SPAIN: Delays and Demands

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A victory parade in Madrid, supposed officially to end the civil war, was first scheduled for the week after Madrid's surrender on March 29. It was then postponed to May 2, later, to May 15. Last week Generalissimo Francisco Franco, in Malaga, dropped a hint that he could not yet consider the war over. About the same time there came a report from Rome that the Madrid march would now take place on May 30.

The British and French Governments would normally regard the date of Spain's victory parade as El Caudillo's own private little matter. But long ago Dictator Benito Mussolini solemnly promised British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that Italian soldiers would be withdrawn from Spain as soon as the war was over. When the last Loyalist citadel was captured, the British waited a discreet time, then reminded II Duce of his sworn word.

Signer Mussolini's smooth answer was that his legionnaires, who had shed blood in the glorious Spanish campaigns, surely could not be expected to depart before they had marched down Madrid's Gran Via and Calle de Alcalá, along with 500,000 Spaniards, in a final salute to El Caudillo. And Italy could surely not be held responsible for Dictator Franco's delays. Last week the British and French began to suspect that Il Duce and El Caudillo were giving them the runaround, that Italian soldiers might remain in Spain just as long as Dictator Mussolini wants them there and Dictator Franco will have them.

Eye-opener. Those statesmen who believed that the New Spain would soon forsake its Rome-Berlin allies and go over to Britain and France had a rude shock, moreover, in the diplomatic tribulations of Marshal Philippe Petain at San Sebastian and Burgos. The 81-year-old Marshal was picked as French Ambassador to Spain because it was thought he would be able to talk to El Caudillo as one military man to another. El Caudillo did not see it that way.

At San Sebastian Marshal Petain was kept in the diplomatic doghouse for eight days before being officially received by the Franco Government. The price of reception, moreover, the old Marshal was told, was the return of the interned Republican fleet from Bizerte, Tunisia, the French protectorate, where it had fled in the closing days of the war. On this point the French gave in and General Franco's sailors sailed away with the fleet without bothering to pay even port charges.

Nor was Marshal Petain's experience much happier once he was received. Taking a leaf from the book of Adolf Hitler, Dictator Franco began making more demands. He wanted France immediately to turn over to Spain 410 interned armed trawlers and merchant ships of the now defunct Spanish Republic. He demanded $13,000,000 worth of war material that had been shipped from Soviet Russia and was held up in transit in France. He asked for about 100 airplanes and motors, still in crates, that were also in France. Not less interesting to the Generalissimo was $39,000,000 in gold francs deposited by the Loyalists in the Bank of France. El Caudillo omitted to say anything about the 400,000 Loyalist refugees which France is still lodging and feeding on French soil and for which the French Government somehow expects Dictator Franco to pay.