Cyril Connolly, From To-Day the Struggle, ‘New Statesman and Nation'

‘Spain’ is a hundred-line poem by Auden; it is good medium Auden in a good cause – the Spanish Medical Aid. The Marxian theory of history does not go very happily into verse, but the conclusion is very fine…. Literature is something which is just as good in ten years’ time, propaganda is not, and the contrast is acute for many. To-day the struggle, To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death, The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder; To-day the expending of powers On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.