Foreign News: Tyrants & Liberty

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Catalonian anarchists supporting the Leftist Government of Premier Dr. Juan Negrin asked leave to stage anti-Fascist rallies and parades on the first birthday of Spain's civil war last week, but were sternly repressed. Catalonia's President Luis Companys cared to risk no street riots among his Communist, Anarchist, Socialist and Republican supporters, and anyhow Leftist Spain was grimly straining every resource in its first large offensive of the war.

Starting fortnight ago, this "Big Push" cut a swath nearly ten miles wide and ten miles deep into Rightist positions west of Madrid (TIME, July 19). By last week the Rightists had had to halt their own offensive against Santander on the North in order to release enough troops and planes to check the Leftist drive. They had it retarded after nine days.

Meanwhile, after a week in which Franco's fighting planes had had much the worst of it in daily dogfights, 21 Franco bombers escorted by 66 pursuit ships hurled 50 tons of bombs down upon a four-mile-square, area of the ten-mile-square advance Leftist positions, huge 200-lb. bombs gouging enormous craters, destroying the point of the Leftist spearhead. This week, grimly determined to follow up their advantage the Rightists reportedly massed 42,000 men on the Madrid front, another 80,000 in reserve. Newshawks were already beginning to talk in anticipation about the "Battle for Madrid."

Flags all over Rightist Spain went to half-staff early last week. This marked the first anniversary of the assassination in Madrid last year of Rightist Martyr No. i, onetime Finance Minister Jose Calvo Sotelo who was taken-for-a-ride by uniformed guards of the Madrid Government. Its head then as now was President Don Manuel Azana who last week was in Valencia. Few days after the Rightists mourned Calvo Sotelo, they celebrated with bullfights and fiestas last week the day on which they rose against Republicans, Socialists, Anarchists and Communists of Spain. Last week British-owned ore mines near Bilbao (now Rightist) had taken from them the first shipload of ore dispatched to Adolf Hitler.

Gibraltar. British Laborites failed last week to arouse His Majesty's Government with the disclosure, not challenged in the House of Commons, that German technicians have now installed for General Franco a semicircle of heavy howitzers on Spanish soil commanding Britain's Gibraltar. When Labor M.P.s got to pressing His Majesty's Government uncomfortably, one of the most remarkable diversions in Parliamentary history was created by new First Lord of the Admiralty Alfred Duff Cooper who drawled: "It may interest the House to know that a British ship was captured [by the Rightists] while attempting to enter Santander this morning." At this the Conservative M.P.s who formed Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's majority raised shouts of laughter, and only the impotent Laborites of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition cried: "Shame! Shame!"