We Saw Spain Die (53 page)

Mr Steer writes entirely from the Basque standpoint, and he has, very strongly, the curious English standpoint of being unable to praise one race without damning another. Being pro-Basque, he finds it necessary to be anti-Spanish, i.e., to some extent anti-Government as well as anti-Franco. As a result his book is so full of gibes at the Asturians and other non-Basque loyalists as to make one doubtful of his reliability as a witness.

This was not entirely unfair in that Steer’s sympathies lay with the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque Nationalist Party), which was as hostile to the Left as it was to the Francoists, and much of what he wrote reflected that position. Despite his doubts, Orwell did recognize the immense authority with which Steer could write about Guernica.
⁶³

After the publication of his book, Steer remained in Africa throughout 1938, travelling and writing articles for various South African and English papers, including the
Daily Telegraph
and the Manchester
Guardian,
on the ongoing Ethiopian resistance to the Italians and on the Italian threat to poorly defended British colonies. He also collected material on German colonial ambitions, material he hoped could be used by Noel-Baker to undermine Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policies. He also indiscreetly revealed to Noel-Baker, ‘for your ear alone’, that he would be reporting on what he found to South African Military Intelligence. Whatever else he was doing, Steer always kept his mind on the Basque cause. On 12 October 1938, he wrote to Noel-Baker to ask for advice as to whether it would be better for him to continue to work to keep the Nazis out of Africa or else

to come home in November and take part in any negotiations for mediation in Spain, my object being to press Basque claims.
I think this is vitally important, if we are ever to have a point of concentration to resist Italo-German influence in Spain. Basque autonomy, Catalan autonomy, removal of the Italians from Majorca and the Germans from Morocco are essentials.

Not without arrogance, he added: ‘I don’t think anybody could press these points better on the War Office and the Air Ministry than I can.’
⁶⁴

Within a week, however, Steer had decided that Franco would never agree to international mediation and that the Spanish Republic was thus doomed. Accordingly, he wrote to Noel-Baker on 18 October: ‘Henceforward, I feel, our main job is not to save Spain or Ethiopia or China or even democracy, but something far more material – to get Chamberlain out. I promise you that I will do my best to help you do this.’ In another letter, he said: ‘Our job is to get Chamberlain out.’
⁶⁵

Steer was still destined to see much fighting. In 1939, he travelled in North Africa and wrote a book about the threat posed by the Italians in Libya to the Egypt and to the French Empire.
⁶⁶
Nevertheless, he also permitted himself finally to leave behind his grief for Margarita. On 14 July 1939, he married Esmé Barton, the younger daughter of Sir Sidney Barton, a friend since their days together in Addis Ababa. Esmé had been portrayed by Evelyn Waugh in his novel
Black Mischief
as the promiscuous ‘Prudence Courteney’, and her parents lampooned as the bumbling ‘Sir Samson’ and ‘Lady Courteney’. Outraged that he should thus repay her parents’ lavish hospitality to him, she had taken her revenge when she saw him in one of Addis Ababa’s two ramshackle nightspots, by hurling a glass of champagne in his face. As an old friend of George Steer, she had attended the funeral of Margarita and, seeing him distraught, decided that he needed looking after and began falling in love with him. When they finally got together, their wedding was a society affair, conducted at the King’s Chapel of the Savoy by the Bishop of London with three other clergymen assisting and reported in
The Times.
With George in a top hat and tails and his bride in an elaborate gown of blue crepe, it was a world away from the improvised ceremony through which he and Margarita had joked their way in the dusty legation compound in Addis Ababa. Among the guests was the head of
MI5, Sir Vernon Kell, for whom Esmé worked as a secretary. On 14 May 1940, Esmé gave birth to a son. He was christened George Augustine Barton Steer in St Paul’s Cathedral on 8 June 1940, with the Emperor Haile Selassie as his godfather. On 13 October 1942, they had a daughter, Caroline.
⁶⁷

As a result of his work on Africa, Steer had been hired by the
Daily Telegraph.
The outbreak of the Second World War found him honeymooning in South Africa with Esmé. He soon headed north to cover the Russian invasion of Finland, once more drawn to describe the heroic resistance of a small nation faced by a totalitarian invader. In his reporting, he drew frequent comparisons with what the Germans had done in Euskadi.
⁶⁸
It was as if he was drawn always to the doomed struggle of small nations facing overwhelming odds. That commitment would lead to full-scale action when Britain became one of those small nations facing invasion. Steer remained in contact with the exiled Basque leadership in France. In the hope of getting them to England before they fell into German hands, he gave details of their whereabouts to Geoffrey Thompson, who knew Steer from his own time as Chargé d’Affaires at Hendaye during the Spanish Civil War. With the retreat from Dunkirk in full spate, Steer encouraged Philip Noel-Baker to try to persuade the British Government to bring José Antonio de Aguirre to Britain to be the focus of a Basque anti-Franco resistance.
⁶⁹

After the christening of his son, he joined his father-in-law Sir Sidney Barton, his friend Philip Noel-Baker and his son’s godfather, Haile Selassie, to discuss the possibility of hitting the Italians by encouraging the resistance in Abyssinia. The Negus was keen to return to his own country to foment revolt against the Italians. This coincided with the plans of Major General Archibald Wavell, the Commander in Chief of British Forces in the Middle East. Steer, as a result of an unusually imaginative decision, was commissioned as an officer in the Intelligence Corps on the basis of his previous experience in Addis Ababa during the Italian invasion. This was organized by Geoffrey Thompson, now of the Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office. Because of the importance of his mission, Steer, ‘who was of course well known to the Emperor, became a staff captain overnight’ and accompanied Haile Selassie to Khartoum.
⁷⁰
He did not remain long as the Emperor’s
aide de camp,
but
transferred to Psychological Warfare Operations, producing leaflets in Amharic which provoked plenty of desertions among the native troops recruited by the Italians. In fact, Steer turned out to be a propagandist of genius. He also organized guerrilla raids on Italian outposts. He linked up with the eccentric Colonel Orde Wingate, a buccaneering officer who shared Steer’s enthusiasm for Haile Selassie. Wingate’s column of Sudanese and other irregular troops kept large numbers of Italian troops occupied and eventually liberated the capital. Steer was with the Emperor when he returned to Addis Ababa on 5 May 1941.

Steer relished the opportunity to attack the Italians with his typewriter. He showed a real flair for what came to be called ‘psychological warfare’. Some of his inventions aimed at rousing the Ethiopian factions were beyond what the Emperor Haile Selassie could approve, so Steer forged an imperial seal with which to issue his bulletins. This was honestly recounted in his book,
Sealed and Delivered,
and prompted Evelyn Waugh to publish a hostile review in which he went so far as to suggest that the military authorities should punish Steer for indiscretion.
⁷¹
Waugh’s wish was not granted and, in fact, Steer was promoted. However, Waugh’s review was used by the odious Bolín as ‘proof’ that Steer was a habitual liar and had therefore lied about Guernica.
⁷²

Steer was posted to Cairo, where his wife had managed to get herself a job with British Intelligence. He served in the North African campaign until, in 1942, he was posted to Madagascar to take part in operations to prevent the Japanese taking over the island. There was considerable competition from several sections of the Special Operations Executive for his services. Then at the beginning of 1943, now Major Steer, he was sent to India, to take part in the campaign to recover Burma from the Japanese. His inventive use of propaganda and his active participation in a number of clashes with the enemy saw him promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. He was killed, not in action but in an accident, on Christmas Day 1944, when his jeep went off the road when he was driving to watch the Christmas Day sports at his training camp.
⁷³
It was a tragic irony that a man who had taken so many risks in such great causes should die in so banal a manner. The obituary in
The Times
recalled his exploits in Burma but not his service in Spain or Ethiopia, but commented on his books: ‘Combining the research of the scholar with the experience of
the fighter and the faith of the idealist, he was as frank and accurate in his writings as he was vivid and he has left a record of service to his country the cessation of which will be regretted by fellow journalists and soldiers alike.’
⁷⁴

Despite publishing five important books and a military career that saw him compared with Lawrence of Arabia, Steer is remembered, most of all, for the crucial despatch from Guernica which blew the whistle on Nazi involvement in the Spanish Civil War. From the time that he became a war correspondent in 1935, Steer had made it his business to alert the world to the imperialist ambitions and ruthless aggression of fascism. During the Italian invasion of Abyssinia and in Spain, his commitment to an apparently lost cause led him to a level of involvement that went far beyond the duties of a war correspondent. Steer’s book is not just about the bombing of Guernica, but is a complete account of the entire Basque campaign. In that sense, it remains one of the ten or so most important books about the Spanish Civil War. It is also a crucial element of Steer’s series of books about fascist aggression and atrocity. The book is one of the most moving and authentic tributes to the Basque people, to their suffering and their courage in the fight against Franco and his Nazi and Fascist allies. Moreover, despite his empathy with the PNV, the words of Steer summing up the Basque part in the Spanish Civil War capture the tragedy and dignity of an entire people:

After all, the Basques were a small people, and they didn’t have many guns or planes, and they did not receive any foreign aid, and they were terribly simple and guileless and unversed in warfare; but they had, throughout this painful civil war, held high the lantern of humanity and civilisation. They had not killed, or tortured, or in any way amused themselves at the expense of their prisoners. In the most cruel circumstances, they had maintained liberty of self-expression and faith. They had scrupulously and zealously observed all the laws, written and unwritten, which enjoin on man a certain respect for his neighbour. They had made no hostages; they had responded to the inhuman methods of those who hated them by protest,
nothing more. They had, as far as anyone can in war, told the truth and kept all their promises.
⁷⁵

George Steer wrote: ‘In this war, the Basque fought for tolerance and free discussion, gentleness and equality.’
⁷⁶
He died in a later war for those same values. Next to his body was found his most precious possession, a gold watch given to him by José Antonio de Aguirre, inscribed ‘To Steer from the Basque Republic’.

I
n the early hours of the morning of 25 August 1936, an American journalist named Jay Allen sat typing in the tiny enclosed patio of a small pension in the white Portuguese walled town of Elvas. He couldn’t sleep, partly because of the oppressive heat and partly because of the sobbing of the woman in the next room. Her husband had been one of the victims of the mass slaughter taking place just across the Spanish border at Badajoz. Jay had just come from the town and, by writing an article, was trying to come to terms with the horrors that he had seen. When published, it would do considerable damage to the cause of the military rebels in Spain. It was to be one of the most important and frequently cited chronicles of the Spanish Civil War and was to make Jay Allen the object of right-wing abuse. His commitment to the Spanish Republicans survived their defeat in 1939. In consequence, in March 1941, Jay Allen would be arrested by the German authorities in occupied France and imprisoned. He was there ostensibly as a journalist, but was trying to arrange the escape of Spanish Republican refugees and anti-fascist volunteers who had fought in the International Brigades. His fame as the man who had done so much damage to the rebel military in Spain made it difficult for American diplomats to secure his release.

Along with Henry Buckley, Jay Allen was one of the two bestinformed correspondents in Spain on either side. Isabel de Palencia, who had been the Spanish minister plenipotentiary in Sweden and Finland during the Civil War, wrote: ‘if I were asked who I thought was the best-informed North American on the Spanish conflict, I would unhesitatingly say, “Jay Allen”.’ She went on to list other distinguished friends of the Spanish Republic, including Vincent Sheean, Freda Kirchwey and
Elliot Paul, and concluded: ‘no one has compiled the history of the Spanish war or had the patience to build up the files that Jay Allen has’.
¹

Born in Seattle on 7 July 1900, Jay Cooke Allen Junior did not have a very happy childhood. His mother, Jeanne Lynch Allen, died from tuberculosis fifteen months after he was born. A first-generation Irish Catholic, she had made her Methodist husband, Jay Cooke Allen, promise to raise their children in the Catholic Church. After Jeanne’s death, her family wanted custody of Jay and, when his father refused, they kidnapped Jay. After a court battle, Jay was returned to him. The consequent bitterness in the family hurt the young Jay very deeply and may have influenced his later critical attitude towards the Catholic Church. At the same time, his relationship with his father did little to compensate him for the loss of his mother. Jay wrote years later of his father: ‘When I was a kid, I never saw him sober that I remember. And in my adult years, the few occasions when we were together he was aggressive, drank too much, and though I always enjoyed his immense vitality and appreciated his honest affection, I was always ill at ease.’
²
Jay did not find emotional warmth and stability until he met the love of his life, Ruth Austin.