Norman Praises a Friend Killed in the Spanish Civil War

Cambridge [Massachusetts]
4 February [1937]

Dear Howie;

[…]

As you say, the Spanish news is encouraging but always excruciating — the news accounts are getting so viciously pro-fascist that it indicates the determination of the international bourgeoisie led by Britain & ably officered by Italy & Germany to prevent a victory for the People’s Front in Spain

I don’t think I told you (because the letter was general) that early in January I received a letter from a friend in Cambridge [England] telling of the death of a very close associate and companion of mine, [E.C.B.] MacLauren, of St. John’s College, who was killed outside Madrid in the first days of the furious assault on it. He was a volunteer in the International Brigade — a group of “heaven-stormers” if there ever was any. (Have you read full accounts of the rugged heroism of that Brigade? […])

This friend was a New Zealander — a brilliant mathematician. We knew each other through political meetings etc. in Cambridge and moved leftward together at the same speed and with the same sort of hesitancy and finally reaching the same goal at the same time. It is difficult and futile for me to describe my feelings when I heard the news. I think both you and I are attuned so closely that you can imagine what I felt — a mixture of shame, pride, and rage — shame at my own safe and easy life; pride in sharing in a political cause and in a love for justice and humanity in common with him and his kind; and rage at the complacency and cunning with which British, American, and French “democracy” regard German intentions as on par with volunteers in the International Brigade and at the disgusting speed with which Roosevelt and Congress rushed through legislation to prevent hard-pressed and half-equipped Spanish people getting a few pitiful boat-loads of second-hand clothes, airplanes, and munitions — all in the name of neutrality!

I have thought from time to time very seriously of going to Spain. I have never discussed it with Irene, but I have come to the conclusion that my complete helplessness in things military etc. would make me of little or no use to the International Brigade which requires either veterans or men with military knowledge — but the emotional pull to go is very strong and I really am deterred as much by reason of “common sense” and all that means as well as the above consideration which is something of an “emotional compensation” salve.

[…]

As ever, love,
Herb