It Tolls for Thee

Now that I've finished Hemingway's longest novel, I find myself wondering whether it would have been a different sort of book if it had been written in 1936 and 1937, instead of after the Loyalist effort had failed.  While there is a certain amount of idealism, even good humor, the foreshadowing of disaster both personal and political is difficult to avoid.  "But remember this that as long as we can hold them here we keep the fascists tied up.  They can't attack any other country until they finish with us and they can never finish with us.  If the French help at all, if only they leave the frontier open and if we get planes from America they can never finish with us.  Never, if we get anything at all." (p. 432)

Of course, by the time he wrote those words Hemingway was perfectly well aware that fascist sympathizers in France had prevailed upon the Blum government to close the frontier, and that FDR had found it politically expedient not to send planes to fly side by side with communist pilots.  With troglodytes like Andre Marty purifying the International Brigades and the NKVD performing a similar disservice among the anarchists, the CNT, and POUM, it's no wonder Franco won.