Authors: Preston Paul
Subsequently, Fischer sailed back to Spain with the Ambassador Fernando de los Ríos, who had not long before recruited a young
Oklahoman from the Library of Congress to work for the embassy’s press services. The radical librarian was Herbert Southworth, who would become a friend and collaborator of Fischer as a fellow lobbyist in the service of Negrín. At this stage, Fischer began lobbying by writing innumerable letters to politicians, including Eleanor Roosevelt. Subsequently, he would lecture to large audiences and also address dinners of influential figures in both the United States and England.
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Despite Fischer’s scepticism concerning Largo Caballero’s capacity as war leader, under his nominal leadership – although thanks largely to Prieto and Negrín – the power of the central state was well on the way to being reasserted. In November 1936, Fischer had been permitted to attend a meeting of the inner war cabinet, perhaps in his capacity as quartermaster of the brigades but perhaps also because of his earlier letter to Largo Caballero. Prieto ‘did very little talking and when he did speak he showed a marked deference to Caballero. What Prieto said was the most intelligent contribution to the entire deliberation.’
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Largo Caballero resisted the idea of incorporating the party and trade union militias into a single regular army. His Soviet advisers had considerable difficulty in persuading him that the militia system was inefficient.
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It was hardly surprising that, after Largo Caballero had been replaced by Juan Negrín in May 1937, Fischer was delighted with the progress made towards the proper organization of a war effort. He wrote of Largo’s ‘isolation from the masses whom he refused, despite friendly pressure, to address even once during the months he was Prime Minister, his haughty behaviour towards his own colleagues and the slowness and inflexibility with which he met the problems heaped mountain-high around him, all caused many of his supporters to turn against him’. In contrast, he wrote: ‘Negrín is an excellent executive, and that is what the conduct of the war needed. Things are now getting done quickly where millions can see the results – in the army. The people know that he has wiped out private violence, introduced order on the highways and streets, and created an atmosphere conducive to civil and military discipline.’ He was particularly struck by Negrín’s determination to maintain democratic principles despite the ongoing internal political clashes.
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During the summer of 1937, Fischer was in Valencia and involved in the preparation of the Anti-Fascist Writers’ Congress. On one occasion,
at a banquet, he was accompanied by Kate Mangan, who had been assigned to interpret for him and a visiting trade union leader.
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He saw Kitty Bowler a couple of times. In the third week of June 1937, she wrote to her lover, the British Communist Tom Wintringham, ‘Fischer had turned up again, says De los Ríos has done a grand job on Roosevelt with the result that some people in the State Department are definitely favourable’.
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He was back in Valencia at the end of June and had dinner with the new prime minister, Juan Negrín, at Náquera near Sagunto. Negrín also arranged for him to have an interview with Azaña, although the president received him only on the strict condition that ‘nothing he said was for immediate publication’. After their interview, at which Azaña had revealed to Fischer his hopes for British mediation to put an end to the war, Fischer crossed the street to have lunch with Negrín. The growing intimacy between them was reflected in the fact that some days later, Negrín invited Fischer to dinner along with Prieto, now Minister of War, Arthur Stashevsky, the Soviet trade representative, and the Communist Minister of Education, Jesús Hernández.
Afterwards, Negrín revealed to Fischer that he was about to go to Madrid. Negrín was going to be with General Rojo during the great diversionary offensive that was launched on 6 July at Brunete. Despite the blanket of secrecy that covered the operation and the exclusion of all correspondents, when Fischer appeared in Madrid, Negrín arranged for Prieto to give him a rare pass to visit the front and even put a Rolls Royce at his disposal for the journey from Valencia to Madrid. The next morning, they had breakfast and discussed Negrín’s determination to move the capital to Barcelona. He also had a two-hour off-the-record interview with Azaña. He was the only foreign correspondent to visit the front during the battle of Brunete.
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He sent two articles to
The Nation
written while in Spain, one datelined Valencia 28 June and, on 11 July, a much shorter and guarded one from Madrid.
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A couple of days later, Louis left for Paris.
In both articles, Fischer was discreet about the level of his access to Negrín and to other politicians, such as Azaña, who spoke off the record. Nevertheless, in a long survey of the first year of the war, sent from Paris on 20 July, Fischer gave a revealing hint that his influence went far beyond that of a simple correspondent. He wrote:
I recently walked down several central streets of Valencia with a cabinet minister at eleven o’clock in the morning and drew his attention to many hundreds of young civilian men. They were not in factories, they would be in their offices if they were government employees, and they were not in the army. All cities and villages in Loyalist Spain show a similar picture. The government needs greater power to put these vast human resources to work at winning the war. Yet the power necessary to accomplish this objective might easily become excessive and assume the quality of dictatorship. This is a delicate matter which further complicates the problem of political parties.
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In fact, Fischer’s discretion was to cause some friction with Freda Kirchwey and
The Nation.
In response to the two tantalizing articles sent from Valencia and Madrid, she wrote on 14 July:
Your articles were interesting but they left me with a feeling of great uncertainty and a wish that I might discuss the whole inner situation with you face to face. Your second dispatch in particular was terribly provocative. I am hoping most earnestly that after you have left Spain and have no need to submit your copy for censorship, you will write a full and very frank analysis of the political situation both inside the government and between the government and its left opposition.
Concerned not just about possible official censorship, she went on to ask if there was any self-censorship on Louis’ part:
Would you on account of your close personal relations with Negrín and your function as an unofficial adviser feel hesitant about writing fully? I can understand that this might be so and I would consider these reasons wholly legitimate. If such a situation exists, could you suggest a person as detached and trustworthy as, say, Brailsford who might go into the thing fully and without doing any harm.
Along similar lines, she wrote a fortnight later: ‘You are really an exasperating guy. You mention a talk with Azaña and don’t say anything even in private about what came out of it.’
Fischer was furious for a whole raft of reasons. He resented criticism at the best of times. He was, as always, annoyed at editorial changes to his text. Above all, he was incandescent that she should think that he would allow his relationships with politicians to affect his journalistic integrity. His letter of reply gives a vivid portrait of his way of working and of his pride in it: ‘Your letter of July 14th was the most insulting I ever received from you. I hate indirection. If you don’t want my contributions you can say so and I will go elsewhere.’ He went on to explain how the article in which he had referred obliquely to the Brunete offensive was ‘sent under special circumstances’:
There was a strict censorship. No correspondent was allowed to send anything but terse official communiqués. The telephone service with abroad was suspended. No private messages could be sent. They wanted the facts of the offensive kept secret – and it was a good thing. Nobody was allowed to go to the front. I received special permission from Prieto (this is to be kept secret). When I got back in the evening I sat down to write my despatch. I knew the stiffness of the censorship. Under the circumstances I wrote more than anyone else did in that period and as much as was possible. What I said about the internal political situation was new and sensational and if you didn’t appreciate it there doesn’t seem to be much use going to a lot of trouble to get and forward such information to you. I was hampered by censorship and by no other circumstance, as you suggest. The proof is in the article I sent from Paris wherein I elaborated a few points touched upon in the Madrid despatch. Nobody has analysed this complicated situation, as I have.
As so often, her reply was conciliatory: ‘there is no sense in getting sore or in hurling abuse at my head. I like you and your writing and we all want what you can give.’
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Louis’ letter to Freda had been written on 5 August 1937 from Moscow, whither he had returned not having seen his family for seven months. The atmosphere of the purges there could not have been grimmer. The denunciations, arrests and shootings mounted up, and many of the victims were acquaintances of Fischer and his wife. Previously, his visits home had been the cue for lots of Russian friends to drop by in search of news. This time no one came. The only moments of political interest came when he was received by Litvinov and Dimitrov. Appalled by what he was witnessing, he was soon desperate to get away: ‘I was glad there was a Spain to work in and work for. It would have been mental torture to live in Moscow’s atmosphere. The alternative would have been to go away and attack the Soviet regime in my writings and lectures. I was not yet ready to do that.’ Moreover, he knew that, if he attacked Russia, he would not be welcome in Spain and he could not tolerate that.
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His stay in Moscow was relatively short and by mid-August he was back in Paris, where it may be assumed that he conferred with Otto Katz since he was, according to letters intercepted by British Intelligence, already liaising with him about getting the Republic’s case put forward as widely as possible in England and America.
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Nevertheless, the idea that he was somehow the tool of Katz and the Comintern is unsustainable in the light of his reply to Freda Kirchwey’s next letter, which contained comments on his survey of the war. She had found the article ‘interesting and far more full and analytical than the one which preceded it. Even so, I find your treatment of the internal political situation a bit ambiguous. You fail to state clearly just how you think the government should deal with the various Left elements and what you think the role of the Communist Party should be.’
Louis replied with a forceful statement both of his professional ethics and of his attitude to the Communist Party:
If my article from Paris is deficient in the material you say it lacks then I am a good journalist. It is not my business to say ‘how the government should deal with the various Left elements and what [I] think the role of the Communist party should be’. That would be neither news nor analysis. It would be my bias.
What I advocate is not much to the point in interpreting the internal political situation. My treatment is not ‘ambiguous’. It is incomplete because there can be no final summary of a phenomenon which is unfinished and which changes daily. I have said that I don’t like the policy of the Communist party – which doesn’t mean that I have joined the anti-Communist parade. If it weren’t for the Communists in and outside of Spain, Franco would be in Barcelona.
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In September, he went to Nyon, near Geneva, to report on the conference called to stop Italian attacks on British shipping in the Mediterranean. Negrín came to Geneva to take the chair at the League of Nations session. Each day, Fischer would telephone him and Negrín would invite him down to his suite, where he would often find him in the bathroom shaving, clad only in his pyjama bottoms. He would then take a bath while Fischer sat on a stool or leaned against the wall chatting with him. Out of their meetings came suggestions from Fischer as to how the Republic might be able to circumvent the international embargo on its arms purchases.
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On his way back to Spain, he stopped off in St Jean de Luz with a letter from Negrín to Claude Bowers. Throughout October 1937, Fischer remained in Spain. He had flown to Valencia for the session of the Cortes being held there and was a guest in Negrín’s presidential apartments, along with Otto Katz.
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It was during this visit that he made the intervention that saved the job of Constancia de la Mora. His observations resulted in an article in which he wrote objectively about the Communists and was firmly supportive of the tandem of Indalecio Prieto and Juan Negrín. The article on the state of Spanish politics sustains the adage that journalism is the first draft of history. He commented on the contradiction between the Republican determination to maintain a functioning democracy while trying to run the control economy necessary for an efficacious war effort, writing: ‘On the whole, an astounding amount of economic laissez faire, personal freedom, and political immunity continues to testify to the vigor of democracy and its disadvantages in war time.’
Fischer’s main concern, which was reflected in his tireless efforts on the international front, was to try to persuade the democracies to
abandon the self-destructive policy of non-intervention. With a mixture of frustration and prescience, he wrote: ‘Some day the Western democracies’ deeply dormant instinct of self-preservation will be sufficiently awakened to induce them to help themselves by helping the Loyalists.’ His long article ended prophetically:
The Republic’s main preoccupation is not internal politics. It is the foreign situation. How slow these democracies are, how difficult to shake them into a realization of the dangers that beset them! One merely asks that the British be pro-British and the French pro-French. If these countries lack the sense to let Loyalist Spain safeguard their interests, they will be forced to do the fighting themselves later on.
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