How do you know they are impossible until you have tried them?
If every one said orders were impossible to carry out when they were received where Would you be?
Where would we all be if you just said, "Impossible," when orders came?
He had seen enough of commanders to whom all orders were impossible.
That swine Gomez in Estremadura.
He had seen enough attacks when the flanks did not advance because it was impossible.
No, he would carry out the orders and it was bad luck that you liked the people you must do it with.
In all the work that they, the _partizans_, did, they brought added danger and bad luck to the people that sheltered them and worked with them.
For what?
So that, eventually, there should be no more danger and so that the country should be a good place to live in.
That was true no matter how trite it sounded.
If the Republic lost it would be impossible for those who believed in it to live in Spain.
But would it?
Yes, he knew that it would be, from the things that happened in the parts the fascists had already taken.
Pablo was a swine but the others were fine people and was it not a betrayal of them all to get them to do this?
Perhaps it was. But if they did not do it two squadrons of cavalry would come and hunt them out of these hills in a week.
No.
There was nothing to be gained by leaving them alone.
Except that all people should be left alone and you should interfere with no one.
So he believed that, did he?
Yes, he believed that.
And what about a planned society and the rest of it?
That was for the others to do.
He had something else to do after this war.
He fought now in this war because it had started in a country that he loved and he believed in the Republic and that if it were destroyed life would be unbearable for all those people who believed in it.
He was under Communist discipline for the duration of the war.
Here in Spain the Communists offered the best discipline and the soundest and sanest for the prosecution of the war.
He accepted their discipline for the duration of the war because, in the conduct of the war, they were the only party whose program and whose discipline he could respect.
What were his politics then?
He had none now, he told himself.
But do not tell any one else that, he thought.
Don't ever admit that.
And what are you going to do afterwards?
I am going back and earn my living teaching Spanish as before, and I am going to write a true book.
I'll bet, he said.
I'll bet that will be easy.
He would have to talk with Pablo about politics.
It would certainly be interesting to see what his political development had been.
The classical move from left to right, probably; like old Lerroux.
Pablo was quite a lot like Lerroux.
Prieto was as bad.
Pablo and Prieto had about an equal faith in the ultimate victory.
They all had the politics of horse thieves.
He believed in the Republic as a form of government but the Republic would have to get rid of all of that bunch of horse thieves that brought it to the pass it was in when the rebellion started.
Was there ever a people whose leaders were as truly their enemies as this one?
Enemies of the people.
That was a phrase he might omit.
That was a catch phrase he would skip.
That was one thing that sleeping with Maria had done.
He had gotten to be as bigoted and hidebound about his politics as a hard-shelled Baptist and phrases like enemies of the people came into his mind without his much criticizing them in any way.