April 27, 1943

Mr. Hemingway, it will be noted has been connected with various so-called communist front organizations and was active in aiding the loyalist cause in Spain. In the latter connection he spent sometime in Spain during the Spanish revolution and reported the events transpiring there for the North American Newspaper Alliance.Activities on Behalf of Loyalist SpainWhile in Spain, during the Spanish Revolution, Hemingway was said to have associated with Jay Allen, of the North American Newspaper Alliance. It has been alleged by a number of sources that Allen was a Communist and he is known to have been affiliated with alleged Communist Front organizations.

Hemingway apparently spent some time in a concentration camp in Spain.

A confidential informant who fought in the Spanish Civil War for the Loyalists, and who claimed to have been captured and placed in a concentration camp at San Pedros, Cardenas, Spain, stated that he met Ernest Hemingway while in this camp.

Ernest Hemingway has a piece coming out in Ken about a correspondent for a powerful British newspaper. Because it would be libelous in England to mention the man's name it isn't. It tells how this correspondent tried to send out an uncensored story about Loyalist terrorism - that the soldiers are wantonly shot dead by their own fellows, etc. *** Hemingway tried to tell the newcomer that such terror happened last year - not anymore. -- Nevertheless the man insisted on sending out the fabrication by a newspaper girl, who didn't know the contents of the sealed envelope. Had she been caught with it on her person, she would have been shot. The newspapermen there finally intercepted the envelope and destroyed it.

What I want to bring out here is that Ernest Hemingway, a courageous individual, whom I admire, and an able story teller, who had just gone to Spain, tried to talk upon political matters, which Ernest Hemingway does not understand, but has just been whitewashing Communist terror in Spain in the various articles he had written in the United States. He has here admitted that the communists have been spreading terror in Spain and shooting their fellow loyalists in the backs.

According to the February 4, 1939 issue of the Daily Record, seventy-eight of America's leading writers released an appeal on February 3, 1939 by Pearl Buck, Ernest Sutherland Bates and Earnest Hemingway, for the raising of the embargo which prevented the Spanish Republic from buying arms in the United States for its defense. An account of this also appeared in the Peoples' World on February 7, 1939.

A clipping reportedly from New York Times of September 21, 1941, was furnished by a confidential source. This clipping announced that a dinner forum on Europe would be held October 9, at the Hotel Biltmore in New York, under the auspices of the American Committee to Save Refugees, the Exile Committee of the League of American Writers, and the United American-Spanish Aid Committee to raise funds for the transportation of anti-Fascist refugees from French concentration camps to the Americas. This clipping stated that Lillian Hellman and Ernest Hemingway were co-chairmen of the dinner forum committee.

The above mentioned confidential source made the following remark concerning Lillian Hellman and Ernest Hemingway: "Lillian Hellman, who together with Ernest Hemingway is co-chairman, is an outright Communist. Hemingway who is on the cute with the Communists, apparently is serving as an innocent friend." This source also made the allegation that the above mentioned organizations were 100% Communist controlled and run.Abraham Lincoln Brigade"Our dead are a part of the earth of Spain now and the earth of Spain can never die, Hemingway explained. Each winter it will seem to die and each spring it will come alive again. Our dead will live with it forever....And as long as all our dead live in the Spanish earth, and they will live as long as the earth lives, no system of tyranny ever will prevail."


[John Gates] named such men as Louis Fischer, Ralph Bates, Vincent Sheean, and Ernest Hemingway. He referred especially to Fischer's autobiography which slanders the Spanish Communists and the Soviet Union, and Bates referred to speeches attacking the Communist party. Bates also reportedly stated that the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade must "boldly expose the partial war policies of the Roosevelt administration.

Hemingway characterized the new pact between France and Germany 'shameful' and added 'I think there is no doubt that Chamberlain can be called the No. 2 Fascist of Europe. Hitler is still no. 1, but Chamberlain can easily be ranked in second place.

"The Loyalists are holding up splendidly against the combined armies of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco, the report stated. However, they are badly in need of food, and supplies, and all democracies should come to their assistance." He had strong praise for the members of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, and called several of them by their first names. "However, the work of the International Brigade is done," Hemingway said. "The Loyalist army is now entirely Spanish, and what a wonderful military machine it is. Their courage is almost beyond belief."

The Habana Communist daily newspaper "Hoy" on April 25, 1943, carried an extensive attack against Ernest Hemingway, displayed under a four-column heavy title-line: "The Last Position of The Traitor Hemingway". This article, written by Raul Gonzales Tunon, labeled Hemingway's "For Whome the Bell Tolls" a book "so miserable, so slanderous, that it met with excellent reception among the Fascists, the Trotskyists and the Munichists". The article closes with the statement: "Here is the literate Hemingway, author of a slanderous book which is a rehash of others of his, this time directed against the Communist party and against the Spanish people. Here is the portrait of the revolutionary tourist. His destiny will be the destiny of all traitors, of all provocateurs who maneuver openly or in cover against the Communist party, against the people, against history. And against good literature."