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Handout #247 |
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The Spanish Civil War |
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For the majority of Catholics and for the Holy
See, France's uprising was a crusade against Communism. Georges Bernanos had
thought this initially, but having witnessed the summary executions
perpetrated by Franco's men in Jajorca, he attacked the pseudo-crusade and
the reciprocal violence.
I think that the Spanish Crusade is a farce. It sets against one another two partisan masses which were already in confrontation at an electoral level, and will always confront one another in vain because they do not know what they want, exploiting force instead of knowing how to make use of it. The Spanish War is a charnel house. It is the charnel house of principles, true and false; of intentions, good and bad. When they have cooked together in blood and mud, you will see what they become, you will see the soup into which you have plunged. If there is a sight deserving of compassion it is that of these unfortunates who have squatted for months around the witches' cauldron, stabbing at it with a fork and each one boasting of the piece that he has got Republicans, Democrats, Fascists or anti-Fascists; clerical and anti-clerical, poor people, poor devils. I have seen with my own eyes, I tell you, I have seen a small Christian people, peaceful by tradition, sociable in the extreme and almost to excess, suddenly becoming hard; I have seen these faces, even children's faces, growing hard ...Georges Bernanos, Les Grands Cimitieres sous Is lune (1938) |
