Edward Cecil-Smith was commander of Canada’s Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Other than his battle reports, that’s about all we’ve known. Oh, other than the gossipy (slanderous?) bit about him deserting his troops. It’s bare bones, one dimensional and some would say, unjust.
Tyler Wentzell’s biography, Not for King or Country, puts flesh on those bones, lays the gossip to rest with facts (leaving it for the reader to decide), and fills a void in the history of Canadians—known as Mac-Paps—who volunteered to fight in Spain’s civil war.
Not for King or Country: Edward Cecil-Smith, the Communist Party of Canada, and the Spanish Civil War by Tyler Wentzell.
Wentzell thought it important to approach Cecil-Smith’s biography with, as he puts it, “political agnosticism and detached historical sensibility,” effectively dispensing with the lens of the Cold War. What emerges is the absorbing story of a man who was both a Christian and a communist. Cecil-Smith’s religious convictions came from the social gospel, influenced by his missionary parents where he grew up in China.
The reconciliation of the two ideologies wasn’t easy for Cecil-Smith but after observing the negative effects of capitalism on society, he came to the view that “Jesus was a communist,” and joined the Communist Party of Canada. That mix of Christianity and communism gave him a degree of independence, and he was at odds with the party more than once.
Wentzell brings out Cecil-Smith’s role in the Communist Party of Canada leading up to, during, and after the Spanish Civil War. It’s a unique angle on 1930s communism in Canada. We learn that Cecil-Smith, a journalist and intellectual, saw the arts as a way to attract members of the working class to the communist party. In the early 1930s, he and like-minded others, established the Progressive Arts Club which included writers, poets, artists, and scholars.
Amongst his accomplishments, Cecil-Smith wrote a play called Eight Men Speak, based on the imprisonment of Canadian communist, Tim Buck, and seven other leaders of the CPC. It was staged one night only in Toronto before it was shut down by the RCMP; but 1500 people saw it that one night.
Cecil-Smith was also lead writer on a book about the Mac-Paps planned for 1939, but it was never finished. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that their story began to emerge when Mac Reynolds interviewed and audio recorded thirty-five surviving veterans of the Spanish Civil War, leading to the first book about the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion in 1969. That book, based largely on Reynolds’ interviews, was written by Victor Hoar. Edward Cecil-Smith was not amongst those interviewed because, by 1963, at age sixty, he was dead of a stroke.
And the reason Cecil-Smith never finished the book he started in 1939? Hoar said it was because the Second World War interrupted those plans and that’s been the story ever since. But amongst Wentzell’s primary sources is a note written by SCW veteran, Jim Higgins, that reveals why the book planned for 1939 was never written. Hint: it had nothing to do with the start of the war.
We learn there were fewer than fifty Canadians in Spain when Cecil-Smith reported for duty on March 7, 1937. Many more soon arrived (the final count was close to 1700, with 400 killed, as established by author Michael Petrou in 2008), and by late November, Cecil-Smith was appointed commander of the recently formed Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.
Wentzell has drawn on extensive primary and secondary sources, adding new details to the military history of the Spanish Civil War, especially officer training, the relationship between Americans and Canadians, and the battles of Brunete, Teruel, the Aragon Retreats and the Ebro Offensive.
In a roundabout way, Wentzell also addresses why Cecil-Smith has languished in the shadows, while Norman Bethune, the Canadian best known for bringing mobile blood-transfusion units to Spain’s front lines, is revered around the world.
In fact, Bethune and Cecil-Smith were friends, both were creative, unconventional and idealistic, and both were influential members of the Communist Party of Canada. (And both, it seems, vied for the affections of Lillian Gouge, the accomplished wife of Cecil-Smith.)
Edward Cecil-Smith deserves to emerge from those shadows and take his place in Canadian history and, indeed, in the larger history of the Spanish Civil War. Tyler Wentzell’s engaging book does the job remarkably well: It will appeal as much to historians demanding rigourous scholarship as it will to lay people looking for a great story.
Book Review by Janette Higgins
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Disclosure: I met Tyler Wentzell while working on Spanish Civil War veteran, Jim Higgins’s, autobiography/biography, Fighting for Democracy. In Wentzell’s endnotes, it is referred to by its working title, The Softest Rock. I purchased Tyler’s book at full price from an Indy bookstore
Fighting for Democracy: The True Story of Jim Higgins (1907-1982), A Canadian Activist in Spain’s Civil War can be ordered here.
Fighting for Democracy by Jim Higgins is the latest book about the Mac-Paps, Canadians in the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion, which was part of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Other books about Canadians in the Spanish Civil War include Not For King or Country by Tyler Wentzell (reviewed here), Mac-Pap by Ronald Liversedge with David Yorke and Renegades by Michael Petrou.
Interesting blog. I checked out the book on the link above, and there’s a fairly extensive sample to read. I found it intriguing and easy to follow, as a reader interested in the lives and times of that period in history. I think it is important to be aware of what happened in that inter-war period, and about the individuals who put their lives on the line for social justice.
Glad you clicked on the link, Susan! Yes, you can read up to page 39 using the “Look Inside” feature. I encourage others to do the same.