Alvah Bessie

"The free meal was bad, and Lopez wasted a lot of time sending a cablegram signed Hy to some one in America. But we got to the Committee at two, and sat on low benches in a lecture hall. There were other men there; one I recall who was wearing a blue beret and a leather glove on an obviously artificial hand. "You guys just get back?" he said, and we said, "No, were just going." "Oh," he mumbled, "more suckers." We looked at him but he retired into himself, sitting in the back of the room for a time, and then suddenly leaving."

"Whenever we hear it said that Communism threatens us from within and without; whenever we are told that the Soviet Union menaces our "way of life" and wants to conquer the world; whenever we are summoned to a Holy Crusade that – if it is allowed to begin – will ravish the entire earth, we recall the following simple facts of history:Mussolini killed whatever democracy existed in Italy by claiming that Italy was threatened by Communism;Hitler destroyed the German Republic with the same weapon;Tojo broke the resistance of the people of Japan by using the identical thesis;Franco murdered the Spanish Republic in the name of the "Red menace";The Axis launched World War II under the slogan of saving the world from Communism."

"We switched out the light and tried to sleep again; the windows were clouded with steam as the train shrieked along the tracks, and we thought of the thousands from all countries who had traveled this way before, and of those who had not come back. We thought of the volunteer organizations throughout the world that were helping to get these men to Spain; we thought of the men from Fascist countries, who had known the enemy at first hand, had escaped from their own countries and traveled thousands of miles to get to Spain to fight the enemy on another front, and who would have no homes if they survived the war. We were optimistic of the outcome."

"Whenever the mind has led the body to an important decision, events have a way of assuming, momentarily, a half-symbolic nature. The mind plays that trick on you, and everything you see seems to partake of the quality of the decision you have made."

"Here were students, dock-workers, clerks and labor-organizers, farmers. Most were unacquainted with each other, but they came together now with the warmth and familiarity of old friends; they told each other of their work in their respective countries; of their friends and families. They spoke of the European political scene, of the imperative necessity for the Loyalist Government to drive the foreign invader from Spain; you felt that with each of them, no matter how diverse his previous training, the Spanish struggle was a personal issue, something deep and close. This in itself, considering the disparity of their origin, was a major political phenomenon. They spoke no word of the actual business of war; they did not speculate on the nature of artillery or air attacks, of machine-gun fire. You felt: many of these men will never see their friends or families again; they dont know what theyre getting into; their idealism has blinded them to the reality of what they will have to face. And you knew immediately that you were wrong; that they were so far from being blind that it might be said of them that they were among the first soldiers in the history of the world who really knew what they were about, what they were going to fight for — and that they were ready and eager to fight. Their very presence on the French frontier was an earnest of their understanding and their clarity; no one had made them come, no force but an inner force had brought them."

"You cannot really believe in the existence of a foreign country until you see it."

"The Swede who had walked in his sleep — he had not been wounded. Before we went into Batea he was in our peloton with Tabb and Moish Taubman and Johnson and Sid... He seemed to be stupid, but he wasnt. He never spoke, he never asked questions, but he had a face like a snake — he had the attentive expression of a reptile, pale, hard, unmoving eyes, a wide thin mouth, an impassive face. They said he had refused to retreat; he had set up his machine-gun on a hill, and told the others he was with, "Go on, I cover you." They left him there on the hill alone, his machine-gun banging away as the tanks came up."

"I was four years in the war," Merkel said. "German army." "What was it like?" "It aint bad," he said. "It aint bad at all; you get used to it. You never see the enemy; you shoot and shoot and you never see em. It aint bad at all." We talked of the World War and the Spanish War. Merkel told us that he had done underground work in Germany, and of the discontent among the German workers. "Every ship what comes to Hamburg," he said, "brings literature for em; they eat it up. I fight against Hitler, that bastard," he said. We talked of conditions back home; of Roosevelts popularity and liberalism, and of the reactionary opposition they were trying to whip up again; of its chances of success. "In the end," Merkel said, "you cant fool the workers. Takes em maybe a long time to wake up with the newspapers saying lies all the time, but you cant fool em."

"You know what I got half a mind to do?" the driver said. "What?" "Head this damn junk for the border." "Have a cigarette," I said. I wondered if he would head for the border and what I would do if he did, but he didnt. "The details all fucked-up," he said. "Wheres the Lincoln? Wheres the Macpap? The British? The Franco-Belge? Nobodys seen fuck-all of em. The bastards are driving to the sea," he said. "Maybe theyve got to Tortosa already; well find out. If France dont come in now, were fucked ducks. Mucho malo," he said. "Mucho fuckin malo."