SPAIN: Stars & Stripes & Bourbon

With a soldier's contempt for the feelings of the Anarchist, Communist and assorted Marxist adherents of the Valencia Cabinet of Premier Largo Caballero in Spain last week, White Generalissimo Francisco Franco let his radiorating General Queipo de Llano appoint as Military Governor of Málaga, just captured from the Reds (TIME. Feb. 15), a soldierly Bourbon, the middle-aged Duke of Seville, onetime Colonel in the Spanish Infantry of King Alfonso XIII.

Set up was a court-martial to try all more or less authentic Reds on whom the White victors could get their hands, much as the defenders of Málaga set up after the civil war began a "people's court" to crack down on any Spaniard who seemed to be more or less Monarchist or even middleclass. That an orgy of Spanish vengeance did not at once erupt in Málaga last week, as it has erupted after almost every previous White victory in Spain's civil war, seemed to be due to the fact that decisive in taking Málaga fortnight ago were Italian forces. These strangers not only lacked the local enthusiasm for Spanish fratricide but quietly did all they could to restrain the acts of General Queipo de Llano, though no one could restrain the words of Spain's hottest-headed "Radio General." By week's end the Spaniards tried, condemned and actually executed in Málaga numbered only 200, this first batch being mostly officers and men of Spain's pre-civil war regular Army who had sided with the Reds.

With the victory at Málaga, which deprived the Valencia Cabinet of their last seaport on the south coast of Spain, came a tough problem for the Italian press. As yet Il Duce does not choose to make it official that Italian forces are fighting in Spain, but also last week Benito Mussolini did not choose to keep his people fror glorying in a victory won largely by Italia arms. The solution: Italian papers printed nothing from their own correspondents about Málaga, reprinted under banner headlines stories in which London, Paris, Berlin and other papers had spilled the facts.

Significantly meanwhile British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, no friend of Il Duce, went to "vacation" on the French Riviera, although Mr. Eden has only just finished enjoying the long English Christmas and New Year holidays. In London foreign policy was thus in full charge of Sir Robert Gilbert Vansittart, a leading figure last year in "The Deal" which sealed the fate of Haile Selassie (TIME, Oct. 14, 1935 et seq.). Last week such veteran correspondents as the New York Times P. J. Philip scarcely veiled their overwhelming hunch that the French, Italian and German Ambassadors and Sir Robert were sealing the fate of Valencia. Headlined the Times: POWERS WILL DROP NEUTRALITY POLICY TO LET FRANCO WIN.