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| https://spartacus-educational.com/SPmatthewsH.htm |
| 03 Ernest Hemingway, Hugh Slater & Herb Matthews |
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Herbert Matthews was highly critical of the Non-Intervention policy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt: "He (Roosevelt) was too intelligent and experienced to fool himself about the moral issues involved" and that his "overriding consideration was not what was right or wrong, but what was best for the United States and, incidentally, for himself and the Democratic Party." . After the defeat at Ebro, Matthews left Spain: "The story that I told - of bravery, of tenacity, of discipline and high ideals - had been scoffed at by many. The dispatches describing the callousness of the French and the cynicism of the British had been objected to and denied. I, too, was beaten and sick at heart and somewhat shell-shocked, as any person must be under the nerve strain of seven weeks of incessant danger, coming at the end of two years' campaigning... But the lessons I had learned! They seemed worth a great deal. Even then, heartsick and discouraged as I was, something sang inside of me. I, like the Spaniards, had fought my war and lost, but I could not be persuaded that I had set too bad an example." . Herbert Matthews wrote at the end of the Spanish Civil War: "I know, as surely as I know anything in this world, that nothing so wonderful will ever happen to me again as those two and a half years I spent in Spain. And it is not only I who say this, but everyone who lived through that period with the Spanish Republicans. Soldier or journalist, Spaniard or American or British or French or German or Italian, it did not matter. Spain was a melting pot in which the dross came out and pure gold remained. It made men ready to die gladly and proudly. It gave meaning to life; it gave courage and faith in humanity; it taught us what internationalism means, as no League of Nations or Dumbarton Oaks will ever do. There one learned that men could be brothers, that nations and frontiers and races were but outer trappings, and that nothing counted, nothing was worth fighting for, but the idea of liberty." . Humphrey Richard 'Hugh' Slater enlisted in and eventually commanded the Anti-Tank Battery of XV Internatioinal Brigade in Spain, of which he was eventually Chief of Operations. He participated in actions from Jarama to Belchite to Aragon and was repatriated [to Britain] in Oct 1938. https://internationalbrigadesinspain.weebly.com/anti-tank-battery.html |