User:MerAtticus/sandbox - Revision history

MerAtticus: added pages

2025-04-19T21:15:06Z

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MerAtticus: added works cited

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 of documentary reportage in the thirties” that worked “by vicarious persuasion:
 the writer partook of the events he reported and bared his feelings
-and attitudes to influence the reader’s own.”{{sfn|Stott|1986|pp=178-9}}{{efn|He specifically includes Hemingway et al (180).}} Stott also observes {{pg|433|434}}
+and attitudes to influence the reader’s own.”{{sfn|Stott|1986|pp=178-9}}{{efn|He specifically includes Hemingway et al (180).}} Stott also observes {{pg|433|434}}another technique to enable documentary reportage to “talk to us, and convince us that we, our deepest interests, are engaged,” in the use of the second person: “Thirties documentaries constantly address ‘you,’ the ‘you’ who is we the audience, and exhorts, wheedles, begs us to identify, pity, participate.” His examples include Dorothy Parker’s Spanish Civil War writing, and Hemingway’s 1935 “First-Hand Report on the Florida Hurricane.”{{sfn|Stott|1986|pp=27-8}} A number of Hemingway’s NANA dispatches employ the second-person as a way of bringing the reader along for the ride.

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 cable Matthews sent to his Times editors on April 9, 1937, concerning the
 Loyalist attack: “WORKED CONJOINTL WITH HEMINGWAY TODAY HE SENDING EYEWITNESS DESCRIPTION WHILE EYE SENT GENERAL STRATEGY.”{{sfn|Matthews|1937|p=April}} When a year later the Times asked NANA to ensure Hemingway’s reports differed from Matthews, NANA complied by asking Hemingway “to emphasize color rather than straight reporting” not necessarily out of dissatisfaction with Hemingway’s reportage as Baker contends,{{efn|Baker’s notes date the Times request to NANA as 8 Apr. 1938, and NANA’s to Hemingway as 15
-Apr. 1938 (Princeton University, Firestone Library: Box 18, Folder 8 “1938”), the date of “The Bombing of Tortosa” dispatch.}} but to increase{{pg|431|432}}the chance of selling to the Times and indeed to ensure the spirit of NANA’s original arrangement with Hemingway. {{sfn|Baker|1969|p=329}}
+Apr. 1938 (Princeton University, Firestone Library: Box 18, Folder 8 “1938”), the date of “The Bombing of Tortosa” dispatch.}} but to increase{{pg|431|432}}the chance of selling to the Times and indeed to ensure the spirit of NANA’s original arrangement with Hemingway. {{sfn|Baker|1969|p=329}}Far from dissatisfied, NANA wrote Hemingway at the end of August 1938 a letter of agreement for his coverage of “a general European war”  should it break out, “written in your colorful style” (Hemingway was in Paris, on his way to Spain for the last time during the war).{{sfn|Wheeler|1938|p=}} When Edmund Wilson criticized the selected dispatches reprinted in Fact, Hemingway wrote him that “I was paid to write what are called ‘eye witness’ accounts . . .what is called, or was asked for as ‘color stuff.’ Most of such stuff is faked. Mine was not. It was straight reporting and the personal stuff was what had been asked for by the editors. “Wilson’s estimation was also based upon Fact’s inclusion of the “The Old Man at the Bridge” story from Ken, “not a news dispatch” at all.{{sfn|Hemingway|1938|p=Edmund}} Speaking at Carnegie Hall before the showing of a rough cut of The Spanish Earth, shortly after his first trip to Spain and so very much in the context of his wartime work, Hemingway defined the writer’s problem as “project[ing] [what is true] in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.”{{sfn|Hemingway|2002|p=193}}

MerAtticus: Added in abstract and fixed typos

2025-04-15T20:05:03Z

Added in abstract and fixed typos

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	THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR BEGAN ON 17–18 JULY, 1936 as a rebellion of generals against the Republic’s electorally-restored left-leaning government. Hemingway held a deep love for Spain dating from his trips to the bullfights in the early 1920s. He finally made it to the war-torn country in March of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), to assess the situation in his role as chairman of the ambulance corps committee of the pro-Republican American Friends of Spanish Democracy, to collaborate with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens on the pro-Republican documentary The Spanish Earth, and to pursue his fledgling love affair with Martha Gellhorn.		Abstract:The Spanish Civil War began in July 1936 as a rebellion of generals against the Republic’s electorally-restored left-leaning government. Hemingway held a
	By war’s end in April 1939, Hemingway would make four trips to Spain and write thirty-one dispatches for NANA.{{sfn\|~~Baker~~\|1988\|p=}}{{efn\| Quotations from the NANA dispatches follow the Diplomatic Text established by William Braasch Watson’s “Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War Dispatches.” I prefer NANA’s titles rather than Watson’s. For my disagreements with some of Watson’s datings, see my comments on specific dispatches in Hemingway’s Second War. The secondary sources habitually judge them inferior journalism. Carlos Baker in the first Hemingway biography, for example, complains that the dialogue was “so heavily stamped with personal mannerisms as to be of doubtful authenticity.” Baker sees a “curious monotony in his stories of battles and bombardments,” a gratuitous use of graphic imagery “to shock his readers,” and “a note of triumphant boastfulness” in reporting proximity to danger. He also faults Hemingway for “often hint[ing] he was alone when in fact he was usually with Martha Gellhorn, Matthews, and Delmer.” Hemingway lacked Dos Passos’ “eye for telling details” and the “meticulous exactitude and inclusiveness that characterized the best work of Herbert Matthews and Sefton Delmer.”{{sfn\|Baker\|1969\|p=329}} Philip Knightley’s The First Casualty, the standard history of war correspondence, paraphrases Baker but with a trouncing final judgment: {{pg\|427\|428}}Hemingway’s “performance as a war correspondent was abysmally bad.” But Knightley goes beyond “technical” dissatisfaction to moral condemnation. Not just “unjustifiably optimistic”—an excusable offense—Hemingway’s reporting was “unforgivable” in its “total failure to report the Communist persecution,		deep love for Spain dating from his trips to the bullfights in the early 1920s. He finally made it to the war-torn country in March of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), to assess the situation in his role as chairman of the ambulance corps committee of the pro-Republican American Friends of Spanish Democracy. By war’s end in April 1939, Hemingway would make four trips to Spain and write thirty-one dispatches.
	imprisonment, and summary execution of ‘untrustworthy elements’ on the Republican side, when he knew this was happening and when disclosing it might well have prevented further horrors like this.”
			THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR BEGAN ON 17–18 JULY, 1936 as a rebellion of generals against the Republic’s electorally-restored left-leaning government. Hemingway held a deep love for Spain dating from his trips to the bullfights in the early 1920s. He finally made it to the war-torn country in March of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), to assess the situation in his role as chairman of the ambulance corps committee of the pro-Republican American Friends of Spanish Democracy, to collaborate with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens on the pro-Republican documentary ''The Spanish Earth'', and to pursue his fledgling love affair with Martha Gellhorn.


			By war’s end in April 1939, Hemingway would make four trips to Spain and write thirty-one dispatches for NANA.{{sfn\|Watson\|1988\|p=4}}{{efn\| Quotations from the NANA dispatches follow the Diplomatic Text established by William Braasch Watson’s “Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War Dispatches.” I prefer NANA’s titles rather than Watson’s. For my disagreements with some of Watson’s datings, see my comments on specific dispatches in ''Hemingway’s Second War.''}} The secondary sources habitually judge them inferior journalism. Carlos Baker in the first Hemingway biography, for example, complains that the dialogue was “so heavily stamped with personal mannerisms as to be of doubtful authenticity.” Baker sees a “curious monotony in his stories of battles and bombardments,” a gratuitous use of graphic imagery “to shock his readers,” and “a note of triumphant boastfulness” in reporting proximity to danger. He also faults Hemingway for “often hint[ing] he was alone when in fact he was usually with Martha Gellhorn, Matthews, and Delmer.” Hemingway lacked Dos Passos’ “eye for telling details” and the “meticulous exactitude and inclusiveness that characterized the best work of Herbert Matthews and Sefton Delmer.”{{sfn\|Baker\|1969\|p=329}}

			Philip Knightley’s ''The First Casualty'', the standard history of war correspondence, paraphrases Baker but with a trouncing final judgment:{{pg\|427\|428}}Hemingway’s “performance as a war correspondent was abysmally bad.” But Knightley goes beyond “technical” dissatisfaction to moral condemnation. Not just “unjustifiably optimistic”—an excusable offense—Hemingway’s reporting was “unforgivable” in its “total failure to report the Communist persecution, imprisonment, and summary execution of ‘untrustworthy elements’ on the Republican side, when he knew this was happening and when disclosing it might well have prevented further horrors like this.”
	{{sfn\|Knightley\|2004 \|pp=231–32}}{{efn\|In my view, Knightley does not sufficiently acknowledge his paraphrasing of Baker.}}		{{sfn\|Knightley\|2004 \|pp=231–32}}{{efn\|In my view, Knightley does not sufficiently acknowledge his paraphrasing of Baker.}}


	Such criticisms in the final analysis might bear out. As Scott Donaldson writes, Hemingway advanced the Republican cause in his dispatches by eliciting “the deepest possible feelings of horror and of sympathy for the victims” of the Madrid bombardment; his “undue optimism” often “ignored Loyalist defeats and exaggerated the importance of its victories”; and “he repeatedly called attention to the participation of Italians and Germans on Franco’s side.”{{sfn\|Donaldson\|2009\|p=426}} It also served as a recruitment tool—Milton Wolff, for example, acknowledged the strong influence Hemingway’s dispatches had on his decision to volunteer. Nevertheless, I think it a worthwhile exercise to attend a little more studiously to Hemingway’s dispatches, their context, and their artistry. I don’t necessarily intend to reverse the general opinion of the correspondence, only to achieve a better and more sympathetic understanding.		Such criticisms in the final analysis might bear out. As Scott Donaldson writes, Hemingway advanced the Republican cause in his dispatches by eliciting “the deepest possible feelings of horror and of sympathy for the victims” of the Madrid bombardment; his “undue optimism” often “ignored Loyalist defeats and exaggerated the importance of its victories”; and “he repeatedly called attention to the participation of Italians and Germans on Franco’s side.”{{sfn\|Donaldson\|2009\|p=426}} It also served as a recruitment tool—Milton Wolff, for example, acknowledged the strong influence Hemingway’s dispatches had on his decision to volunteer. Nevertheless, I think it a worthwhile exercise to attend a little more studiously to Hemingway’s dispatches, their context, and their artistry. I don’t necessarily intend to reverse the general opinion of the correspondence, only to achieve a better and more sympathetic understanding.
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	to fulfill expectations. NANA approached him, after all, for his name		to fulfill expectations. NANA approached him, after all, for his name
	and personality as much as whatever he would write. Before he even left the		and personality as much as whatever he would write. Before he even left the
	states it pitched him to potential publications, sending out a promotional release		states it pitched him to potential publications, sending out a promotional release with text to be used alongside his forthcoming dispatches and suggesting
	with text to be used alongside his forthcoming dispatches and suggesting		they include a photograph: “Mr. Hemingway’s assignment is to get both from the bombed towns and bombed trenches the human story of the war, not just an account of the game being played by general staffs with pins
	they include a photograph: “Mr. Hemingway’s assignment is to get		and a map.”{{sfn\|NANA\|1937\|p=Hemingway}}{{ NANA also released each individual dispatch with a one-sentence “precede” about the “famous” or “noted” author. Ernest Hemingway was not writing as Herbert Mathews, ace reporter; Hemingway was writing as Ernest Hemingway, famous author of novels and stories well known to be drawn from his own experiences.
	both from the bombed towns and bombed trenches the human story of the
	war, not just an account of the game being played by general staffs with pins
	and a map.”{{sfn\|NANA\|1937\|p=Hemingway}}{{ NANA also released each individual dispatch with a one-sentence “precede” about the “famous” or “noted” author. Ernest Hemingway was not writing as Herbert Mathews, ace reporter;
	Hemingway was writing as Ernest Hemingway, famous author of novels and
	stories well known to be drawn from his own experiences.

	That he understood this to be his assignment is further evidenced by a		That he understood this to be his assignment is further evidenced by a
	cable Matthews sent to his Times editors on April 9, 1937, concerning the		cable Matthews sent to his Times editors on April 9, 1937, concerning the
	Loyalist attack: “WORKED CONJOINTL WITH HEMINGWAY TODAY HE SENDING EYEWITNESS DESCRIPTION WHILE EYE SENT GENERAL STRATEGY.”{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=April}} When a year later the Times asked NANA to ensure Hemingway’s reports differed from Matthews, NANA complied by asking Hemingway “to emphasize color rather than straight reporting” not necessarily out of dissatisfaction with Hemingway’s reportage as Baker contends,{{efn\|Baker’s notes date the Times request to NANA as 8 Apr. 1938, and NANA’s to Hemingway as 15		Loyalist attack: “WORKED CONJOINTL WITH HEMINGWAY TODAY HE SENDING EYEWITNESS DESCRIPTION WHILE EYE SENT GENERAL STRATEGY.”{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=April}} When a year later the Times asked NANA to ensure Hemingway’s reports differed from Matthews, NANA complied by asking Hemingway “to emphasize color rather than straight reporting” not necessarily out of dissatisfaction with Hemingway’s reportage as Baker contends,{{efn\|Baker’s notes date the Times request to NANA as 8 Apr. 1938, and NANA’s to Hemingway as 15
	Apr. 1938 (Princeton University, Firestone Library: Box 18, Folder 8 “1938”), the date of “The		Apr. 1938 (Princeton University, Firestone Library: Box 18, Folder 8 “1938”), the date of “The Bombing of Tortosa” dispatch.}} but to increase{{pg\|431\|432}}the chance of selling to the Times and indeed to ensure the spirit of NANA’s original arrangement with Hemingway. {{sfn\|Baker\|1969\|p=329}}
	Bombing of Tortosa” dispatch.}} but to increase{{pg\|431\|432}}the chance of selling to the Times and indeed to ensure the spirit of NANA’s original arrangement with Hemingway. {{sfn\|Baker\|1969\|p=329}}

MerAtticus: added in text

2025-04-15T12:26:00Z

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			THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR BEGAN ON 17–18 JULY, 1936 as a rebellion of generals against the Republic’s electorally-restored left-leaning government. Hemingway held a deep love for Spain dating from his trips to the bullfights in the early 1920s. He finally made it to the war-torn country in March of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), to assess the situation in his role as chairman of the ambulance corps committee of the pro-Republican American Friends of Spanish Democracy, to collaborate with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens on the pro-Republican documentary The Spanish Earth, and to pursue his fledgling love affair with Martha Gellhorn.
			By war’s end in April 1939, Hemingway would make four trips to Spain and write thirty-one dispatches for NANA.{{sfn\|Baker\|1988\|p=}}{{efn\| Quotations from the NANA dispatches follow the Diplomatic Text established by William Braasch Watson’s “Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War Dispatches.” I prefer NANA’s titles rather than Watson’s. For my disagreements with some of Watson’s datings, see my comments on specific dispatches in Hemingway’s Second War. The secondary sources habitually judge them inferior journalism. Carlos Baker in the first Hemingway biography, for example, complains that the dialogue was “so heavily stamped with personal mannerisms as to be of doubtful authenticity.” Baker sees a “curious monotony in his stories of battles and bombardments,” a gratuitous use of graphic imagery “to shock his readers,” and “a note of triumphant boastfulness” in reporting proximity to danger. He also faults Hemingway for “often hint[ing] he was alone when in fact he was usually with Martha Gellhorn, Matthews, and Delmer.” Hemingway lacked Dos Passos’ “eye for telling details” and the “meticulous exactitude and inclusiveness that characterized the best work of Herbert Matthews and Sefton Delmer.”{{sfn\|Baker\|1969\|p=329}} Philip Knightley’s The First Casualty, the standard history of war correspondence, paraphrases Baker but with a trouncing final judgment: {{pg\|427\|428}}Hemingway’s “performance as a war correspondent was abysmally bad.” But Knightley goes beyond “technical” dissatisfaction to moral condemnation. Not just “unjustifiably optimistic”—an excusable offense—Hemingway’s reporting was “unforgivable” in its “total failure to report the Communist persecution,
			imprisonment, and summary execution of ‘untrustworthy elements’ on the Republican side, when he knew this was happening and when disclosing it might well have prevented further horrors like this.”
			{{sfn\|Knightley\|2004 \|pp=231–32}}{{efn\|In my view, Knightley does not sufficiently acknowledge his paraphrasing of Baker.}}


			Such criticisms in the final analysis might bear out. As Scott Donaldson writes, Hemingway advanced the Republican cause in his dispatches by eliciting “the deepest possible feelings of horror and of sympathy for the victims” of the Madrid bombardment; his “undue optimism” often “ignored Loyalist defeats and exaggerated the importance of its victories”; and “he repeatedly called attention to the participation of Italians and Germans on Franco’s side.”{{sfn\|Donaldson\|2009\|p=426}} It also served as a recruitment tool—Milton Wolff, for example, acknowledged the strong influence Hemingway’s dispatches had on his decision to volunteer. Nevertheless, I think it a worthwhile exercise to attend a little more studiously to Hemingway’s dispatches, their context, and their artistry. I don’t necessarily intend to reverse the general opinion of the correspondence, only to achieve a better and more sympathetic understanding.

			Herbert Matthews’ reporting for the New York Times will serve as a convenient comparison for two reasons. First, because both Baker and Knightley use Matthews’ journalism as the standard of excellence to pass judgment on Hemingway’s; and second, because the two worked practically side-by-side, seeing and reporting on many of the same events. In fact so closely did they work together that NANA sometimes complained that the Times was not buying Hemingway’s pieces because they resembled Matthews,’ and at one point Matthews’ own editors at the Times suspected him of plagiarizing Hemingway.{{sfn\|Donaldson\|2009\|pp=411, 420}} A note from Matthews’ assigned editor Raymond McCaw provides, in two columns, seven quite similar passages from Hemingway’s Aragon front dispatches of September 13 and 14 with Matthews’ of September 14, with a penciled note at the bottom: “a deadly parallel if you ask me.”{{sfn\|McCaw\|1937\|p=Note}} Edwin James, the managing editor and McCaw’s boss, eventually agreed with Matthews’ defense: “It is quite apparent that you did not file any duplicate of the Hemingway story, or vice versa. As I understand it, the similarity arose from the fact that you{{pg\|428\|429}}both went to see the same show and saw it at the same time [sic], under the same conditions.”{{sfn\|James\|1937\|p=Herbert}}

			Matthews’ dispatches ring of Republican bias as much if not more than anything Hemingway ever filed. The Times received many letters to the editor complaining about Matthews’ undisguised politics, which also gave serious concern to some of his editors. His description of the Republican May 1937 infighting in Barcelona is a striking example of how his news veered into propaganda and shows just how much he passed along the government’s version of events. The government’s “BLOODLESS TRIUMPH FOUGHT WITH RECOGNIZEDWEAPONS OF DEMOCRACY” turned out to be blatantly false, as the government and the “COMMUNISTS [WHO] DISTINGUISHED THEMSELVES” resorted to violent suppression. His blaming the uprising on the anarchist CNT working as Franco operatives parrots the government’s and the communist party’s public position, even though both charges—that the anarchists precipitated the events and that they were under Nationalist direction—were also false. His dispatch’s optimistic close also equivocates the political reality: “NEW GOVERNMENT HAS TAKEN POWER WHICH APPEARS TOVE CONFIDENCE VAST MAJORITY SPANIARDS IN LOYALIST TERRITORY AND TIS HOPED WILL GAIN EQUAL CONFIDENCE ABROAD STOP VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION BEEN REPUDIATED AND NEWAND FAR HOPEFULLER PERIOD SEEMS BEGINNING.”{{sfn\|McCaw\|1937\|p=May}}
			The Times, knowing full well the one-sided coverage of a correspondent writing from one side of the conflict, had a reporter on both sides: Matthews with the Republicans, and William Carney with the Nationalists. They got their facts right (or wrong) as often as the other, their editors concluded; and they inspired about the same number of letters of complaint.{{sfn\|James\|1937\|p=Bertrand}}{sfn\|James\|1939\|p=Tenney}}

			Furthermore, Matthews’ dispatches received a great deal of substantive editorial revisions. One of Matthews’ Teruel reports had to be cut for length, as McCaw informed James: “This bird sent 2844 words on the same facts which Hemingway covered much better in less than half that number. I wonder if Matthews thinks the paper is thriving, and that cable tolls do not matter a damn. Of course, it had to be cut for space anyway.” McCaw most likely refers here to Matthews’ dispatch corresponding to Hemingway’s “The Attack on Teruel,” though Matthews’ account of the fall of Teruel is also much longer (and more long-winded) than Hemingway’s, and just as personal in terms of describing the dangers{{pg\|429\|430}} he faced. Indeed its length allows him to share even more of the action he endured.{{sfn\|McCaw\|1937\|p=December}}


			Raymond McCaw held a general professional disagreement with Matthews perhaps tainted with over zealousness. Whether a personal or political motive informed that disagreement can’t be determined from the evidence I’ve seen. It is also clear that McCaw’s charges bear some validity—that any responsible editor could have easily and reasonably taken issue where McCaw did. One of the more interesting examples concerns Matthews’ piece on Guadalajara. Because he only saw evidence on Franco’s side of Italian forces, he only reported on Italians. But the Times editors heard from other sources that German soldiers also participated in the March offensive. They thought it prudent, from this confusion, to change (nine times) “Italian” to “Rebel,” “the foe,” or “Insurgent.” When Matthews saw the published piece he wrote a strenuous objection. In some instances the editors changed paraphrased quotations from his sources. One large paragraph omitted by the editors stressed the first-hand nature of the information, and Matthews underlines the key words: “All day, at every place we stopped and no matter whom we talked to or what we saw, there was only one label—Italian. The dead bodies, the prisoners, the material of every kind, the men who had occupied Brihuega and then fled were Italian and nothing but Italian.” Here and elsewhere in his original story, Matthews emphasizes the “personal knowledge” of its information.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=April}}{{efn\|James supported McCaw on these changes, though later acknowledged that altering quoted sources was perhaps unwarranted.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=Herbert}}}} Yet Matthews did not report on the foreigners fighting for the Republic—it was in fact the Italian Garibali Battalion that routed Franco’s Italians. We might surmise government censorship behind this silence, though Matthews would not cable news of “CENSORSHIP STRICTER” and “BAN ON MENTIONING INTERNATIONALS INCLUDING AMERICANS INSTITUTED TODAY” until July.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=July}} Perhaps he cautiously self-censored, or politically self-censored for the same reasons the government would eventually ban mention. Still, his stridency about the omission of foreigners on one side is striking given his knowledge of their contribution to the other side. For this reason too, and his omission of other nationalities on the insurgent side, it seemed only fair to his editor “to stand on the statement that the majority of the Rebels were Italians and let it go at that.”{{sfn\|James\|1937\|p=Sulzberger}} A reasonable decision.

	Throughout his correspondence to his editors and his several books,{{pg\|430\|431}}Matthews maintained a passionate defense of his eyewitness journalistic standard, a position those close to him understood. “Matthews never believed anything he had not seen with his own eyes,” Joris Ivens wrote. “He never saw his job as reporter as one that permitted him to sit in his hotel and read the handouts of the War Ministry.” {{sfn\|Ivens\|1969\|p=112 Sidney Franklin recalls that some writers wrote their pieces before arriving in Madrid, and came only for the “legitimacy” of the Madrid dateline.{{sfn\|Franklin\|1952\|p=232}} And Matthews hated, on principle, having his name attached to an article that violated the integrity of his witness. The only way to achieve objectivity, for Matthews, was to acknowledge one’s subjective perspective. Writing to his publisher, Matthews argued that “the full documentary value” of his coverage was lost when the editors altered his submissions for “the apparent necessity of giving more or less equal space to both sides.”{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=Sulzberger}}		Throughout his correspondence to his editors and his several books,{{pg\|430\|431}}Matthews maintained a passionate defense of his eyewitness journalistic standard, a position those close to him understood. “Matthews never believed anything he had not seen with his own eyes,” Joris Ivens wrote. “He never saw his job as reporter as one that permitted him to sit in his hotel and read the handouts of the War Ministry.” {{sfn\|Ivens\|1969\|p=112 Sidney Franklin recalls that some writers wrote their pieces before arriving in Madrid, and came only for the “legitimacy” of the Madrid dateline.{{sfn\|Franklin\|1952\|p=232}} And Matthews hated, on principle, having his name attached to an article that violated the integrity of his witness. The only way to achieve objectivity, for Matthews, was to acknowledge one’s subjective perspective. Writing to his publisher, Matthews argued that “the full documentary value” of his coverage was lost when the editors altered his submissions for “the apparent necessity of giving more or less equal space to both sides.”{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=Sulzberger}}

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2025-04-15T12:25:12Z

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MerAtticus: deleted info

2025-04-15T11:50:43Z

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	THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR BEGAN ON 17–18 JULY, 1936 as a rebellion of generals against the Republic’s electorally-restored left-leaning government. Hemingway held a deep love for Spain dating from his trips to the bullfights in the early 1920s. He finally made it to the war-torn country in March of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), to assess the situation in his role as chairman of the ambulance corps committee of the pro-Republican American Friends of Spanish Democracy, to collaborate with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens on the pro-Republican documentary The Spanish Earth, and to pursue his fledgling love affair with Martha Gellhorn.
	By war’s end in April 1939, Hemingway would make four trips to Spain and write thirty-one dispatches for NANA.{{sfn\|Baker\|1988\|p=}}{{efn\| Quotations from the NANA dispatches follow the Diplomatic Text established by William Braasch Watson’s “Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War Dispatches.” I prefer NANA’s titles rather than Watson’s. For my disagreements with some of Watson’s datings, see my comments on specific dispatches in Hemingway’s Second War. The secondary sources habitually judge them inferior journalism. Carlos Baker in the first Hemingway biography, for example, complains that the dialogue was “so heavily stamped with personal mannerisms as to be of doubtful authenticity.” Baker sees a “curious monotony in his stories of battles and bombardments,” a gratuitous use of graphic imagery “to shock his readers,” and “a note of triumphant boastfulness” in reporting proximity to danger. He also faults Hemingway for “often hint[ing] he was alone when in fact he was usually with Martha Gellhorn, Matthews, and Delmer.” Hemingway lacked Dos Passos’ “eye for telling details” and the “meticulous exactitude and inclusiveness that characterized the best work of Herbert Matthews and Sefton Delmer.”{{sfn\|Baker\|1969\|p=329}} Philip Knightley’s The First Casualty, the standard history of war correspondence, paraphrases Baker but with a trouncing final judgment: {{pg\|427\|428}}Hemingway’s “performance as a war correspondent was abysmally bad.” But Knightley goes beyond “technical” dissatisfaction to moral condemnation. Not just “unjustifiably optimistic”—an excusable offense—Hemingway’s reporting was “unforgivable” in its “total failure to report the Communist persecution,
	imprisonment, and summary execution of ‘untrustworthy elements’ on the Republican side, when he knew this was happening and when disclosing it might well have prevented further horrors like this.”
	~~{{sfn\|Knightley\|2004 \|pp=231–32}}{{efn\|In my view, Knightley does not sufficiently acknowledge his paraphrasing of Baker.}}~~


	Such criticisms in the final analysis might bear out. As Scott Donaldson writes, Hemingway advanced the Republican cause in his dispatches by eliciting “the deepest possible feelings of horror and of sympathy for the victims” of the Madrid bombardment; his “undue optimism” often “ignored Loyalist defeats and exaggerated the importance of its victories”; and “he repeatedly called attention to the participation of Italians and Germans on Franco’s side.”{{sfn\|Donaldson\|2009\|p=426}} It also served as a recruitment tool—Milton Wolff, for example, acknowledged the strong influence Hemingway’s dispatches had on his decision to volunteer. Nevertheless, I think it a worthwhile exercise to attend a little more studiously to Hemingway’s dispatches, their context, and their artistry. I don’t necessarily intend to reverse the general opinion of the correspondence, only to achieve a better and more sympathetic understanding.

	Herbert Matthews’ reporting for the New York Times will serve as a convenient comparison for two reasons. First, because both Baker and Knightley use Matthews’ journalism as the standard of excellence to pass judgment on Hemingway’s; and second, because the two worked practically side-by-side, seeing and reporting on many of the same events. In fact so closely did they work together that NANA sometimes complained that the Times was not buying Hemingway’s pieces because they resembled Matthews,’ and at one point Matthews’ own editors at the Times suspected him of plagiarizing Hemingway.{{sfn\|Donaldson\|2009\|pp=411, 420}} A note from Matthews’ assigned editor Raymond McCaw provides, in two columns, seven quite similar passages from Hemingway’s Aragon front dispatches of September 13 and 14 with Matthews’ of September 14, with a penciled note at the bottom: “a deadly parallel if you ask me.”{{sfn\|McCaw\|1937\|p=Note}} Edwin James, the managing editor and McCaw’s boss, eventually agreed with Matthews’ defense: “It is quite apparent that you did not file any duplicate of the Hemingway story, or vice versa. As I understand it, the similarity arose from the fact that you{{pg\|428\|429}}both went to see the same show and saw it at the same time [sic], under the same conditions.”{{sfn\|James\|1937\|p=Herbert}}

	Matthews’ dispatches ring of Republican bias as much if not more than anything Hemingway ever filed. The Times received many letters to the editor complaining about Matthews’ undisguised politics, which also gave serious concern to some of his editors. His description of the Republican May 1937 infighting in Barcelona is a striking example of how his news veered into propaganda and shows just how much he passed along the government’s version of events. The government’s “BLOODLESS TRIUMPH FOUGHT WITH RECOGNIZEDWEAPONS OF DEMOCRACY” turned out to be blatantly false, as the government and the “COMMUNISTS [WHO] DISTINGUISHED THEMSELVES” resorted to violent suppression. His blaming the uprising on the anarchist CNT working as Franco operatives parrots the government’s and the communist party’s public position, even though both charges—that the anarchists precipitated the events and that they were under Nationalist direction—were also false. His dispatch’s optimistic close also equivocates the political reality: “NEW GOVERNMENT HAS TAKEN POWER WHICH APPEARS TOVE CONFIDENCE VAST MAJORITY SPANIARDS IN LOYALIST TERRITORY AND TIS HOPED WILL GAIN EQUAL CONFIDENCE ABROAD STOP VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION BEEN REPUDIATED AND NEWAND FAR HOPEFULLER PERIOD SEEMS BEGINNING.”{{sfn\|McCaw\|1937\|p=May}}
	The Times, knowing full well the one-sided coverage of a correspondent writing from one side of the conflict, had a reporter on both sides: Matthews with the Republicans, and William Carney with the Nationalists. They got their facts right (or wrong) as often as the other, their editors concluded; and they inspired about the same number of letters of complaint.{{sfn\|James\|1937\|p=Bertrand}}{sfn\|James\|1939\|p=Tenney}}

	Furthermore, Matthews’ dispatches received a great deal of substantive editorial revisions. One of Matthews’ Teruel reports had to be cut for length, as McCaw informed James: “This bird sent 2844 words on the same facts which Hemingway covered much better in less than half that number. I wonder if Matthews thinks the paper is thriving, and that cable tolls do not matter a damn. Of course, it had to be cut for space anyway.” McCaw most likely refers here to Matthews’ dispatch corresponding to Hemingway’s “The Attack on Teruel,” though Matthews’ account of the fall of Teruel is also much longer (and more long-winded) than Hemingway’s, and just as personal in terms of describing the dangers{{pg\|429\|430}} he faced. Indeed its length allows him to share even more of the action he endured.{{sfn\|McCaw\|1937\|p=December}}


	Raymond McCaw held a general professional disagreement with Matthews perhaps tainted with over zealousness. Whether a personal or political motive informed that disagreement can’t be determined from the evidence I’ve seen. It is also clear that McCaw’s charges bear some validity—that any responsible editor could have easily and reasonably taken issue where McCaw did. One of the more interesting examples concerns Matthews’ piece on Guadalajara. Because he only saw evidence on Franco’s side of Italian forces, he only reported on Italians. But the Times editors heard from other sources that German soldiers also participated in the March offensive. They thought it prudent, from this confusion, to change (nine times) “Italian” to “Rebel,” “the foe,” or “Insurgent.” When Matthews saw the published piece he wrote a strenuous objection. In some instances the editors changed paraphrased quotations from his sources. One large paragraph omitted by the editors stressed the first-hand nature of the information, and Matthews underlines the key words: “All day, at every place we stopped and no matter whom we talked to or what we saw, there was only one label—Italian. The dead bodies, the prisoners, the material of every kind, the men who had occupied Brihuega and then fled were Italian and nothing but Italian.” Here and elsewhere in his original story, Matthews emphasizes the “personal knowledge” of its information.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=April}}{{efn\|James supported McCaw on these changes, though later acknowledged that altering quoted sources was perhaps unwarranted.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=Herbert}}}} Yet Matthews did not report on the foreigners fighting for the Republic—it was in fact the Italian Garibali Battalion that routed Franco’s Italians. We might surmise government censorship behind this silence, though Matthews would not cable news of “CENSORSHIP STRICTER” and “BAN ON MENTIONING INTERNATIONALS INCLUDING AMERICANS INSTITUTED TODAY” until July.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=July}} Perhaps he cautiously self-censored, or politically self-censored for the same reasons the government would eventually ban mention. Still, his stridency about the omission of foreigners on one side is striking given his knowledge of their contribution to the other side. For this reason too, and his omission of other nationalities on the insurgent side, it seemed only fair to his editor “to stand on the statement that the majority of the Rebels were Italians and let it go at that.”{{sfn\|James\|1937\|p=Sulzberger}} A reasonable decision.

	Throughout his correspondence to his editors and his several books,{{pg\|430\|431}}Matthews maintained a passionate defense of his eyewitness journalistic standard, a position those close to him understood. “Matthews never believed anything he had not seen with his own eyes,” Joris Ivens wrote. “He never saw his job as reporter as one that permitted him to sit in his hotel and read the handouts of the War Ministry.” {{sfn\|Ivens\|1969\|p=112 Sidney Franklin recalls that some writers wrote their pieces before arriving in Madrid, and came only for the “legitimacy” of the Madrid dateline.{{sfn\|Franklin\|1952\|p=232}} And Matthews hated, on principle, having his name attached to an article that violated the integrity of his witness. The only way to achieve objectivity, for Matthews, was to acknowledge one’s subjective perspective. Writing to his publisher, Matthews argued that “the full documentary value” of his coverage was lost when the editors altered his submissions for “the apparent necessity of giving more or less equal space to both sides.”{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=Sulzberger}}

	~~As with Matthews, so too Hemingway. Indeed the commitment to subjectivity~~
	~~fit quite well with Hemingway’s modernist aesthetics. If Hemingway~~
	~~focused the dispatches on his perspective—on his own experience dodging~~
	~~artillery—more than Matthews and more than most, he did so at least partially~~
	~~to fulfill expectations. NANA approached him, after all, for his name~~
	~~and personality as much as whatever he would write. Before he even left the~~
	~~states it pitched him to potential publications, sending out a promotional release~~
	~~with text to be used alongside his forthcoming dispatches and suggesting~~
	~~they include a photograph: “Mr. Hemingway’s assignment is to get~~
	~~both from the bombed towns and bombed trenches the human story of the~~
	~~war, not just an account of the game being played by general staffs with pins~~
	and a map.”{{sfn\|NANA\|1937\|p=Hemingway}}{{ NANA also released each individual dispatch with a one-sentence “precede” about the “famous” or “noted” author. Ernest Hemingway was not writing as Herbert Mathews, ace reporter;
	~~Hemingway was writing as Ernest Hemingway, famous author of novels and~~
	~~stories well known to be drawn from his own experiences.~~

	~~That he understood this to be his assignment is further evidenced by a~~
	~~cable Matthews sent to his Times editors on April 9, 1937, concerning the~~
	Loyalist attack: “WORKED CONJOINTL WITH HEMINGWAY TODAY HE SENDING EYEWITNESS DESCRIPTION WHILE EYE SENT GENERAL STRATEGY.”{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=April}} When a year later the Times asked NANA to ensure Hemingway’s reports differed from Matthews, NANA complied by asking Hemingway “to emphasize color rather than straight reporting” not necessarily out of dissatisfaction with Hemingway’s reportage as Baker contends,{{efn\|Baker’s notes date the Times request to NANA as 8 Apr. 1938, and NANA’s to Hemingway as 15
	~~Apr. 1938 (Princeton University, Firestone Library: Box 18, Folder 8 “1938”), the date of “The~~
	Bombing of Tortosa” dispatch.}} but to increase{{pg\|431\|432}}the chance of selling to the Times and indeed to ensure the spirit of NANA’s original arrangement with Hemingway. {{sfn\|Baker\|1969\|p=329}}

	===Naked and the dead===		===Naked and the dead===

MerAtticus: Naked and dead pasted in

2025-04-14T23:48:34Z

Naked and dead pasted in

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added page 430 to start of 432

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	Raymond McCaw held a general professional disagreement with Matthews perhaps tainted with over zealousness. Whether a personal or political motive informed that disagreement can’t be determined from the evidence I’ve seen. It is also clear that McCaw’s charges bear some validity—that any responsible editor could have easily and reasonably taken issue where McCaw did. One of the more interesting examples concerns Matthews’ piece on Guadalajara. Because he only saw evidence on Franco’s side of Italian forces, he only reported on Italians. But the Times editors heard from other sources that German soldiers also participated in the March offensive. They thought it prudent, from this confusion, to change (nine times) “Italian” to “Rebel,” “the foe,” or “Insurgent.” When Matthews saw the published piece he wrote a strenuous objection. In some instances the editors changed paraphrased quotations from his sources. One large paragraph omitted by the editors stressed the first-hand nature of the information, and Matthews underlines the key words: “All day, at every place we stopped and no matter whom we talked to or what we saw, there was only one label—Italian. The dead bodies, the prisoners, the material of every kind, the men who had occupied Brihuega and then fled were Italian and nothing but Italian.” Here and elsewhere in his original story, Matthews emphasizes the “personal knowledge” of its information.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=April}}{{efn\|James supported McCaw on these changes, though later acknowledged that altering quoted sources was perhaps unwarranted.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=Herbert}}}} Yet Matthews did not report on the foreigners fighting for the Republic—it was in fact the Italian Garibali Battalion that routed Franco’s Italians. We might surmise government censorship behind this silence, though Matthews would not cable news of “CENSORSHIP STRICTER” and “BAN ON MENTIONING INTERNATIONALS INCLUDING AMERICANS INSTITUTED TODAY” until July.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=July}} Perhaps he cautiously self-censored, or politically self-censored for the same reasons the government would eventually ban mention. Still, his stridency about the omission of foreigners on one side is striking given his knowledge of their contribution to the other side. For this reason too, and his omission of other nationalities on the insurgent side, it seemed only fair to his editor “to stand on the statement that the majority of the Rebels were Italians and let it go at that.”{{sfn\|James\|1937\|p=Sulzberger}} A reasonable decision.		Raymond McCaw held a general professional disagreement with Matthews perhaps tainted with over zealousness. Whether a personal or political motive informed that disagreement can’t be determined from the evidence I’ve seen. It is also clear that McCaw’s charges bear some validity—that any responsible editor could have easily and reasonably taken issue where McCaw did. One of the more interesting examples concerns Matthews’ piece on Guadalajara. Because he only saw evidence on Franco’s side of Italian forces, he only reported on Italians. But the Times editors heard from other sources that German soldiers also participated in the March offensive. They thought it prudent, from this confusion, to change (nine times) “Italian” to “Rebel,” “the foe,” or “Insurgent.” When Matthews saw the published piece he wrote a strenuous objection. In some instances the editors changed paraphrased quotations from his sources. One large paragraph omitted by the editors stressed the first-hand nature of the information, and Matthews underlines the key words: “All day, at every place we stopped and no matter whom we talked to or what we saw, there was only one label—Italian. The dead bodies, the prisoners, the material of every kind, the men who had occupied Brihuega and then fled were Italian and nothing but Italian.” Here and elsewhere in his original story, Matthews emphasizes the “personal knowledge” of its information.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=April}}{{efn\|James supported McCaw on these changes, though later acknowledged that altering quoted sources was perhaps unwarranted.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=Herbert}}}} Yet Matthews did not report on the foreigners fighting for the Republic—it was in fact the Italian Garibali Battalion that routed Franco’s Italians. We might surmise government censorship behind this silence, though Matthews would not cable news of “CENSORSHIP STRICTER” and “BAN ON MENTIONING INTERNATIONALS INCLUDING AMERICANS INSTITUTED TODAY” until July.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=July}} Perhaps he cautiously self-censored, or politically self-censored for the same reasons the government would eventually ban mention. Still, his stridency about the omission of foreigners on one side is striking given his knowledge of their contribution to the other side. For this reason too, and his omission of other nationalities on the insurgent side, it seemed only fair to his editor “to stand on the statement that the majority of the Rebels were Italians and let it go at that.”{{sfn\|James\|1937\|p=Sulzberger}} A reasonable decision.

			Throughout his correspondence to his editors and his several books,{{pg\|430\|431}}Matthews maintained a passionate defense of his eyewitness journalistic standard, a position those close to him understood. “Matthews never believed anything he had not seen with his own eyes,” Joris Ivens wrote. “He never saw his job as reporter as one that permitted him to sit in his hotel and read the handouts of the War Ministry.” {{sfn\|Ivens\|1969\|p=112 Sidney Franklin recalls that some writers wrote their pieces before arriving in Madrid, and came only for the “legitimacy” of the Madrid dateline.{{sfn\|Franklin\|1952\|p=232}} And Matthews hated, on principle, having his name attached to an article that violated the integrity of his witness. The only way to achieve objectivity, for Matthews, was to acknowledge one’s subjective perspective. Writing to his publisher, Matthews argued that “the full documentary value” of his coverage was lost when the editors altered his submissions for “the apparent necessity of giving more or less equal space to both sides.”{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=Sulzberger}}

			As with Matthews, so too Hemingway. Indeed the commitment to subjectivity
			fit quite well with Hemingway’s modernist aesthetics. If Hemingway
			focused the dispatches on his perspective—on his own experience dodging
			artillery—more than Matthews and more than most, he did so at least partially
			to fulfill expectations. NANA approached him, after all, for his name
			and personality as much as whatever he would write. Before he even left the
			states it pitched him to potential publications, sending out a promotional release
			with text to be used alongside his forthcoming dispatches and suggesting
			they include a photograph: “Mr. Hemingway’s assignment is to get
			both from the bombed towns and bombed trenches the human story of the
			war, not just an account of the game being played by general staffs with pins
			and a map.”{{sfn\|NANA\|1937\|p=Hemingway}}{{ NANA also released each individual dispatch with a one-sentence “precede” about the “famous” or “noted” author. Ernest Hemingway was not writing as Herbert Mathews, ace reporter;
			Hemingway was writing as Ernest Hemingway, famous author of novels and
			stories well known to be drawn from his own experiences.

			That he understood this to be his assignment is further evidenced by a
			cable Matthews sent to his Times editors on April 9, 1937, concerning the
			Loyalist attack: “WORKED CONJOINTL WITH HEMINGWAY TODAY HE SENDING EYEWITNESS DESCRIPTION WHILE EYE SENT GENERAL STRATEGY.”{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=April}} When a year later the Times asked NANA to ensure Hemingway’s reports differed from Matthews, NANA complied by asking Hemingway “to emphasize color rather than straight reporting” not necessarily out of dissatisfaction with Hemingway’s reportage as Baker contends,{{efn\|Baker’s notes date the Times request to NANA as 8 Apr. 1938, and NANA’s to Hemingway as 15
			Apr. 1938 (Princeton University, Firestone Library: Box 18, Folder 8 “1938”), the date of “The
			Bombing of Tortosa” dispatch.}} but to increase{{pg\|431\|432}}the chance of selling to the Times and indeed to ensure the spirit of NANA’s original arrangement with Hemingway. {{sfn\|Baker\|1969\|p=329}}

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			THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR BEGAN ON 17–18 JULY, 1936 as a rebellion of generals against the Republic’s electorally-restored left-leaning government. Hemingway held a deep love for Spain dating from his trips to the bullfights in the early 1920s. He finally made it to the war-torn country in March of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), to assess the situation in his role as chairman of the ambulance corps committee of the pro-Republican American Friends of Spanish Democracy, to collaborate with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens on the pro-Republican documentary The Spanish Earth, and to pursue his fledgling love affair with Martha Gellhorn.
			By war’s end in April 1939, Hemingway would make four trips to Spain and write thirty-one dispatches for NANA.{{sfn\|Baker\|1988\|p=}}{{efn\| Quotations from the NANA dispatches follow the Diplomatic Text established by William Braasch Watson’s “Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War Dispatches.” I prefer NANA’s titles rather than Watson’s. For my disagreements with some of Watson’s datings, see my comments on specific dispatches in Hemingway’s Second War. The secondary sources habitually judge them inferior journalism. Carlos Baker in the first Hemingway biography, for example, complains that the dialogue was “so heavily stamped with personal mannerisms as to be of doubtful authenticity.” Baker sees a “curious monotony in his stories of battles and bombardments,” a gratuitous use of graphic imagery “to shock his readers,” and “a note of triumphant boastfulness” in reporting proximity to danger. He also faults Hemingway for “often hint[ing] he was alone when in fact he was usually with Martha Gellhorn, Matthews, and Delmer.” Hemingway lacked Dos Passos’ “eye for telling details” and the “meticulous exactitude and inclusiveness that characterized the best work of Herbert Matthews and Sefton Delmer.”{{sfn\|Baker\|1969\|p=329}} Philip Knightley’s The First Casualty, the standard history of war correspondence, paraphrases Baker but with a trouncing final judgment: {{pg\|427\|428}}Hemingway’s “performance as a war correspondent was abysmally bad.” But Knightley goes beyond “technical” dissatisfaction to moral condemnation. Not just “unjustifiably optimistic”—an excusable offense—Hemingway’s reporting was “unforgivable” in its “total failure to report the Communist persecution,
			imprisonment, and summary execution of ‘untrustworthy elements’ on the Republican side, when he knew this was happening and when disclosing it might well have prevented further horrors like this.”
			{{sfn\|Knightley\|2004 \|pp=231–32}}{{efn\|In my view, Knightley does not sufficiently acknowledge his paraphrasing of Baker.}}


			Such criticisms in the final analysis might bear out. As Scott Donaldson writes, Hemingway advanced the Republican cause in his dispatches by eliciting “the deepest possible feelings of horror and of sympathy for the victims” of the Madrid bombardment; his “undue optimism” often “ignored Loyalist defeats and exaggerated the importance of its victories”; and “he repeatedly called attention to the participation of Italians and Germans on Franco’s side.”{{sfn\|Donaldson\|2009\|p=426}} It also served as a recruitment tool—Milton Wolff, for example, acknowledged the strong influence Hemingway’s dispatches had on his decision to volunteer. Nevertheless, I think it a worthwhile exercise to attend a little more studiously to Hemingway’s dispatches, their context, and their artistry. I don’t necessarily intend to reverse the general opinion of the correspondence, only to achieve a better and more sympathetic understanding.

			Herbert Matthews’ reporting for the New York Times will serve as a convenient comparison for two reasons. First, because both Baker and Knightley use Matthews’ journalism as the standard of excellence to pass judgment on Hemingway’s; and second, because the two worked practically side-by-side, seeing and reporting on many of the same events. In fact so closely did they work together that NANA sometimes complained that the Times was not buying Hemingway’s pieces because they resembled Matthews,’ and at one point Matthews’ own editors at the Times suspected him of plagiarizing Hemingway.{{sfn\|Donaldson\|2009\|pp=411, 420}} A note from Matthews’ assigned editor Raymond McCaw provides, in two columns, seven quite similar passages from Hemingway’s Aragon front dispatches of September 13 and 14 with Matthews’ of September 14, with a penciled note at the bottom: “a deadly parallel if you ask me.”{{sfn\|McCaw\|1937\|p=Note}} Edwin James, the managing editor and McCaw’s boss, eventually agreed with Matthews’ defense: “It is quite apparent that you did not file any duplicate of the Hemingway story, or vice versa. As I understand it, the similarity arose from the fact that you{{pg\|428\|429}}both went to see the same show and saw it at the same time [sic], under the same conditions.”{{sfn\|James\|1937\|p=Herbert}}

			Matthews’ dispatches ring of Republican bias as much if not more than anything Hemingway ever filed. The Times received many letters to the editor complaining about Matthews’ undisguised politics, which also gave serious concern to some of his editors. His description of the Republican May 1937 infighting in Barcelona is a striking example of how his news veered into propaganda and shows just how much he passed along the government’s version of events. The government’s “BLOODLESS TRIUMPH FOUGHT WITH RECOGNIZEDWEAPONS OF DEMOCRACY” turned out to be blatantly false, as the government and the “COMMUNISTS [WHO] DISTINGUISHED THEMSELVES” resorted to violent suppression. His blaming the uprising on the anarchist CNT working as Franco operatives parrots the government’s and the communist party’s public position, even though both charges—that the anarchists precipitated the events and that they were under Nationalist direction—were also false. His dispatch’s optimistic close also equivocates the political reality: “NEW GOVERNMENT HAS TAKEN POWER WHICH APPEARS TOVE CONFIDENCE VAST MAJORITY SPANIARDS IN LOYALIST TERRITORY AND TIS HOPED WILL GAIN EQUAL CONFIDENCE ABROAD STOP VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION BEEN REPUDIATED AND NEWAND FAR HOPEFULLER PERIOD SEEMS BEGINNING.”{{sfn\|McCaw\|1937\|p=May}}
			The Times, knowing full well the one-sided coverage of a correspondent writing from one side of the conflict, had a reporter on both sides: Matthews with the Republicans, and William Carney with the Nationalists. They got their facts right (or wrong) as often as the other, their editors concluded; and they inspired about the same number of letters of complaint.{{sfn\|James\|1937\|p=Bertrand}}{sfn\|James\|1939\|p=Tenney}}

			Furthermore, Matthews’ dispatches received a great deal of substantive editorial revisions. One of Matthews’ Teruel reports had to be cut for length, as McCaw informed James: “This bird sent 2844 words on the same facts which Hemingway covered much better in less than half that number. I wonder if Matthews thinks the paper is thriving, and that cable tolls do not matter a damn. Of course, it had to be cut for space anyway.” McCaw most likely refers here to Matthews’ dispatch corresponding to Hemingway’s “The Attack on Teruel,” though Matthews’ account of the fall of Teruel is also much longer (and more long-winded) than Hemingway’s, and just as personal in terms of describing the dangers{{pg\|429\|430}} he faced. Indeed its length allows him to share even more of the action he endured.{{sfn\|McCaw\|1937\|p=December}}


			Raymond McCaw held a general professional disagreement with Matthews perhaps tainted with over zealousness. Whether a personal or political motive informed that disagreement can’t be determined from the evidence I’ve seen. It is also clear that McCaw’s charges bear some validity—that any responsible editor could have easily and reasonably taken issue where McCaw did. One of the more interesting examples concerns Matthews’ piece on Guadalajara. Because he only saw evidence on Franco’s side of Italian forces, he only reported on Italians. But the Times editors heard from other sources that German soldiers also participated in the March offensive. They thought it prudent, from this confusion, to change (nine times) “Italian” to “Rebel,” “the foe,” or “Insurgent.” When Matthews saw the published piece he wrote a strenuous objection. In some instances the editors changed paraphrased quotations from his sources. One large paragraph omitted by the editors stressed the first-hand nature of the information, and Matthews underlines the key words: “All day, at every place we stopped and no matter whom we talked to or what we saw, there was only one label—Italian. The dead bodies, the prisoners, the material of every kind, the men who had occupied Brihuega and then fled were Italian and nothing but Italian.” Here and elsewhere in his original story, Matthews emphasizes the “personal knowledge” of its information.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=April}}{{efn\|James supported McCaw on these changes, though later acknowledged that altering quoted sources was perhaps unwarranted.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=Herbert}}}} Yet Matthews did not report on the foreigners fighting for the Republic—it was in fact the Italian Garibali Battalion that routed Franco’s Italians. We might surmise government censorship behind this silence, though Matthews would not cable news of “CENSORSHIP STRICTER” and “BAN ON MENTIONING INTERNATIONALS INCLUDING AMERICANS INSTITUTED TODAY” until July.{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=July}} Perhaps he cautiously self-censored, or politically self-censored for the same reasons the government would eventually ban mention. Still, his stridency about the omission of foreigners on one side is striking given his knowledge of their contribution to the other side. For this reason too, and his omission of other nationalities on the insurgent side, it seemed only fair to his editor “to stand on the statement that the majority of the Rebels were Italians and let it go at that.”{{sfn\|James\|1937\|p=Sulzberger}} A reasonable decision.

	Throughout his correspondence to his editors and his several books,{{pg\|430\|431}}Matthews maintained a passionate defense of his eyewitness journalistic standard, a position those close to him understood. “Matthews never believed anything he had not seen with his own eyes,” Joris Ivens wrote. “He never saw his job as reporter as one that permitted him to sit in his hotel and read the handouts of the War Ministry.” {{sfn\|Ivens\|1969\|p=112 Sidney Franklin recalls that some writers wrote their pieces before arriving in Madrid, and came only for the “legitimacy” of the Madrid dateline.{{sfn\|Franklin\|1952\|p=232}} And Matthews hated, on principle, having his name attached to an article that violated the integrity of his witness. The only way to achieve objectivity, for Matthews, was to acknowledge one’s subjective perspective. Writing to his publisher, Matthews argued that “the full documentary value” of his coverage was lost when the editors altered his submissions for “the apparent necessity of giving more or less equal space to both sides.”{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=Sulzberger}}		Throughout his correspondence to his editors and his several books,{{pg\|430\|431}}Matthews maintained a passionate defense of his eyewitness journalistic standard, a position those close to him understood. “Matthews never believed anything he had not seen with his own eyes,” Joris Ivens wrote. “He never saw his job as reporter as one that permitted him to sit in his hotel and read the handouts of the War Ministry.” {{sfn\|Ivens\|1969\|p=112 Sidney Franklin recalls that some writers wrote their pieces before arriving in Madrid, and came only for the “legitimacy” of the Madrid dateline.{{sfn\|Franklin\|1952\|p=232}} And Matthews hated, on principle, having his name attached to an article that violated the integrity of his witness. The only way to achieve objectivity, for Matthews, was to acknowledge one’s subjective perspective. Writing to his publisher, Matthews argued that “the full documentary value” of his coverage was lost when the editors altered his submissions for “the apparent necessity of giving more or less equal space to both sides.”{{sfn\|Matthews\|1937\|p=Sulzberger}}