Introductory Chapter to The Jews (1937) by Hilaire Belloc, part 2 of 6

Pg 29

It insisted on “liquidating” those who had inherited or acquired the habit of control under the old Christian society: not only those who were themselves in possession of machinery and lands and reserves of necessaries — not only capitalists, that is — but all educated men who, though themselves — proletarian and possessed of nothing, sympathized with the traditions of Christian society; for these traditions include the right to property and the independence of the family. It was necessary to “liquidate” these people, and further to “liquidate” more particularly and more thoroughly those who passed on the tradition of the Christian religion. The simplest form of “liquidation” was murder, and under the inspiration of Communism we saw murder on a scale hitherto unknown even during the invasions of the pagan Mongols. Priests by tens of thousands, the owners of wealth in every kind, the adherents to old traditions in every form, were massacred wherever the new fury could strike.

Moreover, Communism declared itself not only atheist but materialist in its atheism. It declared quite accurately and logically that its prime enemy was the Christian religion.

Pg 30

Now Spain was a country in which the exploitation of the poor by the rich, such as takes place under Capitalism, was more intensely resented by the victims of that system than anywhere else in Europe. The mass of Spain is agricultural, and much of the agricultural population had either security of tenure or actual possession of land sufficient to establish a just and contented society. But there were great patches which were exceptional. In the South, that is in Andalusia, the medieval arrangements of village life from which all the better traditions of Christendom descend were not present. The land reconquered from the Moors at the end of the Christian advance against them during the last century of the Middle Ages was confiscated to the Crowns of the conquerors, as was the universal custom with land redeemed from Pagan or Mahommedan invaders; but it was not redistributed to the peasantry. It was given in huge estates to great nobles and other favourites. The actual tillers of the soil remained amongst the poorest in Europe. In Andalusia therefore there was a widespread feeling of popular enmity against the wealthier classes. But that had little to do with the opportunity which other parts of Spanish society offered to revolutionary propaganda. The core of that opportunity was the intense feeling of the Spanish proletariat in the large towns, especially where these towns had been industrialized. Nowhere was it felt more violently than in Barcelona. Anyone who has mixed with the people of that port, and has seen the workers in its factories during the last thirty years, can testify to the intensity of the rising popular anger against industrial conditions. Those who were ready to go to all lengths in order to end those conditions by violence were a minority, and not a large minority, but they were exceedingly courageous, thoroughly determined, and inspired by the fullest hate. They were naturally to be found mainly among the younger men of the industrial proletariat, but they had sympathizers outside that class.


Pg 31

Meanwhile, there was a hatred of the Church as, violent as, or more violent than, the hatred of the rich and of the system whereby the rich were supported. This hatred of the Church was not due, as foreigners have ignorantly and even stupidly supposed, to the wealth of the Church: the Spanish parish clergy were among the poorest in Europe, and anyone who will go carefully over the list of those known to have been murdered will satisfy himself that envy of wealth had nothing to do with the crimes. Half the priests of Spain have been savagely put to death by the revolutionaries, and very few of them could have known from one day to another where to find ₤10. Humble village priests, sprung from the people, indistinguishable in manners and speech from the peasants around them and less endowed with goods than any other class in the country, were the specially chosen victims.

Here again it was a minority, as might be expected, that committed such shocking crimes. The bulk of the population, even in great towns, were churchgoing Catholics. This was manifest in Barcelona, though Barcelona was the very focus of the revolution. But the Church was associated in the minds of the revolutionaries with the best of all the traditions they were determined to destroy.

Pg 32

At this point let it be carefully noted and fixed in the reader’s mind that the Spanish conflict is essentially a religious war. It does not call itself such. The superficial foreign observer, especially if he be from a country where Catholicism is virtually unknown to the mass of men, may well think the other elements in the struggle to be of greater importance, and particularly the struggle between Capital and Labour. But in all its manifestations of active hatred, especially its organizing of murder, Communism in Spain since the outbreak of the revolution has been specially and particularly anti-Christian.

In that part of Spanish territory still in the hands of the revolutionaries it has been impossible to practise religion, or to teach religion to the young. What is more, implements and symbols of religion were systematically destroyed wholesale because the Revolutionaries judged, quite rightly, that symbols are a support to Religion. They are also proofs of its presence. In a great many cases the possession of a crucifix or a rosary was a death-warrant.

When the organized reaction against this outburst of anarchy and murder arose under the conduct of General Franco, it seemed at first as though Madrid wherein the gold of the country was amassed — particularly in the Bank of Spain — would be seized by the insurgents. Madrid was saved from capture by something which thenceforward dominated the situation — foreign intervention. The Communist Government of Russia began to pour in munitions of war through the eastern ports which were under the control of revolutionary bodies, principally composed of young men and most of them Anarchists. With the Anarchists, Moscow Communism was not in great sympathy. They would be a disturbing factor. But anything was thought by Moscow worthy of support which helped to destroy Christian Spain.

Pg 33

The young revolutionaries, both the comparatively small body within Madrid itself and the much larger bodies from the eastern seaboard, were enrolled as militia, so were the men let loose from the gaols, and almost anyone who cared to join for such pay as the revolutionary government could offer.

The courage of these irregular troops was very fine but their lack of discipline was hopeless, and the insurgent aircraft could drive the militiamen out of their badly made trenches almost at will. The advance on Madrid from the South was so rapid that the centre of the town would certainly have been reached in the first continuous movement had it not been necessary to rescue the Army cadets who were holding out against the revolutionaries at Toledo, in the military school of that town, which was also the old castle, the Alcazar. This deflection from Franco’s main purpose gave the revolutionary government time to bring up tanks — not of the first quality, but sufficient for the purpose and provided by Moscow. The advance was checked and the penetration of the town of Madrid never got beyond the outskirts.

Thence onwards masses of munitionment and men began to reach the revolutionary side in all manner of ways. The revolutionaries having seized the gold of the country — about 130 millions (probably more counting private sources) — they spent it wholesale, buying up out-of-works in the Southern French towns and elsewhere. They also bought up at a very high price, for it was risky work, pilots and machines for air fighting. Meanwhile, the French Government was secretly conniving at the passage of French aeroplanes over the Pyrenees.

Pg 34

Franco and his insurgents were also receiving reinforcements; not of course on the same scale as their opponents, and this for two reasons. First, because it was more difficult to reach them with the French Government hostile to the insurgent cause and with only one port at their disposal, that of Cadiz; secondly, because they had been better equipped at the beginning of their movement than had the ramshackle and ill-organized revolutionary herd calling itself “the Government forces” (often known in this country as “constitutional “— the most comic epithet which under the circumstances could have been applied).

Soon a certain number of German experts, especially expert organizers of flying work and a certain number of German pilots and machines, and another contingent of Italian engineers and machines appeared on the insurgent side. The numbers thus contributed have never been accurately ascertained. They were probably more than 8,000 men and less than 10,000, so far as ground work was concerned: they were all volunteers, but their volunteering was winked at by the authorities of the countries from which they came. On the revolutionary side far larger numbers of hired mercenaries but also young foreign revolutionaries, filled with a genuine enthusiasm for the Anarchist or Communist cause, as the case might be, came flooding into Eastern Spain, organized their International Brigade, and soon became the best disciplined and (for a long time) the only serious fighting force which Franco had to meet.