ALBA Visit #8

Yesterday I started reading the Marjorie Polon Papers, specifically Bill Bailey’s letters to Marjorie during the Spanish Civil War, which span from spring or early summer 1938 to November 1938. The content of these letters is very similar to that of the other letters I have read, except that Bailey’s letters are some of the longest, going into more gory war details. Certain aspects of his letters stood out to me and raised some questions.

For one, Bailey echoes one of Abe Osheroff ‘s complaints from his interview on the Facing Fascism DVD, about how heartbreaking it can be not to receive letters. Bailey wrote, “About the toughest piece of misery to go through in any war is to fail to receive letters from people.”^[1] Bailey did not suffer as great a lack of letters as Osheroff, but this somewhat hyperbolic statement seems to reflect a widely held feeling on what was a sensitive issue. In the shoes of a combatant, perhaps a statement like Bailey’s may not have sounded hyperbolic at all.

Bailey also wrote, regarding volunteers who lied about their age, “…a few of [the young volunteers] I know to be about 15 years of age, are a sure willing bunch, always asking the old timers packs of questions. They feel swell being amongst us and we feel likewise about them.”^[1] This was shocking to me. If what Bailey wrote is true, this is the only source I have ever seen discussing volunteers that young. Just as surprising to me as their purported age is Bailey’s attitude towards them. The presence of underage combatants is generally viewed as exceptionally hazardous, isn’t it? And how reliable is Bailey’s knowledge about the attitudes of his fellow “old timers”? If Bailey’s report is accurate, what are the implications of this seemingly strange, not to mention illegal, situation?

Additionally, Bailey is one of the volunteers who explicitly wrote about the necessity of lifting American non-intervention. He prophetically implied that successfully protesting the embargo against Spain would be the difference between victory and defeat, and that protesting non-intervention was the American thing to do, which I though was an apt articulation. Though I still wonder about the logic behind the timing of writing on this essential topic. Once again, it seems a little late in the game, but hindsight may be distorting my view of the issue…

Citations

1. 4^th Letter from Bailey to Polon, Fall 1938; Marjorie Polon Papers; ALBA 159; box 1; folder 1

Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives

Elmer Holmes Bobst Library

70 Washington Square South

New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries.