate
that is generated by a suffering cruelly pro-
longed. They were sober, hard and persevering

nations�and the great powers of to-day should
not foget it�who carried out the most tran-
scendental and glorious undertakings in the
last centuries. But the poor nations that have
performed and will continue to perform the
hardest tasks of history, are not starving and
miserable nations.

The average Spaniard is able to distinguish
between aid that is offered to his country and
aid to a regime that enslaves it. True help to
the country must, if its nature is not to be
corrupted, take into account the natural con-
ditions of the economic movement, according
to the reciprocal needs of the peoples partipat-
ing. It must begin by showing itself free from
any attempt of exploitation, as well as from
any spirit of corruption. For a healthy capital-
ism, Franquist Spain neither is nor can be an
"investment field," as is said in financial jar-
gon. The Franquist Regime is like a dry and
burning land that would absorb the treasures
thrown to it, and give nothing in return. The
dictatorship is not only political despotism; it
is administrative immorality and economic
orgy; a bottomless barrel, as well as the gal-
lows and the prison, is the symbol of this
regime. All resources are insufficient for keep-
ing up the display of force that substitutes
public opinion, and the corrupted bureaucracy
that acts for the Government. An army with-
out soldiers, but with twenty thousand chiefs
and officers, is a monstrous parasite, even for
the wealthiest country. And, what is not taken
by this army of domination, is devoured by the

secondary parasites, underlings no less greedy.
This is the misery of Franquist Spain. And it
is very important not to mistake the covetous-
ness of the rulers of the country, who need
money, for the hunger of the people that they
try to exploit.

Any pretended economic help to Spain would
only be a subsidy to Franco, the wages of the
dictator and the maintenance of his sinister
gang. It would be used to reinforce locks and
gags, and to repair the prisons that are over-
flowing with prisoners. It would be the hideous
budget of the hangman. Far from favouring
the Spanish people, it would rivet their chains.
And in the long run it would be bad business
too, even without taking into account any moral
consideration. Because we cannot believe that
any honest government that may replace that
of Franco would recognise the national debt
created by the usurper of the Spanish sover-
eignty, in order to maintain his execrable
dictatorship.

� Call to Revolutionary Forces
Instead of a Peace-Making Gesture

If the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, on
making his declarations, had the purpose of
contributing to the pacification of Spain, pro-
curing the democratic evolution of the dictator-
ship, he can consider his attempt as a failure
from the very moment of the publication of
his letter. It satisfied nobody : the partisans of
Franco, because of its reticences and reserves;

the enemies of the dictator, because it excited
their anger; this is all that can be expected
for the hybrid combinations of all artful and
insincere politics.

The present regime of Spain cannot be
transformed, nor could Franco himself trans-
form it, even if he desired its transformation.
It is not likely that Franco, rather a man of
arms than a man of letters, has read Quevedo,
but by intuition, he probably knows the philos-
ophy of this maxim of the great writer:
"Tyrants are so wicked that to be virtuous is
dangerous for them; if they continue on the
way of violence, they consolidate their position ;
if they moderate it, they fall ; thus is their
nature that obstinacy is better for them, than
modification that means their ruin."

The question in Spain is not to camouflage
the dictatorship; the problem is to give back
to the Spanish people the sovereignty of which
they were deprived. And for that purpose, we
know only one way; this way is shown in the
immortal speech of Roosevelt on "the four
freedoms"; this is referred to afterwards in
the Atlantic Charter and the declaration of the
United Nations, and in the subsequent land-
marks of Yalta, San Francisco, Potsdam and
New York. Instead of going backwards, we
must follow on the same way to the end ; if the
measures taken up to now against the dictator
have not been efficacious, they should be re-
placed by other more vigorous measures. If the
restoration in Spain of the Democratic Regime
is sincerely desired, and this makes necessary

the overthrow of Franco, it is an inevitable
duty to favour and stimulate with the powerful
resources of the great democracies, and with-
out any material intervention, the forces that
inside the country and in exile fight for libera-
tion from the dictatorship. But instead of
favouring and stimulating these forces, they
are weakening and depressing them by acts,
such as the letter of Dean Acheson; this ex-
ceeds, let us say it with an euphemism, the
greatest liberty. To proclaim the necessity of
an alternative to the dictatorship and to help
this dictatorship, directly or indirectly, is to
play a frivolous and dangerous game. The
omens of 1950 are too grave to be disdained
by the statesmen of the democracies.

The Government of the Spanish Republic in
exile, on addressing the international opinion
never indulged in stupid vanity, unsuitable to
its representation and authority, self-respect
and the cause that is being defended, does not
permit indulgence in insult or frivolity. When
this Government expresses the deep pain that
the letter of Dean Acheson to Senator Tom
Connally causes to it, it neither wants to make
grievances nor provoke them. And we continue
to have confidence in the great people of the
United States, where we have so many friends,
and whose strong democracy has the power of
rectifying the mistakes of their rulers. In our
irrevocable conviction that this Republic, the
last manifestation of the national will, is the
only possible solution for the Spanish crisis,
we regret bitterly that, instead of offering to

the Spanish people legal solutions, they may be
obliged to choose between abject submission or
an appeal to violence, to which the arbiters
of war and peace are calling.

Government of the
Spanish Republic in Exile

Hon. DIEGO MARTINEZ BARRIO

President of the Spanish Republic in Exile

Hon. ALVARO DE ALBORNOZ

President of the Government and Minister
Foreign Affairs. Republican (Democrat).

Hon. FERNANDO VALERA

Vice-Presidente of the Government and Minister
of Finance. Union Republican. Paris.

Hon. FELIX GORDON ORDAX

Vice-President of the Government and Minister
Without Portfolio, Union Republican. Mexico.

Minister of Justice. Republican. (Democrat).

Hon. DR. EUGENIO ARAUZ

Minister Without Portfolio, Secretary
of Government. Federalist. Paris.

Hon. DR. EUGENIO SERRA MORET

Minister Without Portfolio. Socialist.

Hon. JOSE MA. SEMPRUN

Minister Without Portfolio.
Republican Independent (Catholic), Rome

Hon. GEN. JOSE ASENSIO

Minister Without Portfolio
Republican Independent. U.S.A. and U.N.

Minister Without Portfolio.
Republican (Democrat), Chile.



		The Government of the Spanish Republic in Exile Addresses the Following Commentary to the Governments and the Public Opinion of the Democratic Countries h Alvaro de Albornoz



		1950 Published by the Spanish Weekly Newspaper ESPA�A LIBRE



	this organization." And the London Assembly of February 1946 reiterates the San Francisco and Potsdam declarations. So, the resolution of the United Nations of the 12th of December 1946 is not an improvisation or a surprise, owing to momentary circumstances; it is still less the result of a manoeuvre in the interior of an organization which was not yet divided into two blocks, nor was yet the scene of the hard struggle of the cold war. It is logical in its political principles, and necessary because of the moral premises of a whole series of previ- ous declarations and resolutions, which have the value and prestige of acts of the most im- portant Governments and of the highest inter- national Organization. To derogate this resolu- tion or to suppress it, would be to erase from history the war for democracy and liberty of the peoples, and to forget the millions of dead and the horrible cruelties, whose first victims were the Spanish people. And to consider it as a casual mistake continued absentmindedly or carelessly would prove before the world that the highest diplomacy is but a comedy. Convention in diplomacy, however liberal this diplomacy may be, has an insurmountable limit, and this is the respect to the evidence of facts. And this limit that even the diplomacy of the most powerful State cannot transgress though it desires to do so, is transgressed when it is said that the resolution of the United Na- tions of December 1946 served only to invigor- ate the Franquist Regime, and to unite around the Dictator, with the bonds of patriotic love 7

		^MMM^^^^^^B

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the Spanish people legal solutions, they may be obliged to choose between abject submission or an appeal to violence, to which the arbiters of war and peace are calling.

	^Mlvaro de ~J�w
			omoz


		27