Referring to your minute 141/14 of 6th inst.¹ , I will be on the look-out for any information I can gleam² regarding the 15th bandera of the Tercio; I cannot count on any reliable impartial testimony as regards conditions there from any of my friends on Franco's side, but I will try to get hold of some more independent observer.

There passed through here recently a Norwegian journalist, Axelbergh I think was his name, who has been contributing articles to the 'New York Times'. He had left before I knew he was here. I am told that he referred in a conversation to O'Duffy, and expressed the opinion that he was a 'queer fellow'; that in some bar or hotel in Salamanca he was in the habit of calling round him any journalists he saw, standing them drinks and telling them yarns, with the injunction not to repeat them but, apparently, with a contrary intention. This statement, for whatever it may be worth, was not given for the sake of pandering to any particular prejudice.