THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 170 No. 5079

LONDON SEPTEMBER 11th, 1937

SIXPENCE

IN T H IS I S S U E

THE PRESENT POSITION OF ANGLICANS

A Survey by Humphrey Johnson, Cong. Oral. AN ENGLISH JESUIT IN NATIONALIST SPAIN

By G. S. Burns, S .J.

THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING

A Catholic Scientist’s Impressions

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK Incidents in the Mediterranean

When the Leipzig was attacked, Germany, as one of the participants in the Non-Intervention Committee, asked Britain and France to meet to devise common measures against such attacks. We refused, and the Germans and the Italians withdrew their ships from the patrol. They were patrolling the east coast of Spain, to intercept ships from Russia. It is a good illustration o f the great value of the Non-Intervention Committee in limiting the area for the Spanish hostilities that the gap created has led to an increasing number of attacks on ships in all parts of the Mediterranean. Only partisanship can affirm definitely that all these attacks are the work of one side. It is extremely improbable that they are. What is probable is that Italian ships have intercepted vessels coming from the Black Sea, but many of the incidents of the last few weeks are at least as likely to be the work of submarines acting under the orders of Valencia and the patrons of Valencia. Certainly the Soviet, as soon as it knew of the Conference, addressed Italy in language which made it very hard for the Italians to accept an invitation to concert joint measures. But while it is easy to understand that Germany and Italy do not like the setting and tone of this very sudden gathering, we are sorry they have declined to take part. The attacks on the German ships had the same motive, an attempt to bring to an end the whole business of non-intervention, and those attacks failed to have any large results, but they would have been even more abortive had Germany and Italy had the patience to continue their share of the patrolling work. The Fight to Save Valencia a political and diplomatic struggle. Talk of large trained and enthusiastic people’s armies preparing to overthrow the Nationalists is still kept up for foreign consumption, but the pretence has now worn very thin. There is conscription, and there are large armies on paper, large assemblages of human material, but there is no genuine cause and no effective striking power. When abortive offensives are attempted, as in the much advertised projected drive from Cordoba to the Portuguese frontier, or a siege of Saragossa, the results are negligible beyond the occupation of a few villages. The truth is that within a few weeks the war in the north will be ended with the reduction of Gijon, and Valencia and Barcelona will be left on the defensive, outnumbered and outclassed but still quite unwilling, as far as Catalonia is concerned, to sink differences for the sake of common action. When it has discounted, as it must do in any realistic assessment, the military and political value of the divided and fanatical Catalonians, the group now in control in Valencia, has obviously no sort of prospect of asserting its authority over Spain. If the Spanish struggle is confined to the Peninsula, Valencia is doomed. The hopeful battlefields are accordingly not the Aragon nor the Madrid fronts, but the chancelleries and assemblies of Paris, Geneva and London. When we ask why what is called “ piracy” in the Mediterranean has suddenly become the issue of the hour, the answer is to be found in the fall of Bilbao and Santander, and the growing certainty of the Nationalist triumph. The ships that still bring supplies through the Black Sea and the Mediterranean from Russia to Barcelona and Valencia are now much more useful as “ incidents” than as carriers of cargo. What Makes a British Ship ?

The place to meet the leading members of the Valencia Government these days is not Valencia but Paris, because they are now waging not a military but

Shipping became in the last century a business in which Britain was incomparably the chief country in the