Based on a huge trove of diary and personal letter material regarding principally British and American, but also Russian and French, correspondents, ''We Saw Spain Die'' is a study of how the war correspondent came of age. It examines the problems - political, professional and personal, faced by some of the century's greatest war correspondents both within Spain and also in America, Britain, France and Russia. It throws light not just on the Spanish Civil War but also on internal politics within all those countries. The most powerful message is that it re-vindicates a number of America's greatest liberal journalists. Along with the professional war correspondents, some hardened veterans of Abyssinia, others still to win their spurs, came some of the world's most prominent literary figures: Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Josephine Herbst and Martha Gellhorn from the United States; W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Kim Philby and George Orwell from Britain; Andre Malraux and Antoine de Saint Exupery from France.