James Lardner, Loyalist Volunteer

Peces històriques triades per Josep Maria Casasús“There are enough newspapermen in Spain and too few men with sufficient mathematical training to made good gun layers in a hurry”, said James Lardner, 24-year-old Harvard graduate and son of the late great American humorist Ring W. Lardner, [as he] explained his enlistment yesterday in the International Brigades. Explaining that there was no girl in his case and the was not a Communist and was absolutely opposed to war, Lardner resigned his job with the Herald Tribune to join the Brigades after visiting the Lincoln-Washington Brigade where they were holding part of the line along the Ebro River. “I believe absolutely in the justice of the Loyalist Spanish cause. From what I’ve seen in the last two weeks at the front, I know that all they need to win is the right to buy artillery, planes and war material, and I want to back up my beliefs by joining the Brigade so that other Americans can see what one American thinks about the situation”, Lardner said. Asked why he chose the artillery, Lardner said “Mathematics was my favourite subject in college and knowledge of mathematics is the one thing absolutely necessary for artillery and it cannot be improvised”. Lardner, a dark serious scholarly [young man] with a striking facial resemblance to his late father, expects to leave for the Ebro front tomorrow. He will do his artillery studies in the hills above that river, and when he studies counter-battery fire it will be with real batteries. He was confident that with luck under those conditions an intelligent young man could learn quite a lot about artillery in a comparatively short time.