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3 to greet the passer-by with the clenched fist of communism. They do not brandish the fist, - at least they did not when we were there. Theirs was a gesture of hope [?] and they smiled(?) as they made it. No rebellion against them and their cicumstances can succeed enduringly. Nature [?] forces them on. With good reason they have identified the church with the [emphasis] status quo [/emphasis] and that is why in Toledo they have resentfully renamed the Street of the Cardinal, between the cathedral and the episcopal palace, [emphasis] The Calle de Carlos Marx, [/emphasis] and why too latterly[?] they have sacked churches and killed priests and nuns. In Toledo we got a young man, a good linguist, to take us about. I asked him to have drinks with me in a cafe and after the first surprise he talked. A bitter creature he was and I learned much. Spain is compounded singularly, -the medieval, the renaissance and the baroque, almost untouched and even more [illegible] (No picture post-cards, worth the [illegible] of Leon cathedral, for example, and none whatever of exquisite San Vincente); The curty(?) life of the people going onward as for hundreds of years past, untouched by radio, sewing machine (seen in the shoddy
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-4ready-mader), or improvements on the sickle); and the new houses of the the [sic] towns, daring [?] and often [?] ill-chosen attempts of the modernistic, at [?] least [?] in decoration*. The W.C.s are all still Gothic [?]. *Seam this sentence if you can! We had three weeks altogether of Spain, save [?] plains [?], high green [?] [illegible] storks on ancient towers, songs in the night; and then with the luck of the naive, for no inkling had come to us - we got out a few days before the trouble began. Some of [illegible] friends, in San Sebastian a little later, had their car commandeered and were taken on a British warship with only the clothes they wore. It was that close. The trip up through France was a bore. We were suffused with experiences and our [illegible] in relation to further ones were far on the acid side. Only Chartres seemed worthwhile, and the evening with lobsters that Obrian gave [?] us at Premiers. No, come to think of it, there were some double starred restaurants on the way up - though the sight of Phoebe limiting herself to fried potatoes with opportunity spread before her was distinctly trying. In London, there would have been much to do before the Microbiological Congress had we chosen to do it. We just strotted or bussed, avoided sights
