8 July 1937 Typed copy of handwritten original (which has not been traced)
Barcelona, in jail
I have written you two letters c/o Laurence O’Shaughnessy but am not sure the second one reached you because Ethel Macdonald has been arrested and part of the mail she was in charge of had to be destroyed; it is not known if my letter was in that case.
I still have not been interrogated which is very bad sign; all the others have and most of the questions aimed to establish my attitude during the May Days. Absolutely frightened people have made wild statements and some of the Moka’s guards state that on each of the Poliorama’s towers8 I had a machine gun and that a heavy barrage of fire and bombs was unceasingly produced from this position during three days. I have written yesterday a sort of ultimatum to Lt. Colonel Burillo, chief of the police, and if I do not get a proper answer within 48 hours, I shall start a hunger strike as a protest not only for my case but principally for the way we all are treated here. The prisoners are beaten and insulted and I know that if actual offence should be done to me, I shall kill the guard with bare fists, which will not be a solution for the rest of us. I have sent to Laurence (for you) the copy of my ultimatum and a short note stating that I want this hunger strike business to be given a broad publicity in England and France and that further news will be sent to let you know if really I was compelled to this measure. Without publicity, my sacrifice will be useless. We are now 18 in the 10′ by 15′ room and not allowed even to take a short walk in the passage. Nobody visits me; David9 has sent me a French poetry book with the mention ‘from an almost subterranean swine’; no news from George10 who is my only hope for sending out of Spain my correspondence. I sent out messages to the Hotel Victoria to be transmitted but do not know if they are duly forwarded. My money has got out last week but Harry Milton11 lets me share some of his. We are all mixed up with thieves, confidence-tricksters, lousy tramps and homosexuals – and 18 to a small apartment! I am not at all downhearted but feel my patience has definitely gone; in one or another way I shall fight to freedom for my comrades and myself. Harry Milton wishes to be known; I promoted him from a gamma minus to an alpha plus status.
8. See Homage to Catalonia, pp. 110–21 [VI/109–24].
9. Possibly David Murray, the ILP representative in Valencia at the time of Bob Smillie’s death, allegedly from appendicitis. Murray was refused permission to see Smillie’s body. See Homage to Catalonia, pp. 155–6 [VI/170–71]. And see Tom Buchanan. n. 6 above.
10. George: presumably George Tioli (see n. 4.)
11. Harry Milton was the only American serving with the British ILP group on the Aragon Front. It was to him (‘The American sentry’) that Orwell was talking when he was shot through the throat (Homage to Catalonia), p. 131 [VI/137–8]. He regarded Orwell as ‘politically virginal’ on arrival in Spain. Stafford Cottman recalls that only Milton was proud to boast of being a Trotskyist. Milton and Orwell spent hours discussing politics. He tried, very forcefully, to argue Orwell out of his determination to transfer to the International Brigade on the Madrid Front, convinced that the Communists would kill him: ‘But he was cool as a cucumber, and he just walked away from me. He was a very disciplined individual.’ See Remembering Orwell, 81, 85, 90.