THE SPANISH TRAGEDY AT THE BORDER OF THE PYRENEES The exodus of Spaniards to France has acquired such proportions that it is truly unimaginable. It is an entire people that invades: rich, poor, bourgeois, merchants, peasants, workers, public administrations, army, a hodgepodge of beasts, carts, cars, war material, everything that can be loaded onto carts, dragged or take off on his back. If it were possible to transport the houses, they would bring them right away from Spain... All of this is not a uniform mass moving in one direction. The horde advances along all the roads that come down from the mountains, blocking the border towns, camping in the fields, on the beaches, invading the towns. And yet, every day the trains take thousands of these refugees who are scattered in our departments.
****
Tens of thousands of refugees are flocking to our borders. Women, children, the elderly, healthy and wounded men, combatants and non-combatants come to us from all the mountain paths, and by all the roads, between Cerbère and Bourg-Madame. It is a wave, an avalanche. It has been necessary to displace the troops of an army corps, to contain, to repress this true invasion. Are we going to support women, children and the elderly? Are we going to intern and for how long the militiamen, assault guards and riflemen who have deserted their posts? Are we going to give asylum to thousands of undesirables, common criminals, whose hands are stained with innocent blood? These are the questions that our pitiful compatriots are already asking themselves, and that the next few hours will make even more distressing. Let us leave for today the causes of this exodus, of this flight, of this panic. They are politicians and they also bear the mark of Moscow. Now we are responsible for liquidating, but what then? We help the miserable, we feed the hungry, we cover the cold, we care for the wounded and the sick, and no one thinks of being surprised, everyone approves of this charitable and generous action; but after?
