Updating the Spanish Civil War

I relished your perceptive comments on the lack of objective writing about the Spanish Civil War. You mercifully omitted mention of the reporting of The New York Times’ Herbert Matthews, who raised some eyebrows with the seeming slant in his pieces . . . and subsequently vindicated his critics by developing a palpable vested emotional interest in the activities of Fidel Castro.

In “The Passionate War,” a book I reviewed in 1983 for your esteemed pages, Peter Wyden showed persuasively how, even with the benefit of hindsight, it was difficult to categorize either side in the Spanish conflict as the Good Guys or the Bad Guys.

Incidentally, I worked in a touch-and-go sort of way, alongside Hemingway in World War II, and it was generally accepted as fact among the press corps that some of his dispatches for Collier’s were so mushy they never saw print.

GLADWIN HILL

Los Angeles