CLEANING UP

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 457, 15 June 1937, Page 7

CLEANING UP

ROBIN HOODS IN SPAIN Another Side To The War There is a war going on in Spain which rar’ly appears in the papers and never in the official repo: ts, says a correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian.” ik is a grim, lonely, sporadic war, which has o-ucii going on s nee July 20 and which will go on long cuter th© “official’’ war nas enc-ed. The question • raised in cerein military quart-rs here iswhether this war cm be incorporated into the framework of the new united strategy. It is the old guerrilla war, lhe Spanish war proper, which did almost as much as ton’s forces to defeat the N’. poleon.ic arms a hundred y ars ago. Il i th. “partitaii’’ war which held the Cau casuses for ‘the Revolution while lac Bolshevik Red Army was forming. Information which hes bten com. ing to hand duricig recent weeks especially since the f. II of Malaga, showt that there are large tra I s of country inside the rebel limes whZeh are completely ‘ unsubdued ” They, are not of great mililury importance at the present, less im~ portant, indeed, than Ithe rebels “fifih column’’ inside the big loyalist towns. But eooned or later they will play a big part. Queipo de Llano’s statements that lie is “cleaning up’’ the province of Malaga are less sinister than \hey sound —and less.! effective. What he means is that he is send_ in.g expeditionary forces into the s er. ra to look for those bands which have taken to the hills like their “bandolero” forefathers and have liv~ ed a tort of bandit life th re, armed

with aged musk Is, sawn-off guns, pistols, and knives, hidden and ted by the villagers, and ready to fall upon airy rebel scouting party after nightfall. These bande, made up of antiJFas-’ sisYe surprises by lilie July rising, lug;lives from captured cities, pea sants, muleteers, and even intellect tuals—one b_nd in the Sierra Moreria is led by a young electrical engineer who was holiday-making in a reniof.e village in July, heard of the rebeL lion in September, and at once gathered a loyalist group armedi with knives—are far more numerous and far stronger than even the menlt General Staff could hope *it first. They exist all over Estremadura, in Galicia, in the great sierras of the South, even in Navarre. Sometim s they are regular polltL cal militias; sometimes they are men out to avenge the killing of their women by the Moors. Sometimes th: y are quite large raiding forces, like the one that recently 'attacked Toledo. Some of them are fragments of ■the first “shock centuries” who went out as part of the July offensive and have stayed out. There was one band in the Sierra, de Alcubierre for several months, until the Aragon ermy was organised. These bands are ndt yet a military factor. But. they are' increasing in strength and efficiency. The fact that news of them is alt last filtering through shows that they have lie come active again and are organising communications. When the snow melts, Ithey may be expected to take a larger part in the war. At the moment in certain pants of Es tremadura it is by no means wise tor a rebel to gd out alone in uniform, one important poinlt is that, so far as can be ascertained, the villagers are definitely on the side of these “Robin Hoods.” This is, of course, traditional in Spain, bull at the same time it is a political fac tor of importance to ithe anti-Fascist cause.