Thread by @sebasfaber

The Mystery Quote: a thread for archive, #SpanishCivilWar & #factchecking nerds. @gilestremlett, in his International Brigades, quotes Bowers, US Ambassador to Spain, on the Non-Intervention Committee: “the most cynical and lamentably dishonest group that history has known”. 1/14

Giles T refers to Beevor, "The Battle for Spain," where the quote is longer: "Each movement of the Non-Intervention Committee has been made to serve the cause of the rebellion…This Committee was the most cynical and lamentably dishonest group that history has known." 2/14

Beever cites Bowers' memoir, "My Mission to Spain" (though he misspells the title as "Mission in Spain") but doesn't give a page number. 3/14

Here we run into our first problem: "My Mission to Spain" does not contain the quote. The closest it gets is where Bowers writes: "Thus did the Nonintervention Pact operate dishonestly from the first day" (p. 283) 4/14

He also writes: "the Nonintervention Pact was proving itself a dishonest farce. The Fascist powers fought openly, defiantly, 5/14

with arms; most of the democracies fought just as effectively, if unconsciously, as collaborationists of the Fascists under the mocking cloak of 'nonintervention'" (p. 325) 6/14

And: "the Nonintervention Committee was a shameless sham, cynically dishonest, in that Germany and Italy were constantly sending soldiers, planes, tanks, artillery, and ammunition into Spain without an interference or real protest from the signatories of the pact" (pp.411-2) 7/14

A bunch of searching leads to another instance of the original quote, in Art Landis's "Spain! The Unfinished Revolution" (1972). Landis, p. "“Each movement of the Non-Intervention Committee,” according to the American Ambassador, Bowers, 8/14

“has been made to serve the cause of the Rebellion.” And further,“This Committee was the most cynical and lamentably dishonest group that history has known.” (p. 203) 9/14

Yet Landis does not cite Bowers' "My Mission to Spain." Instead his footnote points to "Foreign Relations U.S. Diplomatic Papers, Vol. II., 1936. p. 604." 10/14

The page in question is part of a long memo from Bowers to the Acting Sec of State, dated Dec. 10, 1936, received Dec. 24. It makes for great reading. And it does contain a paraphrase of the original quote. 11/14

"Every move of the Non-Intervention Committee has been to serve the rebel cause." 12/14

But there is no trace of anything resembling "the most cynical and lamentably dishonest group that history has known". 13/14

I assume that Beevor got the quote from Landis and mislabeled the source. But where did Landis get it? 14/14

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