TWO AMERICANS IN SPAIN

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22509, 17 September 1938, Page 20

TWO AMERICANS IN SPAIN

Some Still Live. By F. G. Tinker, Jr. Angus and Robertson. 313 np. (12s 6d.)

Dancer in Madrid. By Janet Riesenfeld. George G. Harrap and Co:, Ltd. 272 pp. (10s 6d net.)

A young man and a young woman went from America to Spain in* the first year of the Civil War to please themselves and to find excitement. Both left Spain hoping that the Loyalists would win; the young woman had a tragic personal qpcperience and was nearly distraught, the young man had nearly lost his life several times. Both are above the average in daring, fortitude, and composure; both have told exciting stories remarkably well. Mr Tinker was a more than competent airman with experience in the American army and naval flying corps. He enlisted in Mexico as a Spanish Government 'pilot, joined three or four other Americans in Spain, and formed with them a squadron under a Spanish officer. He flew nearly eight months over Madrid, Teruel, and the Guadalaiara front. (The ghastly Italian collapse on this front Mr Tinker witnessed—indeed." he bombed and ma-chine-gunned the .fleeing troops—and he reports that foul weather, marshy ground, and floods were, in great part, responsible for the rout.) One of his companions, an American turned out to be a Japanese spy, most of the others were killed or invalided home. No such vivid account of modern aerial warfare has before been written: patrols, bombing raids, aerial combats, and training are clearly described. Three impressions remain: first, the bewildering speed of air fighting; second, the fact that the Loyalist airmen, Spaniards or foreigners, were generally better trained and more daring than their enemies; third, that the Russians are uncommonly thorough as pilots, instructors, and fighters. The life of these pilots on the ground is .very like the life of the Great War pilots. Much hilarity and dissipation, moments when tense nerves gave wav, a continuous frenzied rush to avoid thought. A man needs rare fortitude to endure a month of such dangers and anxieties Janet Riesenfeld had a gay, bright life in America. Her father was a gifted and wealthy musician, and she had a passion and talent for dancing which she was allowed to develop. At 15 she fell in love with a handsome young Spanish, aristocrat. At 21 she met him again, having in the meantime made her career, been married for three years, and divorced. She determined to follow her young Spaniard to Madrid and to dance there. She arrived in Madrid, after many difficulties, a fpw weeks after the outbreak of the Civil War, She and her lover were nacsionately haopy for a time; but difference* began -when the girx grew to like and admire some Loyalist soldiers, men and women. Mvstpry ani strain came over her relations with the young Spaniard. Her heart, but not her snirit, was broker; when she learned that her fiance

was working for Franco, was plotting and conniving at street murders, and, in his patriotism, nearly encompassed her destruction by treachery. This personal tragedy is poignant indeed, and is the more pitiful set in a world of bombardments, air raids, conspiracy, street bloodshed, arid treachery. Such.a tale might be expected to.be hectic and full o- self-pity. It is not. Like Mr Tinker, Janet Riesenfeld kept command of herself, arid has. made her tale the more moving by a selfrestraint which cannot weaken the dire situations she was thrown into, and which, in its more intense degree, resembles the general fortitude of the Spanish people. Both these foreigners cannot admire too much the endurance and patience of the citizens of Madrid. Their personal self-control was made stronger by the example of humble Spaniards.