The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-01-31

ulplOndClC SerVlCe. TIC nau gone into spats so long ago as 1903, and had served in Tokyo, Bangkok, Peking, St. Petersburg. Athens, Paris, Constantinople, Berlin and London, slowly rising from the humble office of embassy cocktail shaker to the dignity of Minister Plentipotentiary and Ambassador Extraordinary. He was, in brief @ man trained by nearly thirty years experience to observe &C., curately what was going on in the foreign ports to which he was assigned, and to report 1t fully and accurately.
 Small Notice
 ''In Washington the other day he made a speech recounting some of the things he saw in Spain dur ing the last two years of his resi- dence there, from 1881 to 1883. That speech got only small notice in the newspapers, but 1t deserved columns, for 1t was a complete counterblast to the bumcombe now circulating. The Honorable MT. Laughlin knew all the prin- cipal actors in the Spanish drama some of them intimately. He had been on confidential terms with the departed Alfonso, and he was on confidential terms with the first president of the new repub- lie, the aforesaid Senor Alcala Zamora.
 Overwhelmed by Reds
 "What he noted principally was that the Government was almost instantly overwhelmed by the Reds. "The frontiers,' he said, were open, no passport control was exercised and every train from France brought in scores of sub versive agents from abroad At once they began to make power- full medicine and in little while they were running the show. AL cala Zamora and his friends 'ex- ercised a slightly moderating in- fluence at first, but 1t did not last long, and they were submerg- ed by the Communist current and swept away The years from 1881 to 1886 were years of increasing turmoil, with the Reds gaining ground constantly. On February 16, 1886, the rigged election put them formally in power, Alcala Zamora was chased out of the Spanish White House and Mad rid hoisted the red flag. The Rus sian tanks and airships were al- ready on the way. By the autumn Francisco Largo Caballero, who liked to be called the Spanish Lenin, was Premier and Franco and his goons were marching northward.
 Not many Americans are ac- lively interested in Spain, and in consequence most of them have accepted the prevailing reports about events there without chal- lenge. Those reports have emanat- ed in the overwhelming main from propagandists for the Mar xiar brand of democracy. They have depicted the members of the Madrid camorra as pure-hearted patroits sworn to save their fath- erland from Moors, Italians and other such monsters, and Franco and his fellow army officers as traitors in the service of Its ene- mics. All the confiscations, burn ing, footing and murders by the Reds have been played down as sad, but inevitable incidents of civil war. and every military oper- ation by the Nationalists has been depicted as brutal and witless attack on unarmed civilians.
 Facts About Spain
 "The report of the Hon. MT. Laughlin differs very materially from all this--in fact, 1t stands in complete contradiction to 1t. Since the beginning of the war; he said in' his speech, public opinion in the United States has been strangely confused as to the facts of the situation, which has been artfully misrepresented by ele- ments actually anti-democratic masquerading 'as democrats, with the object of destroying demo- cracy. These clements are trying to destroy democracy in Spain in their effort to destroy 1t through out the world, and they are using the spanish situation to fertilize the ground in the United States for the growth of their doctrine He went on:
 "The spanish Popular Front Government, to this end, has de- liberately slaughtered, in thou sands Of cases with obscehce tor. ture, at the very lowest estimate more than 100000 helpless men, women and children
 "These are the scoundrsls that decent Americans have been be- sought to aid and sdmire. These are among the salient heroes of the new crusade to make the world safe for democracy. It Is hard to imagine even liberals, born suck CTS though they may be, falling for such obvious and disgusting frauds"