ANDRE MALRAUX
29
Puig's observations betray the main drift of the novel-its theme
wiII be the ordering of the Loyalist forces-and at the same time
the behavior of the Anarchists, their fatalism, their heroics, their ap-
parent indifference to death and defeat, reminds us of Ch'en and
Kyo, and suggests an ideological link with the earlier novels.
In taking as his theme the coordination of the armed forces,
Malraux confronts the central problem of Loyalist Spain. But he fails
by a very considerable margin to confront it squarely. The problem
was essentially political; Malraux treats it as a purely military dilem-
ma. It involved the most vital revolutionary principles: Malraux
poses it as a question of common sense as against utopian folly. It
precipitated the fatal split in the labor movement, culminating in the
tragic May Days in Barcelona and thrusting the war into its long
stalemate; Malraux disposes of its main issues in a single dialogue.
The principal disputants in this brief but important dialogue
are Magnin, commander of the International Squadron, and Garcia,
formerly an ethonologist but now an officer in the Intelligence Service,
who figures throughout the novel as Malraux's most intimate spokes-
man. Pointing to the highly mechanized aid which Germany and Italy
are putting at Franco's disposal, Garcia proposes a sharp shift in the
method of conducting the war.
"This war is going to be a technical war (he says) and we shall
have to conduct it and not talk about sentiments." We cannot, he
thinks, expect the working class leaders "to become specialists by
visitation."
But, Magnin objects, it is the people who have held the Sierra.
"My dear sir (replies Garcia), we are sustained and poisoned at
the same time by two or three sufficiently dangerous myths. First of
all the French one: the People, with a capital P., made the French
revolution. So be it. But it does not follow that, because a hundred
pike-staffs were able to win against a few bad muskets, a hundred
hunting-guns can vanquish a good airplane. The Russian revolution
has further complicated things. Politically, it was the first revolution
of the 20th century; but notice that in a military sense it was the last
of the 19th. The revolutionists had barricades, but the Czarists had
neither tanks nor aviation ....
Spain today is covered with barricades
-against the aviation of Franco."
A companion of Garcia's adds that "never before have militia-
men fought a modern army. The Wrangels were beaten by the Red
Army, not by the Partisans."
And, in short, the revolution in its present stage is the "Apo-
calypse of fraternity" and it is their modest function to organize the
Apocalypse.
