Dispatches from the World

The next conflict was almost underway in Spain. The prime minister of that country had two military officers suspected of conspiracy against the government exiled to commands in the Canary Islands, Spanish islands located off the west coast of Africa. One of the exiled military officers was Francisco Franco. It was an attempt by the military to overthrow the government of Spain in July of 1936, which led to the Spanish Civil War. The government (also referred to as the Republican) forces were supported by the Soviet Union and Mexico, but they also had various other communist volunteers as well as Americans willing to fight in support of their side. The rebel (also referred to as the Nationalist) forces were led by General Francisco Franco, who had now returned from exile. Franco had the support of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s fascist Italy. The governments of Great Britain and the United States were officially neutral in the conflict, but some of the newspapers in these countries supported the rebel forces. Phillips was on the Continent in late July of 1936 to cover the events surrounding the dedication of Vimy Ridge memorial. During the World War, four divisions of the Canada Corps were in a battle at Vimy Ridge against three divisions of the German Sixth Army. The Canadians were victorious. The memorial was in honor of the Canadians who fought and died there during the 1917 battle. Within a month Phillips was reporting the events of the conflict in Spain; his first dispatch was dated August 3 for the Daily Telegraph. On that day he wrote about an encounter between the Spanish government’s battleship Jaime I and the German battleship Deutschland. The former was about to shell rebel-held areas when the German battleship placed itself between the two opposing forces. The government was reluctant to take on the Germans, although it was quite apparent that the latter supported the rebels. All of this was visible from Gibraltar, which Phillips used as his early base, venturing into Spain only sporadically at the beginning. Later he was based with the Spanish rebel army during much of his reporting. Phillips was not the only war correspondent to make his way to Spain to cover the conflict developing there. Many of his colleagues from previous wars and conflicts were to go there as well, although in some cases they never ran into each other. The primary reason for this is obvious; some were with the government forces and some were with the rebel forces. Some estimates suggest that there were a thousand correspondents covering the conflict from the two sides, but this seems like an overestimate. To say there were between one and two hundred may not be far off the mark. The most famous of these covered the government side of the action. Included in this group would be Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and George Orwell. Fewer covered activities from the rebel side and those that did were seasoned correspondents like Phillips and colleagues such as Francis McCullagh (from the Tripoli invasion), William Forest (from the 1916 events in Ireland), Webb Miller and Noel Monks (both from the Italian invasion of Ethiopia). In Phillips case he was assigned to cover the rebel side of the conflict along with Pembroke Stephens. In addition to Phillips, there were other reporters covering the war in Spain for the Daily Telegraph. These included Cedric Salter, who would later join the Daily Mail, Alan Dick, who would be active in the summer of 1937, Henry Buckley, and as noted Pembroke Stephens, who would soon be assigned to cover the Japanese/Chinese conflict. Phillips had not spent much time in Spain prior to this. He was there just after the Barcelona rebellion in 1909, but that was nearly three decades earlier. He had been back in October of 1929 for an interview with General Primo de Rivera, who became dictator of Spain following a coup d’état in September of 1923. Rivera was to continue as dictator for only a little more than two months before resigning in January of 1930 and going into exile in Paris, where he died less than two months later. Phillips time in Spain for the rebellion and interview, as well as some holiday trips, were brief in comparison to this new assignment to cover Spain’s civil war. Phillips’ reports on August 6 and 13 reflected the vigorous movement on the part of the rebels and the loss of more and more ground by the government. Rumors that the Jaime I had received significant damage by rebel bombers on August 13 were confirmed on August 14. Phillips suspected that the new bomber pilots were Italians or Germans, otherwise he could not quite understand the accuracy of the rebel bombers in comparison to their poor showing in previous attacks. He later confirmed that the new pilots were actually Italians and Germans. Phillips did spend some time with his old friend, Francis McCullagh, while in Spain at this time. They had covered the Italian invasion of Tripoli in 1911; Phillips working for the Express and McCullagh working for the New York World. Now they were covering a civil war from the rebel side. In a conversation with McCullagh at the time, Phillips said, Spain “has to import foreign mercenaries to fight for it, even in a civil war. Foreign artillery are blowing Spain to bits.” Officials “won’t let us mention Italians and Germans in our despatches, but they’re here all the same.” Phillips was aware of this fact because Italian and German aviators were staying at hotels in Salamanca; he was also staying at a hotel in Salamanca at the time. He reported weapons were being delivered by the Germans to General Francisco Franco’s rebel forces on the 20th of August. He actually went so far as to write an article for the Daily Telegraph that gave the names of the German pilots and the numbers of German airplanes.