Memorial to Spain

On April 13. 1980, a meeting was held at the College of the City of New York at which a plaque was unveiled to honor the students of CCNY who died fighting fascism in Spain. Among the speakers was Joseph P. Lash, class of 1931.

As one thinks back to the 1930s and to these men who were our classmates, some perhaps would wish to argue the justice of this faction, the cruelty of that, but somehow on this solemn occasion ideology seems to be hollow and one stands before this profound memory of young men in the prime of their manhood silently disappearing from the haunts of classroom and alcove to make their way along that underground railway that led through France, always on the run from the police, over the Pyrenees into Republican Spain to their final encounter with the enemy—and they knew who the enemy was. Those of us who came back now are some 45 years older. We have a more realistic sense of the hazards, the disappointments, the heartaches that confront any effort...