When was homage to catalonia written

Cunningham Valentine. Homage to Catalonia revisited : remembering and misremembering the Spanish civil war. In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire , tome 65, fasc. Homage to Catalonia revisited :. My concern is with the re-readings of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia that have been going on recently, especially in and around the potent Orwellian year of My interest in doing so is two-fold.

It is to check out these hermeneutical tourists, to see what is being made currently of a very important text of the s by the likes of French Nobel Prizewinner Claude Simon, and the leftists assembled by the Marxist deconstructionist Christopher Noms, and the authors of the Orwell volume in the Writers and Readers Documentary Comic Book series For Beginners '. It is also to reflect upon the problems of reading a text like Orwell's, a text concerned with such a topic as the Spanish Civil War.

The fundamental question is : just how is anyone to read a Homage to Catalonia? War writing — war poetry, war prose, war fiction of whatever kind — is the making of War Memorials. A major point of this sort of writing is recollection, remembering, memorialising, the installation of memories that will resist the human and natural processes of forgetting. In their acts of remembering very many war memorialisers.

These texts may seem to be saying Goodbye to All That, recording absence, distance, missing persons, past times, forgotten places. In fact they are seeking to reduce distance, to restore, reinstate, repristinate things past, and lost past, dead, missing persons, to make certain things very present to the reader.

This is why such writing is always so full of names, names of people — the personnel of the old battles, and names of places - the locations, the geography and topography of the distant struggles.

Preserve a broad approach of fame, And ever-echoing avenues of song. And through the centuries let a people's voice. The proof and echo of all human fame,. A people's voice, when they rejoice. At civic revel and pomp and game,. Attest their great commander's claim. With honour, honour, honour, honour to him,. The great echoing, naming lines of Alfred Tennysons's 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" do for Wellington what Tennyson earlier tried to do for the Spanish "heroes" of the nineteenth century insurrection — that Spanish liberal revolt against Ferdinand VII that became the revolution of and was ended by the foreign intervention of the French Due d'Angouleme.

That was an affair that Tennyson and some other Cambridge Apostles were marginally engaged in. Tennyson's poem about it is entitled "Written During the Convulsions in Spain" :. Wake, Pampeluna, wake! Rouse thee for freedom's sake. Rise, Saragossa, rise! Hark to the battle-cries. Rouse thee, Valladolid ; Where are thine heroes hid?

In their naming work Tennyson's "Ode" and "Written During the Convulsions" stand for what all war writing does - not least the name-obsessed texts celebrating the most famous of Spain's civil conflicts. The operations of memory are, though, never simple. So that the texts of memory demand a hermeneutical subtlety of approach and approaches that it is clear many of Orwell's re-readers and they are mostly, nowadays, his detractors simply do not have.

For memories come and go ; they get repressed ; they return in surprising forms. I am not in doubt about the actuality of the past but simply my own place in it The whole thing moves before me like a film where other actors play their part clearly and intelligibly enough, but what should be the central figure stays indeterminate".

I see little evidence that other recollectors of the 30s have any more reliable notions of their own role in the period. A personal encounter of my own with a particular survivor's memory will illustrate the sort of difficulty that arises all the time. Madge's objecting letter to the TLS 24 November conceded that "Memory plays tricks", but nonetheless Madge declared that he had "looked through the few publications from that date which I have handy, and can find nothing in them to connect with the.

In response I supplied chapter and verse for my claims, from articles by Madge in New Verse and Life and Letters Today I just got my letter into the 7X5 in the very last number to appear, 1 December , before the paper's year-long shutdown. A few days later Madge wrote privately to me explaining, reasonably enough, that he had been vexingly misrepresented a lot in the past few years by researchers, and that in any case he had "left Shortly after that, it appears, Madge got his boxes back from France and "dipped into them".

The dip was enough to show that his memory had indeed played tricks when he'd replied to the interviewers whose interpretations had vexed him, and in the fourth number of the TLS to appear after the paper's re-start 14 December his "Viewpoint" piece on the Thirties struck a fairly contrite note.

He talked of "what I can remember, or mis-remember", and "if my memory is correct". His caution was judicious, for his article opened up new areas of doubt and misremembering, was replete with errors about dates and personnel, and so on. Still, the tricks and unreliability of memory had been affirmed.

Imagine, then, one's wry. His rediscovered confidence was, seemingly, not to be jarred even by this particular review's occasionally more cautious note " Memory is indeed fickle. Its blurs and lacks do indeed generate mistakes of fact. But mistakes also occur because of failures of interpretation. Madge had a good deal of faith in his documents, the papers and letters which he believed would act as props and reminders for a shaky recall. But documents themselves inevitably need to be interpreted.

Orwell's detractors, especially in the Norris volume, dislike intensely Orwell's Posture as "Honest George". For Norris and Stradling, Orwell's honesty as a reporter is apparently impugned if there should be discoverable even a single mistake in any matter or report. As for interpretation of events, if Honest George's reading differs from theirs he must, it seems, be dishonest. This is an astonishing assumption on any reckoning. And it's even more astonishing in the presence of a war like the Spanish one, where difference of interpretation seem inevitable.

In any case, especially after the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, we know that we, as readers, must always allow not only for the operation of a writer's particular horizon of interpretation but also for the fact that the reader's own horizon of interpretation may and quite legitimately not coincide with the writer's. And of course, still further, when we're dealing with a written text, there are problems and situations arising because this is a text with particularities of mere textuality, of writtenness, of narrative practice, that will influence the presentation of and approach to fact, the writer's activity as interpreter, and so will seriously complicate the convergence of writer and reader in the reader's act of interpreting.

What's more, the distortions that arise in the normal course of events from the inevitable function of the writer as interpreter, and the difficulties inhering normally in the meeting of the reader's and writer's horizontality, become especially vexed when what is at issue in the text is a war, and a war of ideas, a war that is itself a potent play and display of contrary ideologies.

I am, then, able to distinguish at least five levels of textual activity in Homage to Catalonia that have to be coped with in any approach to the question of "Honest George" : 1 sheer forgetfulness ; 2 errors in matters of ascertainable fact; 3 instances of interpretative slanting on the part of the author ; 4 the interpretative expectations or competences as Jonathan Culler has labelled them that readers might bring with them to text ; 5 the logics of writing, and of text and intertext, i.

In the first matter, that of bad memory, nobody, I think, seriously attacks Homage to Catalonia for straightforward forgetfulness. The book seems characterised rather. It was written close to the events it purports to describe. And, in fact, a major trouble for Orwell's critics seems often to be a perturbing memorability, a vividness of description, of style and language that as it were guarantee the accuracy of the report.

People remember this book. And they remember it because Orwell was unable to forget what he'd been through. They refused either to give them up or to go to the front themselves to fight. It was only a matter of time before outright conflict would break out. Orwell, given his lowly position in a Poum militia, saw none of this. As clashes grew more violent in Barcelona, the Generalitat prohibited the traditional May Day rallies, which was perceived as a provocation by the CNT rank and file.

In early May the crisis exploded. In the wake of deteriorating conditions and police heavy-handedness, elements of the CNT — supported by the Poum — confronted the forces of the Generalitat and the PSUC. Then they would have to fight both the central republican government and the Francoists. Accordingly, with the approval of the anarchist ministers, decisive police reinforcements from the government in Valencia began to arrive on 7 May. Hundreds of CNT and Poum militants were arrested, although the needs of the war industries limited the scale of the repression.

Initial revolutionary achievements were steadily dismantled. His ignorance of the wider picture while in Spain was forgivable. Instructions left before his death for a later edition ignored his acceptance of the need for a unified war effort in Spain. It is as if the Orwell of Animal Farm , Nineteen Eighty-Four and the lister of suspect fellow-travellers for the Foreign Office thought that he should let it stand as another nail in the communist coffin, despite its distortion of the Spanish situation.

Paul Preston is a professor at the London School of Economics and the foremost historian on the period. The Poum militia in Barcelona with Orwell in the background; he describes several days and nights spent defending its headquarters from the roof of the nearby Poliorama theatre in Needless to say, this book of Orwell's was pretty much ignored when it came out. Today, with the Spanish Civil War something that most people don't really know about or care about, this book stands as an interesting read about a man going to war, but more importantly as a testament to one man's dedication to the truth and his strong moral fortitude.

View all 7 comments. He himself warns against his own bias while writing about his time in Spain. Trust nothing is the mantra. I first read Orwell in my late teens. I read Nineteen Eighty-Four first and was spellbound. Being very much a reader of Sci Fi in my youth this was something utterly different. I read the other books in the compendium and found Animal Farm to be in the classic mold as well. So where does Homage to Catalonia fit? In Spain there was betrayal of the ideals that he held dear by those he thought he could trust.

It is not a matter if I or anyone else agreed or disagreed with his political beliefs; he had his ideals but watched them literally gunned down. The narrative of his time in Spain shows an almost naive outlook as he went to the front feeling a part of a working class fight against fascism to a return to Barcelona to discover all he thought exemplar smashed by his own side of the political spectrum.

Strangely through all this he could still write about humans being generally decent. Should all that Orwell wrote of those days in Spain be lessons for us all in not trusting those whose profession is telling lies? I think so. Read this book and read the genesis of ideas for the sublime Nineteen Eighty-Four. Judge a book by its cover? Not generally but image of a bidding of farewell to the International Brigades near Barcelona by Robert Capa is certainly one of the most striking and apt I have seen.

In passing I would like to thank my great friend Gordon Wilson for his gift of this book on my 60th birthday. As I write may his Welsh team do themselves proud at the world cup and may we have a great time at the sevens. View all 12 comments.

Oct 22, Amalia Gkavea rated it it was amazing Shelves: 20th-century , classics , memoirs , history , spain , european-history , non-fiction. Short of burning all your clothes there is no known way of getting rid of him. Down the seams of your trousers he lays his glittering white eggs, like tiny grains of rice, which hatch out and breed families of thier own at horrible speed. I think pacifists might find it helpful to illustrate thier pamphlets with enlarged photographs of lice.

Glory of war indeed! In war all solderies are lousy, at the least when it is warm enough. The men that fought at Verdun, at Waterloo, at Flodden, at Senlac, at Thermopylae - every one of them had lice crawling over his testicles. It really is a very poor source of information on the SCW. Because it is on a very personal level, and is mostly seen from a very limited and narrow point of view, this is really an almost useless book for learning anything historically significant about the war.

Why is this book so famous? The first reason should be obvious, its author. Orwell is one of my favorite authors, as he is for a great number of readers. I believe the second reason is this. For many years Homage was one of the only English language, non-academic books available about the Spanish Civil War with a famous author, no less.

This book has been rated by over 17, readers here on GR. Among non-fiction books dealing with the war, I would venture that no others have been rated by even one-tenth that many readers. A war memoir.

There are two different layouts for the book. Orwell had second thoughts about this arrangement, and later suggested that these two chapters be moved to appendices.

Some editions of the work have actually done this. Others have kept the original layout. The copy of the book I have is a paperback version of the first U. It contains an introduction by Lionel Trilling, which has been reprinted in many editions of the book since then. The first book - when. Entry 99, dated 8 June , is another letter, written while Orwell was still hospitalized in Barcelona. From the last couple chapters of Homage is would appear that it was probably no more than a couple weeks after this letter that, having been discharged from hospital and met up with his wife, they had made it across the border into France.

Entry , an article called Spilling the Spanish Beans , was written after he was back in England, and appeared in two installments in New English Weekly on 29 July and 2 September. The first book, as a war memoir. There was enough action for Orwell to receive a bullet wound in the neck, which could easily have killed him, and did put him in hospital for much of the remaining time he was in Spain.

The second book. He had had a letter of Introduction from a Communist organization in England, but it had little effect on how he was assigned by the Republican recruiters who were dealing with foreign volunteers. Then he tells us of the various contingents of the Republican forces, and the political leanings that they each had. At least as far as I know, Orwell did not speak Spanish. So, first, whatever information he got was either from the few Spaniards he met that may have spoken English, or else second or third hand from non-Spanish English speakers.

Then, since he was connected to an Anarchist unit, naturally much, if not most, of this information came from Anarchist-leaning men. The first book, by English historian Helen Graham, is a modern, up-to-date compendium, dense with information, about the causes of the war, the major phases of the military conflict, the political and social forces driving the two sides, and the brutal way in which Franco spent years afterwards making sure that those who had opposed him paid for their crimes; it makes use of much primary material that has become available only with the demise of Franco and the beginnings of a democratic Spain.

The second book is a magnificent summary of Spanish social and political movements for the years preceding the SCW, with a brief Afterward written after the war was over. It does not deal directly with the years in which the War was fought. In her book, Graham writes that this considerably overstates the effect of these very right wing Stalinist activities in Spain which certainly did happen , and in no way is the reason that the Republican side lost the war.

Far more important were these facts. And at some point in the war, Stalin decided to cut his losses in this regard. Why couldn't they? Of course Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union paid no attention to this embargo, but other "law-abiding" countries were for the most part quite content to observe the embargo. The Republicans never really had a chance, certainly after the time at which Russia cut off their arms supply - and really not even before that happened.

I would recommend either of the above books, or better yet both of them, as a source of information for a the SCW, and b the state of Spanish society when the Civil War broke out. This would be a far more useful reading exercise for this knowledge than Homage to Catalonia. View all 28 comments. I have always found the Spanish Civil War confusing.

After reading Homage to Catalonia , I at least feel that I was justified in my confusion. When Orwell arrived in Spain to fight on the Republican side with the P. Orwell does an admirable job of sorting out the alphabet soup of the anti-Fascist parties and militias - the P. The distinctions between the Anarchists, left-wing Communists, and right-wing Communists seem subtle, especially since the groups were supposedly united in their opposition to Franco, but they became critically important later.

As Orwell learned, associating with the wrong party was a potentially lethal decision. Orwell served in the P. He chose the party somewhat arbitrarily, based on connections he had through the British Independent Labour Party. Rather than providing a comprehensive discussion of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell focuses on his personal experiences of fighting at the front against the Fascists.

He then moves on to the May, street fighting in Barcelona, when the various Republican groups fought each other. He vividly describes the experiences of war, with the cold, dirt, and lice, the inadequate weapons, and the idealistic but inexperienced soldiers, some of whom were children. The Soviet-backed P. The P. This was disastrous for the P. Orwell recounts a poignant story of frantically rushing around the city trying to convince the authorities to read a letter that would exonerate Kopp.

His Spanish was shaky and his voice even weaker after the vocal cord paralysis he suffered from his neck wound. He also ran a very real risk of being arrested himself, simply by association with Kopp and the P. He and his wife only barely escaped from Spain themselves. The Spanish Civil War was a microcosm of the conflict that was developing in Europe in the s, a sort of testing ground for ideologies in preparation for World War II.

Many foreigners came to fight, idealistically hoping to strike out against Fascism and to support a new government which seemed to represent the working people. Unfortunately, as Orwell came to find, other doctrines were tested as well, with the terrors of the totalitarian police state that came to dominate his later writing. Two chapters of the book have been appendixed to the end, which I also think as a wise choice, since both are rather political side-comments 1: why and how Communists suppressed the smaller leftist groups 2: a music: Durutti Column - "Street Fight" also because there's a small, POUM-hostile extremist-anarchist group called Friends Of Durruti mentioned in the book, who were used as part of false-information war by the government my book has intros by Hochschild and Trilling, both very excellent.

Two chapters of the book have been appendixed to the end, which I also think as a wise choice, since both are rather political side-comments 1: why and how Communists suppressed the smaller leftist groups 2: about Barcelona fight in more detail, and how non-Spanish press wrote about it I made a lot of notes reading this book. The book did give me new information on the political situation of the left during Spanish Civil War. When Orwell joined in the battle in , he wasn't at first interested in the political side of things - though from quite almost the start he realised his admiration for the Spanish character in general - but gradually came to realise the importance of it.

This book is a good example of ideals vs. Orwell talks about his life in the trenches, the difference of Barcelona as he first saw it red and hopeful and the second time class system back in, Communists taking over other left and anarchists , becoming wounded and having to flee Spain, for various reasons but mainly as to not be imprisoned and disappeared forever, not just because of his state of health. The part about late s being a dark time for democracy, with fascism rising everywhere, sounds familiar a bit now, doesn't it?

And reading the text you realise: you have read about communists, maoists, etc. Didn't know that Willy Brandt had been in this war. Mexico sent some too, but not much. Most Western Europe that was not fascist didn't deliver arms, and USA of course not either for communits, already, notice. This book changed my view on a plenty of political tactics within the left side, where I still stay. Never was blinkered about the dark sides and selling outs, really, but just got another corner of history more opened up.

This is essential reading, and in many ways has relevant things to say even today. View all 4 comments. No, it is "a comic opera with the occasional death" p. His comment on a Jewish-Polish officer is that he speaks terrible English, for some curious reason I imagine that when inevitably Orwell was made a corporal that he spent most of his time teaching his men to speak English rather than Catalan.

Then after establishing an image of himself as fusty Englishman abroad and war as pantomime no uniforms, terrible old rifles, awful ammunition, no maps, no artillery, no field glasses he then looks at the broader political picture explaining the war as one of Revolution against fascism, in which the Communists pushed for fighting the war first and then having a revolution after - this approach was aiming to reassure the international community - while the Anarchists wanted to see the revolution accomplished first.

Orwell explains how he began by backing the Communists in this regard but over time shifted to the Anarchist position believing it alone had the potential for weakening Franco by inspiring revolt in fascist held territories. In the Communist backed crushing of the Anarchists in Catalonia as a viable political force one can see the origins of Animal Farm. In the middle of the book he is caught up in street fighting in Barcelona which leads into a discussion of its misrepresentation in the press on political grounds before he returns to the front where he gets shot.

The food in the hospitals is plentiful and rich, but with the classic complaint of an English tourist to southern Europe: it is too greasy, food culture is changing even in Britain, a contemporary might instead praise the artisanal quality of such food and its regional authenticity, but back then it was just considered greasy view spoiler [ and lacking lard and beef dripping hide spoiler ].

In contrast to Laurie Lee's A moment of war Orwell was not repeatedly arrested as a suspected spy, this was because he entered affiliated with the Independent Labour Party which itself was linked to the P. His account of fighting and non-fighting is impressionistic and fascinating, cold, hunger, and lack of sleep are more pressing dangers than bombs and bullets. Pretty much everything in Spain to his eyes is execrable view spoiler [ particularly the agricultural tools hide spoiler ] apart from the people who he pretty much universally likes and admires.

The Spanish Civil war still seems to be in progress on various non-military fronts if not exactly raging, aside front that I think in several of Orwell's comments you can see the roots of and Animal farm.

I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards. I only twice remember even being seriously angry with a Spaniard, and on each occasion, when I look back, I believe I was in the wrong myself.

Autobiographies and memoirs are, I think, the best books to read on vacation. Most valuable, however, is simply seeing how an excellent writer transforms their experiences into stories. The vague emotions of daily life, the interesting characters we encounter, the sights and sounds and smells of new places—good autobiographies direct our attention to these little details. It was an excellent choice. In fact, perhaps the most conspicuous quality of this book is the caliber of the prose. The writing is direct but never blunt; the tone is personal and natural, but not chummy.

The book may have been a bit too readable, actually, since I had a hard time prying myself away to go explore Seville and a book has to be very good indeed to compete with Seville. There seems to be a bit of confusion about this book. Specifically, some people seem to come to it expecting to learn about the Spanish Civil War. This is a mistake; Orwell only experienced a sliver of the war, and his understanding of the political situation was limited to the infighting between various leftist groups.

The events and conflicts that led up to the war, and the progress of the war itself, are for the most part unexplained.

This book is, rather, a deeply personal record of his time in the Spanish militia. If you come to the book with this in mind, it will not disappoint. His time in Spain made a deep impression on Orwell; he writes of it in a wistful and nostalgic tone, as if everything that happened occurred in a dreamy, timeless, mist-filled landscape, disconnected from the rest of his life. Characters come and go, soldiers are introduced, arrested, or killed in action; but we do not get acquainted with anyone save Orwell himself.

The mood is introspective and pensive, as if it all took place in another life. Two chapters, however, do not fit into this characterization. In some books, they are published as appendices—which I think is a good choice, actually, since they interrupt the flow of the book quite a bit.

Despite the abrupt change in tone and subject-matter, however, they make for valuable reading. The machinations and petty political squabbles that went on during this time are astounding. One would think that having a common enemy in Franco would be enough to unite the various factions on the Left, at least for the duration of the war.

Instead, the anti-revolutionary communist party ended up declaring the pro-revolutionary communist party of which Orwell was a member, entirely by chance to be a fascist conspiracy, resulting in hundreds of people—people who had spent months fighting at the front—being thrown in secret prisons.

Orwell himself narrowly escaped. He understands nearly everything through a quasi-Marxist lens of class-warfare, which I think fails to do justice to the complex political and cultural history of the conflict. To his credit, though, Orwell does warn us about his limitations: In case I have not said this somewhere earlier in the book I will say it now: beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact, and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events.

And beware of exactly the same things when you read any other book on this period of the Spanish war. But these are minor complaints of a book which I found to be supremely well-written and absolutely fascinating. This is not because Orwell saw very much fighting; quite the opposite. Rather, he conveys a sense of the crushing boredom and the sense of futility that many soldiers must feel during a long, draw-out war.

Also superb was his portrayal of political oppression, the climate of fear and backstabbing that arose during the party conflicts in Barcelona. Perhaps most impressive, though, is that, despite all of the hardships Orwell endured, and despite the obvious injustices inflicted on both himself and his friends, he does not come across as bitter or resentful. I leave you with his words: When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this—and however it ends the Spanish war will turn out to have been an appalling disaster, quite apart from the slaughter and physical suffering—the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism.

Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings. I found this memoir-like book surprisingly interesting and readable in terms of his direct experience in the Spanish Civil War.

I think George Orwell didn't try to be a hero there since he himself was gunned down by a shot through his throat one morning. He simply wrote, "The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail" Chapter X, pp. This obviously has since signified his unique character and integrity in this chaotic world. Linguistically, reading it has also helped me learn some new adjectives ended with -ish, for instance, longish, sweetish, greenish, sheepish, hellish, darkish, etc.

View all 48 comments. Jan 06, B0nnie rated it really liked it. Orwell has kindly granted me an interview regarding his book, Homage to Catalonia B: There has been some talk about the Spanish Civil War lately, perhaps inspired by the recent movie El Laberinto del Fauno.

This war was a labyrinth as well: sorting out the various factions and who did what to whom certainly is quite a chore. But first things first. Could you describe your ensemble - you are wearing some unusual clothing. Is it a uniform? O: Of a sort. It is not exactly a uniform - perhaps a 'multiform' would be the proper name for it. I am wearing a thick vest and pants, a flannel shirt, two pull-overs, a woollen jacket, a pigskin jacket, corduroy breeches, puttees, thick socks, boots, a stout trench-coat, a muffler, lined leather gloves, and a woollen cap.

That is a lot of ensemble - you must be very hot. O: I heard that Canada is quite cold. I dressed in what I wore on cold nights at the front.

B: Now, is this typical clothing for the militia? O: Practically everyone in the army wore corduroy knee-breeches. Everyone wore a zipper jacket, but some of the jackets were of leather, others of wool and of every conceivable colour. The kinds of cap were about as numerous as their wearers. It was usual to adorn the front of your cap with a party badge, and in addition nearly every man wore a red or red and black handkerchief round his throat. B: Very dashing. And red goes particularly well with dark hair.

You guys gave those clothes-horse fascists something to think about. O: I believe we did, in our own way. B: Let's discuss the puttees.

For the benefit of those who do not know it, could you give a brief etymology of this word? O: It's from the Hindi and Urdu, their word for a strip of cloth, which in turn originated from Sanskrit. It is usually a woolen strip of cloth and it's wrapped around the leg from the ankle to knee.

This prevents your trousers from being torn or soiled. Surely a real chore to remove though? O: One rarely removed one's clothing. You see, one had to be ready to turn out instantly in case of an attack. In eighty nights I only took my clothes off three times, though I did occasionally manage to get them off in the daytime. Sleeping in your clothes must have been a hardship? O: No, not after a day or two. But there was a worse problem. For sheer beastliness the louse beats everything I have encountered.

Down the seams of your trousers he lays his glittering white eggs, like tiny grains of rice, which hatch out and breed families of their own at horrible speed. I think the pacifists might find it helpful to illustrate their pamphlets with enlarged photographs of lice. Glory of war, indeed! In war all soldiers are lousy.

B: Surely not - they are usually brave, I understand. O: No, not lousy. B: Ok, enough of that! Ha-ha, I'm confident no one wants to discuss your testicles, lousy or otherwise. B: So there you were, an Englishman thrown in with the Spaniards.

How is your Spanish? O: Villainous. All this time I was having the usual struggles with the Spanish language. Apart from myself there was only one Englishman at the barracks, and nobody even among the officers spoke a word of French.

B: Impossible! O: Things were not made easier for me by the fact that when my companions spoke to one another they generally spoke in Catalan. The only way I could get along was to carry everywhere a small dictionary which I whipped out of my pocket in moments of crisis. But I would sooner be a foreigner in Spain than in most countries. How easy it is to make friends in Spain! B: You joined the P. O: They didn't 'run' the war, they were muddling through like everyone else.

The whole militia-system had serious faults, and the men themselves were a mixed lot, for by this time voluntary recruitment was falling off and many of the best men were already at the front or dead.

There was always among us a certain percentage who were completely useless. Boys of fifteen were being brought up for enlistment by their parents, quite openly for the sake of the ten pesetas a day which was the militiaman's wage; also for the sake of the bread which the militia received in plenty and could smuggle home to their parents.

B: You wrote Homage to Catalonia with a certain detachment and regard for form? O: Yes, I tried to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. B: What sort of action did you see? O: All the time I was in Spain I saw very little fighting.

I was on the Aragon front from January to May, and between January and late March little or nothing happened on that front, except at Teruel. In March there was heavy fighting round Huesca, but I personally played only a minor part in it. Later, in June, there was the disastrous attack on Huesca in which several thousand men were killed in a single day, but I had been wounded and disabled before that happened.