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Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Brand Page
  3. Orwell in Spain
  4. Orwell in Spain
  5. Introduction
  6. Editorial Note
  7. Acknowledgements
  8. Orwell’s Journey to Spain, December 1936
  9. Extract from ‘As I Please’, 42 [The Journey to Spain]
  10. Jennie Lee to Margaret M. Goalby, 23 June 1950: Orwell’s Arrival in Barcelona
  11. Orwell in Spain, December 1936
  12. Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore
  13. ‘British Author with the Militia’
  14. Eileen Blair to her mother
  15. To Eileen Blair
  16. Extract from letter from Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore
  17. Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy
  18. Extract from letter to Victor Gollancz
  19. Orwell’s Wound
  20. To Cyril Connolly
  21. Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy
  22. Escape from Spain
  23. BARCELONA 13TH JULY, 1937
  24. Charles Doran
  25. Homage to Catalonia
  26. X
  27. ‘Spilling the Spanish Beans’
  28. Eileen Blair to John McNair
  29. George Kopp to Dr Laurence O’Shaughnessy
  30. Translation of letter written in Spanish by George Kopp to Lieutenant-Colonel Burillo,7 Chief of Police, Barcelona
  31. George Kopp to Eileen Blair
  32. Review of The Spanish Cockpit by Franz Borkenau; Volunteer in Spain by John Sommerfield
  33. To Rayner Heppenstall
  34. ‘Eye-Witness in Barcelona’
  35. Abstracts of Reports on the Spanish Civil War in the Daily Worker and News Chronicle, 1936–7
  36. To Amy Charlesworth
  37. To Charles Doran
  38. Unpublished Response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War
  39. To Geoffrey Gorer
  40. Review of Red Spanish Notebook by Mary Low and Juan Brea; Heroes of the Alcazar by R. Timmermans; Spanish Circus by Martin Armstrong
  41. To H. N. Brailsford
  42. Review of Storm Over Spain by Mairin Mitchell; Spanish Rehearsal by Arnold Lunn; Catalonia Infelix by E. Allison Peers; Wars of Ideas in Spain by Josée Castillejo; Invertebrate Spain by Josée Ortega y Gasset
  43. H. N. Brailsford to Orwell
  44. To H. N. Brailsford
  45. Review of The Tree of Gernika by G. L. Steer; Spanish Testament by Arthur Koestler
  46. To the Editor, Time and Tide
  47. To Raymond Mortimer
  48. To Stephen Spender
  49. To Geoffrey Gorer
  50. ‘Notes* on the Spanish Militias
  51. To the Editor, The Times Literary Supplement
  52. Sir Richard Rees to Orwell
  53. To the Editor, The Listener
  54. Review of Spain’s Ordeal1 by Robert Sencourt; Franco’s Rule [anonymous]
  55. Review of The Civil War in Spain by Frank Jellinek1
  56. Review of Searchlight on Spain by the Duchess of Atholl1
  57. To the Editor, Manchester Guardian
  58. To Yvonne Davet
  59. To Raymond Postgate
  60. Orwell made two copies of this summary of the article in La Flèche of 14 October 1938, by L.-P. Foucaud.
  61. Review of The Church in Spain, 1737-1937 by E. Allison Peers; Crusade in Spain by Eoin O’Dujfy1
  62. To Frank Jellinek
  63. ‘Release of George Kopp’
  64. ‘Caesarean Section in Spain
  65. To Yvonne Davet
  66. Review of Hotel in Flight by Nancy Johnstone
  67. Review of The Last Days of Madrid by S. Casado, translated by Rupert Croft-Cooke; Behind the Battle by T. C. Worsley
  68. Review of The Spanish Dilemma by E. Allison Peers; A Key to Victory: Spain by Charles Duff
  69. Extract from War-time Diary
  70. Review of The Forge by Arturo Barea,1 translated and with an introduction by Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell2
  71. Extract from letter to Partisan Review
  72. Extract from BBC Weekly News Review for India, 22 [Comparison with the Spanish Civil War]
  73. ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’ [1942?]
  74. Proposed BBC Broadcast on the Spanish Civil War
  75. Review of Spain in Eclipse, 1937–1943 by E. Allison Peers; Behind the Spanish Mask by Lawrence Dundas
  76. Extract from ‘As I Please’, 10 [How the lie becomes truth]
  77. ‘The Eight Years of War: Spanish Memories’
  78. Review of An Interlude in Spain by Charles d’Ydewalle, translated by Eric Sutton
  79. Review of The Clash by Arturo Barea1
  80. Orwell’s Pamphlet Collection
  81. A summary of letters from and to David Astor, 4 and 5
  82. Further Reading

Franco’s Rule is simply an enormous list of atrocities committed in all the territories that Franco has over-run. There are long lists of people who have been shot, and such statements as that 23,000 were massacred in the province of Granada, etc., etc. Now, I do not say that these stories are untrue; obviously I have no means of judging, and at a guess I would say that some are true and some are not. And yet there is something that makes one very uneasy about the appearance of books of this kind.

There is no doubt that atrocities happen, though when a war is over it is generally impossible to establish more than a few isolated cases. In the first few weeks of war, especially in a civil war, there are bound to be massacres of non-combatants, arson, looting and probably raping. If these things happen it is right that they should be recorded and denounced, but I am not so sure about the motives of people who are so enthralled by the subject that they will compile whole books of atrocity-stories. They usually tell you that they are trying to stir up hatred ‘against Fascism’ or ‘against Communism’. But you notice that they seldom hate these things sufficiently to fight against them themselves; I believe no soldier has ever compiled a book of atrocity-stories. One is left with the suspicion that some of the atrocity-mongers rather like writing about rapes and summary executions.

And does anyone believe that in the long run this is the best way to combat either Fascism or what is bad in Communism? Mr. Arthur Koestler, whose nerves must have suffered horribly during his imprisonment by Franco, and who is to be forgiven much, tells us in his book, Spanish Testament, to abandon objectivity and cultivate hatred. The anonymous editor of Franco’s Rule also speaks contemptuously of ‘objectivity neurosis’. I wish these people would stop to reflect what they are doing. To fight, or even to ask others to fight, is one thing; to go round stirring up maniacal hatred is another. For:

He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself: and if thou gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into thee.3

This book is subtitled ‘Back to the Middle Ages’, which is unfair to the Middle Ages. There were no machine-guns in those days, and the Inquisition was a very amateurish business. After all, even Torquemada only burnt two thousand people in ten years. In modern Russia or Germany they’d say he wasn’t trying.

1. The title of the book was originally given as Spanish Ordeal.

2. Lewis’s portrait of T. S. Eliot was rejected by the hanging committee of the 1938 Royal Academy Exhibition. In a letter to Lewis of 21 April 1938, Eliot wrote that he would be quite willing to be known to posterity through this portrait. See Walter Michel, Wyndham Lewis, Paintings and Drawings (1971), 132 and plate 132.