Evening star., 1936-09-01
LOYAL|ST CHIEF
1. SURE OF VICTORY
Gen. .Durruti Confident
Troops Will Take Sara
r. q0SSa Soon.
RY WALTER DURANTY.

AT GEN. DURRUTrS LOYALIST
HEADQUARTERS, NEAR SARA
GOSSA, September / (By courier to
Barcelona) .-"Of course we shall take
Saragossa, and before long, too" said
Gen. Durruti, leader Of one OF the
Loyalist columns operating against the
provincial capital or Aragon. I'VE
know that by all the rules of war the
city Is virtually impregnable and that
the insurgent defenders are double
our number, but by the rules OF war
they ought to be smashing us to pieces
here and now, whereas actually the
Initiative is everywhere in our hands.
Right here where we sit is is only
( miles from Fort Quinto and the
road that is our main line of COM
munication with the front is covered
by Fort Quintos guns. You can drive
along this road to Pima and Osera or
to our other advance positions-our
front lines are only II miles from
Saragossa-and they may throw you
q shell or two at the crossroads, but
you need not worry. I have been
here two weeks and have not lost a
single man on the road.
No Heart in Men.
1.-THE enemy has strong force in
Saragossa-one regiment they had to
send away because of a mutiny-but
there is no heart in them. It is all
they can do to hold the town against
the local workers. We have informa-
ton and we know. They are good at
shooting unarmed workers, these
rebels, but they have little stomach
for fighting"
Earlier in the day this correspondent
had proof of what Gen. Durruti said.
When the rebels evacuated Pima be-
fore a militia attack with inferior
forces, they took 13 Loyalists wounded
earlier in the fighting, dragging them
out from their beds, huddled them
against church wall and shot them
dead. Yet a rebel airman showed
courage at that same moment. He
swooped down on an autobus full Of
Loyalist soldiers and riddled it with
a well-aimed bomb. Ten bodies and
q dozen dying men were lifted from
the wreck of twisted iron, which lies
there now at the roadside, greeted by
every militiaman who passes with the
clenched left fist of defiance that
the Catalonian anti-Fascists have
adopted as salute.
More Like Irishman.
He is big, strong man of 40 years,
this Durruti, more like ''black Irish
man" from Galway than a Spaniard,
and, although the militia does not
recognize rank or distinctions, there
Is no doubt that he is boss of the
column, 1000 strong, of Barcelona
workers. which bears his name. We
may call him general" With calcu-
lated recklessness he rushed his men
forward as spearhead through the
outer defenses of Saragossa and at
one time he was only 912 miles from
the town. Now he Is waiting for
other columns to come up from the
south and north.
Time is on our side" he continued.
"Every week there is a new column
from Barcelona and our supply of
planes, guns and munitions, which was
at first so scanty, now is becoming
important. What is more, We are
,co-ordinating our action with that of
the Huesca front, 80 miles north as
the crow flies. We shall organize a
joint plan of action after Huesca has
fallen. They will be sad in Saragossa
when our Huesca columns come
sweeping down to cut their line of
retreat"
Gen. Durruti spoke with absolute
confidence, but if had not seen with
my own eyes how limp and inactive
the rebel forces are, I should have
thought his optimism was insane.
Rebels in Terrible Position.
The fact is that the rebel officers
and their adherents are in a terrible
position. They are only a handful
among hostile population and can
not even trust their own men. They
know little or nothing of the Loyal
lists maneuvers, but the Loyalists are
informed of every rebel move, every
convoy. Only the other day a big
COllNOy VI 1OOO, pcIIOl dIlO IlUIllGlOIlo
being sent from Saragossa to Huesca
was captured by Loyalist forces, which
at present are converging upon Huesca
from south, north and east.
Gen. Durruti made it clear that
this was not war in the usual sense of
the word, but guerilla warfare-scat-
tered, sporadic fighting like the Civil
War in Russia, in which propaganda
and popular sentiment are no less i'm
portant than cannon or machine
guns.
Look" he said, 1--WE have here our
own newspaper, published every day
a four-page printed sheet of half
tabloid size called THE Front" with
a circulation, of 10000, distributed
throughout the countryside and
dropped from planes behind the
enemy lines. It tells friend and foe
alike what we are fighting for and
why we are anarchists. But we do
not think now as anarchists; we think
only of beating the Fascists. We take