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International Socialism, Spring 1963

 

P. Mansell

God and Spain

 

From International Socialism, No.12, Spring 1963, p.30.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

Spanish Fury
by James Cleugh
Geo. Harrap and Co. 21s.

The final paragraph of this book gives sufficient indication of the author’s standpoint and method of political analysis for any review to be superfluous.

‘The synthesis of Eastern and Western religious impulses existing at the heart of Christian theology, for all its doctrinal differences of opinion, must eventually govern the fundamental attitude of man to his predicament on earth. The Second Republic of Spain fell, in the last analysis, because it issued a local and temporal challenge to that inevitable conqueror. Other challenges arise to-day over far wider regions of the globe than Spain. They have lasted longer and have grown more formidable than the brief, unsteady Spanish defiance. They appeal not only to the lowest common denominator of human nature, to greed, cynicism, and the aggressive bitterness of the victims of misfortune or of the greed and cynicism of others, but also to honest idealists with an imperfect knowledge of the world they have to live in and of their own natures. Yet the intuitive conviction of a truth that lies above and beyond human reason has always hitherto won its way, as it won in Spain in 1939, against the glitter of rationalizations founded on the quicksands of a purely materialist outlook.’

 
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