Preface to the Second Edition

Summary

This book was written during and immediately after the Civil War. It was often difficult to get the material I needed and still more difficult, in the heated atmosphere of Spanish politics, to rely upon what I got. I had, too, to contend in my own mind with strong feelings and prejudices, for I had taken sides in the war in support of the Republic against the Nationalist Movement. Those who remember the intense passions aroused all over the world by this conflict will understand how difficult it was to see Spanish affairs objectively. Yet I tried to do so, for my object in writing this book was not to justify the side I supported, but rather to explain to myself and to others how things had turned out as they did. I especially wished to make clear the mistakes and illusions of the Spanish Left, for they were the people who, on the whole, seemed to me to have the greatest amount of justice and decency on their side and, since most persons of good will in other countries supported them and their cause was also that of the Democracies, the lessons to be learned from their failure might find a wide audience. Not of course that I claimed to see further at the time than the actors in these events, but that in the course of writing about them, the mistakes stood out and demanded to be taken notice of.

On rereading this book to-day, nine years after it was finished, I naturally find some things in it that I would like to change. Errors of fact have been corrected, but passages which require rewriting or amplifying have had to be left as they are. The chapter I am least satisfied with is that which deals with the struggle between the Liberals and the Church. A national Church, even when it has fallen far below what is expected of it, has resources of a different kind from those of a political party. It is not to be judged, as we Anglo-Saxons are apt to suppose, as a sort of divinely appointed ethical society, whose health and vigour depend solely upon the religious spirit of its members. At its lowest it occupies a key position in the social pattern of the country, from which, especially in agricultural communities, it cannot easily be displaced.