"The general launched the Spanish Nationalist party, backed at the outset almost exclusively by Moorish mercenaries who were neither Spanish nor Catholic. The Catholic part of his slogan took root in the outside world, and subsequent developments failed to shake the conviction of good churchmen in Great Britain, the United States, and Latin America that there was only one side to the Spanish issue. These violent foreign partisans were unshaken when Franco had to solicit military assistance from Hitler, due to the marked lack of enthusiasm of the Spanish for his "Nationalist" movement. If the good Catholics in the outside world had stopped for a moment to consider the dubious (to put the best interpretation on it) reputation of the German Fuehrer for dealing with the Catholics in his own country, they might have wondered how good a bargain Franco was driving. When the great "Nationalist" implored legions of mercenaries from Mussolini, the ex-Socialist who had been in constant hot water with the Vatican ever since he usurped power, their embryo suspicions should have been confirmed. But neither inference bore any weight, and Franco became the world's champion of Catholicism."