F. Jay Taylor, in The United States and the Spanish Civil War, dealt primarily with the policies of the State Department, the Congress, and the major newspapers and pressure groups. The present work, which forms an excellent complement to Taylor’s, deals primarily with the attitudes of intellectuals and artists, of religious denominations, and of all sectors of American political opinion, including the many tiny but articulate right and left minority groups. In analyzing the editorials of major newspapers, and in describing the commitments of important public figures, the author demonstrates convincingly that the majority of Americans took their stand more in accordance with historic American principles than under the influence of either Communist or Fascist persuasion. Liberals, fellow-travelers, and even many Communists saw the Spanish experience as analogous to the American Revolution. The cause of the Spanish Republic seemed similar to the cause of the colonies fighting against tyranny and foreign intervention. The International Brigadiers were frequently referred to as the Lafayettes and Kosciuskos of the twentieth century. The democratic and egalitarian principles of the Republic were compared with the principles of 1776. Similarly, in the pro-Franco camp, American Catholics saw their fellow-Catholics in Spain as defenders of religious liberty against communism. The principles announced in the Spanish bishops’ pastoral letter of July 1937 were compared to those of the Founding Fathers, and Fulton J. Sheen expressed the opinion that the Americans in 1776 had had no more reason to revolt against England than had the Spanish Nationalists to revolt against the Popular Front. One of the most interesting portions of the book (p. 45 ff.) describes the Catholic dilemma which led Commonweal in June 1938 to advocate a policy of neutrality toward the Civil War.
Mr. Guttmann’s analysis of the public positions taken by prominent laymen, big businessmen, and business and labor organizations, leads him to the general conclusion that religion outweighed economic and class motives in determining the sympathies of Americans. A substantial proportion of Catholic trade unionists favored Franco, while many wealthy and conservative Protestants refused to support Franco even if they felt no sympathy for the Republic. Regarding the reasons why President Roosevelt, despite his personal sympathies, followed a policy of strict neutrality from first to last, the author agrees substantially with the analysis of F. Jay Taylor, and emphasizes three reasons in particular: (1) the historic tendency of the United States to be strongly influenced by British foreign policy; (2) the isolationist sentiment of majority public opinion; and (3) the determination of the Catholic Church that nothing be done to aid the Republic. The book also includes much interesting analysis of American literary reactions to the war.
