"[L]ike most of my countrymen I loathe injustice and cruelty, and unlike them I happen to have had some recent experience in Spain. And after reading the pages that follow, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the people of this country have been misled by those who form its public opinion into condoning, in the name of an abstract theory, cruelty and injustice of a particularly horrible kind. There doubtless have been many harsh acts committed by the Spanish Nationalists: men do not wage civil war with gloved hands. But they do not include the wholesale rape, murder, and mutilation of non-combatant women and children, such as the Communist leaders in Spain will have to answer for... Over here the intellectuals—our foolish wise—have mislead us into thinking of such men as democrats, and of the Spanish Civil War as a fight between a properly constituted Liberal-cum-Socialist government and a gang of Fascist saboteurs. But no university lecturer or anonymous BBC commentator has told the just and compassionate people of England about the women of San Martin de Valdeiglesias."
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Arthur Bryant
Sir Arthur Wynne Morgan Bryant CH CBE (18 February 1899 – 22 January 1985) was an English historian, columnist for The Illustrated London News and man of affairs. His books included studies of Samuel Pepys, accounts of English eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history, and a life of George V. Whilst his scholarly reputation has declined somewhat since his death, he continues to be read and to be the subject of detailed historical studies. He moved in high government circles, where his works wer
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