TODAY in Spain there is a revolution going on that is less understood than any similar crisis in modern history. Even Professor Langer, that perspicacious student of every wind that blows in Europe, found it necessary, in a recent talk on the Spanish situation, to deal only with Spain's relation to the rest of Europe and not at all with the government at Madrid. Spain is having no conventional uprising of the Latin-American variety; it is a revolution in the bloodiest and most violent sense of the word. Newspapermen Harry Gannes and Theodore Repard have assembled a background of Spanish history and recordel a series of facts that are essential to an understanding of the struggle in Spain today.

"Spain in Revolt" is valuable for the facts it presents rather than the interpretation of those facts. The authors are unrelenting supporters of the Peoples Front and consistent antagonists of the Fascist elements from beginning to end. Their reasoning is often superficial, and their evidence in support of the liberal government occasionally makes excellent justification for the Fancist But we must not be too critical of an interpretation made with scarealy any perspective. Gannon and Hepard have done enough to merit great appreciation in their wealth of facits, the majority of which are well substantiated with references.

Unfortunately the authors did not leave us with as definite a picture of which side deserved to rule as they themselves saw. To be frank neither of the combatting elements appears capable of administering a government. However, it must be remembered that the Peoples Front is the legitimate government, duly elected by democratic methods and according to the Spanish Constitution. It must be kept in mind that up until the actual outbreak in the middle of July 1936, there was not a single communist, socialist, or anarchist in the cabinet. It was a government of the moderates, and only when the revolution actually broke out, did these moderates voluntarily relinquish half of their seats to the more radical group. The Fascists rebelled against constituted authority which three years before when they were in power, they had ardently supported.

In Spain the forces of the proletariat and the landed aristocracy are very great because there is relatively no middle class. The Catholic Church is a tremendous factor in the Fascist cause because it owns approximately one fourth of all the land in Spain. It is because of this condition that we find Spanish peasantry pillaging churches in much the same manner that French revolutionaries burned the homes of the wealthy nobility. The same situation of tenant-farming that we have in the South, exists in Spain under far more extreme circumstances.

These are but a few of the economic and social factors touched on by the authors. They are invaluable in judging the revolution from a sensible standpoint. We highly advocate the reading of Gannes and Repard's "Spain in Revolt.