Madrid, April 29, 1943.
 
 
 
Dear Mr. Taylor:
 
     
 
 
Having come to Sevilla for part of Holy Week, I have at last the requisite respite from   
regular duties to write you at some length about various aspects of the developing situation in   
Spain which I imagine may interest you.
 
     
 
 
Despite the perversities of the present regime, with its uncertain Caudillo and its very   
officious Falange, I feel sure that we are making substantial progress in securing the sympathy   
and good will of the bulk of the Spanish people. I have never regarded our policy of respecting   
the neutrality and territorial integrity of Spain and of supplying this country with petroleum   
and other products essential to its domestic economy as any sort of "appeasement" to   
antidemocratic forces here or elsewhere or as an instrument for strengthening and prolonging the   
life of the Franco government. I have regarded it rather as in line with the principles of the   
Atlantic Charter and as an effective means of binding Spanish ~eo~ to us commercially and   
politically and thus rendering them potential friends and allies of the United Nations instead   
of the Axis. This, I am convinced, is precisely what the policy is achieving. For our territorial   
guarantees and our petroleum supplies reassure and benefit the Spanish people at large, including   
monarchists and republicans, rich and poor, and the Spanish people know, if the present   
Government fails to acknowledge, that all such reassurances and benefits come from democratic   
America, not from Nazi Germany. And if the prospect of our ultimate military victory dismays   
Franco and his precious Falange, it encourages every one of the numerous dissenting elements   
among both the classes and the masses of the Spanish people.
 
     
 
 
Franco still occupies the centre of the stage, and he still talks to Archbishop Spellman in   
March 1943 much as he talked to you in September 1942-- the horrors of Communism, the necessity   
of suppressing it by force, the honesty of Hitler, the regrettable conflict between civilized   
Britain and Germany when they should be united against barbarous Russia, the theory of the two   
wars (the one in Europe and the other in the Pacific), the destructiveness of aerial warfare, the   
disastrous effects of a long war, the need for a negotiated peace of compromise. Yet Franco, in   
his slow thinking, has moved a trifle during the past six months.