Orwell, Auden, Spain

Orwell praised Auden's Spain as "one of the few decent things that have been written about the Spanish war," but he objected strongly to the idea that those who intervened on the Republican side should have any "guilt in the necessary murder." After the combat injury, and after having to flee Spain for political reasons, he spent a lifetime speaking out for the socialist ideal; Auden revised and eventually renounced Spain, feeling it inferior as both politics and poetry.