WAR IN SPAIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 May 1939, Page 3

WAR IN SPAIN

PROBLEMS OF MEDICAL AID. STRUGGLE NOT YET OVER. Relating their experiences of campaigns with the International Brigade in Spain, Dr D. W. Jolly and Mr H. R. Bryan spoke to a large audience in Christchurch the other night. The meeting was convened by the Spanish Medical Aid Committee to help the refugees in France. The problems of giving medical aid under modern war conditions when the sky was always filled with bombing machines, were briefly outlined by Dr Jolly. When he first commenced service in the field, he said, ambulances usually chose the largest buildings in the village for their headquarters. With an increase in aerial bombardment it became advisable to select large houses, rather than public buildings. The increasing supremacy of Franco’s forces in the air eventually forced them to abandon buildings altogether. Medical aid was then given in tents, but because of the intense cold in winter, and the glare at night of the bright lights necessary to carry out operations, which attracted the attention of bombers, these in their turn had to be given up. Before he left Spain ambulances, where possible, established themselves underground. During one offensive in Aragon he had worked in a giant cave, in which they had put 150 beds. Disused railway tunnels were frequently used. A notable advance in medical science during the campaigns had been the discovery of a process for storing human blood, so that transfusions could be given on a large scale in the front line. Motor-trucks, fitted with refrigerators, delivered blood given by the civil population to field hospitals in much the same way as petrol tankers refuelled wayside bowsers.

Contending that the struggle in Spain was not yet finished, Dr Jolly said New Zealanders were apt to misjudge the situation because they had never known the rights and wrongs of the civil war. Spain was actually more important today diplomatically than it had ever been, and their were between 300,000 and 400,000 refugees in France. It was necessary, he said, to understand that Spain was not merely divided from Europe physically by the Pyrenees, but also sociologically. Spain had never passed through an industrial revolution, and its social structure was still, in 1031, when the Republican Government was set up, very largely feudal. Forty-five per cent of the people were returned as being illiterate in the 1931 census. Four sections of the community had opposed the Popular Front Government. There was first the army. In Spain the army was a peculiar institution in that it was almost completely detached, from the people. There was one commissioned or non-commission-ed officer for every 10 men. With the collapse of the monarchy this large officer class became even further removed from the life of the community and felt that it owed allegiance only to itself. Its bad equipment and inefficient administration had rendered it insufficient to control Spain when once it had risen in revolt. For this reason General Franco had had to rely on Foreign aid. Second, there were the great landowners. Seventy per cent of the people of Spain got their living from the soil, but ownership was confined to veryfew. Third, there were the monarchists who were largely landowners. Fourth, the church, which had become a great feudal institution. In July of 1936, when the war broke out, 16,000,000 persons were in Government territory and 8,000,000 in that of the COMPLETE HERBAL SYSTEM TONIC. ■pNERGY— vigour—freshness! NULAX Constipation Herbs refreshen entire system with nature’s purest herbs, roots and barks. Palatable, reliable, entirely different. Large 2/- packets from W. J. Campbell, Chemist. 4