XPost: alt.books.cs-lewis
From: dd@dandrake.com
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 14:22:43 UTC, "AJA" wrote:
>
> > Did he ever express any views on the Spanish Civil War, 1936?
> Very few references exist in print about political situations of his day, I
> find. He barely mentions The Troubles, and mentions the World Wars only to
> illustrate various points. Again some digging is necessary here.
He was, as you say, apolitical and/or anti-political, and Doug Gresham has
cited some really remarkable bit of unawareness of world news, which of
course I can't call to mind now.
Oddly enough, we have one scrap of evidence of his reaction to the Spanish
Civil War: he was on some occasion upset at atrocities committed by
Franco's forces, and Tolkien considered this another sign of Lewis's
Irish Protestant susceptibility to anti-Catholic propaganda. We have no
information, I think, on what the story was; but in light of historical
data, there's no reason to _assume_ that the story was false. In any case,
Lewis had rather strong feelings about murdering defenceless people on any
side, in any cause.
(It's hardly necessary to get into details here (disclosure: I have family
connections to that war); but certainly there were atrocities, in which
class lots of people at the time included the well documented (and how!)
attack on Guernica; and certainly there was enough evil on both sides to
go around.)
But darn it, I will go on: One side was backed by Hitler and one side by
Stalin. One of the most famous participants was on the side backed by
Stalin and wrote an expose' of how it was abused by Stalin, followed by
the classic tract (2 of them) on the evils of the Soviet system. I'd say
it is not easy to draw firm conclusions about a person from which side he
was on.
--
Dan Drake
dd@dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com/
porlockjr.blogspot.com
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