Friend Franco

Last week, the American public was treated to a nice long look at the seamy side of our international politics. It was an excellent view, uneluttered by any of the ideological garbage currently in vogue. What they saw was Secretary of State Marshall and other prominent men stumbling all over themselves to get on the right side of Spain's midget despot, General Francisco Franco. The new love affair was concentrated power politics. Franco wanted readmission to the family of nations. He offered the United States access to the vital Spanish Peninsula and the use of his Moorish troops in return. While the deal is strategically unassailable, it is morally indefensible, for no two nations on the face of the earth are so diametrically opposed as Spain and the United States.

Back in 1946, the United Nations decided that they had seen enough of Franco's peculiar brand of savagery. His government, they said, was the essence of German and Italian fascism and the U.N. passed a resolution advising its members to withdraw their diplomatic missions. The object of this was either to tame Franco or bounce him out of Spain. It failed miserably. Great Britain, looking ahead to the day when Gibraltar would be vulnerable, signed a trade agreement with the dictator, and the United States was afraid that Spain would be consumed by Civil War if Franco left the scene. With this tacit carte blanche, Franco launched a purge, the most ferocious since 1939, under the guise of an anti-communist crusade. He passed a succession law turning Spain into a fascist monarchy and made it a capital crime to be suspected of opposition to the government.

Today there are still Nazis in Spain, but only rich ones. The rank and file were sacrificed to the Allies at the end of the war. There are some excellent restaurants and plenty of food for these big shot Nazis and their Spanish counterparts. But the people are ill-housed and poorly fed. The disease rate is fantastic and those that aren't diseased are squirming with fear.

It is weird that the United States, billing itself as the last great bastion of democracy, can consistently woo men like Franco. Senator Chan Gurney of South Dakota, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has the answer. The Soviet menace is of such magnitude, he says, that we should let bygones be bygones and accept every one we happen to find on the same side of our military fence. There are other reasons Mr. Gurney fails to mention. Spain is a Catholic country and there will be a large Catholic vote in the coming elections here. Another reason centers on the increasing pressure on behalf of Franco by our Latin American allies.

So far, Secretary Marshall's idea of basing our European defense line in the Pyrenees has been opposed by French national interests. Since the idea first took shape in Paris the French have been understandably miffed at the thought of their country becoming "expendable." A military guarantee to France might erase this objection, and then the way would be clear for the State Department to accept Franco's fascism and his strategic nation.

War, hot or cold, makes strange bedfellows.