France suddenly woke up last week to the fact that hereafter, by virtue of Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s conquest of Catalonia (see p. 17), she would have only one neighbor—Rebel Spain—to her south instead of the two warring neighbors she has had for the last two and a half years. Moreover, the realization grew that this new Spanish neighbor, puppet of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, might not prove to be the friendly one that France has known for more than 100 years.
All during the Spanish War France has been scarcely on speaking terms with Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s Government. Unlike Britain, she has sent no friendly, trade mission to Burgos. Last week, however, France thought the time had come to begin a series of diplomatic flirtations if not an actual marriage. Hawk-beaked Rightist Senator Léon Bérard of the Basses-Pyrenees Department entrained for Burgos from Paris. His trip, he and the French Foreign Office said, was unofficial, but there was no doubt that he had been sent by Premier Edouard Daladier’s Government to sound out the possibility of establishing “friendly relations.”
Seen off at Paris by José Maria Quiñones de LeÓn, unofficial agent of Rebel Spain in France and longtime Ambassador to France of King Alfonso XIII, M. Berard would say only that he was going to Burgos to “settle some questions with good neighbors.” Obviously referring to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement trips, he pointed slyly to an umbrella he was carrying, called it “standard equipment on the kind of trip I am making.”
Generalissimo Franco soon responded to the French hints of possible friendship. The French have long dreaded the idea of having the Italian legionnaires fighting with the Rebels at the French frontier. No less pleasing has been the thought that the Rebels’ friends have been constructing fortifications on the French-Spanish frontier. Last week the Generalissimo informed France that Italian troops would not be allowed to operate in the frontier sector, and at the same time withdrew an Italian militia brigade from the Catalonian shambles. He also invited a French military mission to come and see for itself that no fortifications in Spain menaced France. They came, they saw, they went home satisfied.
If this was good news to France, the Spanish news that came from Italy was decidedly bad. Dictator Benito Mussolini has often promised that once Generalissimo Franco has his victory he would retire his troops from Spain. Last week, however, Virginio Gayda, Dictator Mussolini’s journalistic spokesman, revealed that Italy has a far different kind of “victory” in mind than have France and Great Britain. What Italy meant by “victory,” Signor Gayda cagily explained, was not only a “military victory” but “full political victory.” Said he:
“Italian legionnaires will not leave Spanish territory until it has been completely purged of Red armed forces and of the surrounding corrosive influences of their friends. . . .”
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