THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 171 No. 5101

LONDON FEBRUARY 12th, 1938

SIXPENCE

IN TH IS IS SU E

POPULATION PROSPECTS. IV

By E. R. ROPER POWER

THE NEW SPANISH STATE

The Text of the Government’s Declaration

THE SPANISH NATIONALIST PROPAGANDA

A Reply Full List o f Contents on page 196.

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK Towards Belligerent Rights

The Non-Intervention Committee, after a long period of marking time, is again active, and new approaches are being made to the question of withdrawing the foreign volunteers. So far, it has not been found possible to establish a satisfactory ratio or an agreed point at which belligerent rights shall be granted to both sides. It has now become highly important that those rights shall be granted. They are the necessary complement to the strong action taken, under British leadership, by Britain, France and Italy, signatories of the Nyon Agreement, in order to protect the Mediterranean. Two incidents at sea led to the declarations of renewed measures to prevent any recrudescence of piracy. The British ship Endymion was sunk sixteen miles off the east coast of Spain with loss of l ife ; it is believed, by a torpedo. Mr. Duff Cooper’s answer in the House of Commons on Monday, said : ‘‘Three of the survivors of the steamship Endymion have now been interrogated by the naval authorities at Gibraltar. No submarine, torpedo track, or floating mine was seen from the bridge. The depth of water where the explosion occurred is, however, such as to rule out the possibility of a moored mine.” ‘‘In the last six weeks,” said Mr. Eden on the same day, “ there has been one other attack, that on the steamship Atcira, reported to the Non-Intervention Board.” The Alcira was bombed and sunk on February 4th by two aeroplanes, when about twenty miles south-east of Barcelona. The crew were given warning, and no lives were lost. There are two earlier instances, the Thorpeness was bombed while in Valencia harbour, with some loss of life, and there is a claim against Salamanca for damage caused to H.M.S. Hunter by a floating mine. The Endymion is the only submarine incident, and that is apparently, according to the survivors’ stories, not established with any certainty. There is not, happily, any active submarine piracy in the Mediterranean. On Wednesday the British ship Peckham, sailing from Odessa to Barcelona, wirelessed that an aeroplane was hovering near it out to sea, but it was later announced that this ship had successfully reached Barcelona.

The importance of belligerent rights is that the temptation which the Nationalists now have to attack ships making for the ports of their enemies will be replaced by a recognized right to intercept and search them. The danger of the present position is the enormous temptation offered to Barcelona to concoct incidents designed to inflame opinion in Britain. The few submarines in General Franco’s Navy are not by any means the only submarines able to operate in the Mediterranean. There is apparently, in the case of the Endymion, no certainty that there was any torpedo, still less any certainty where the torpedo came from. There is only too much evidence, going back to the early attempt to pretend that the Nationalists had deliberately bombed the British Embassy in Madrid, that anything which can be done to embroil London and Salamanca will not be left undone, and we must accompany our measures to protect British shipping going about its lawful occasions in the Mediterranean with great carefulness that we do not fall in with the machinations of the other side.

Meanwhile one very valuable piece of humanitarian work has made great progress. Mr. Chamberlain was able to announce that both sides in Spain have expressed willingness to exchange military and political prisoners and refugees on condition that a British arbitrator takes charge of the arrangements. And he well said that this agreement, with the relief it will bring to hundreds of families now suffering acute anxiety, was a great tribute to the confidence felt in this country. Britain and Salamanca

There is, we believe, a very sound political reason for the emphatic language of the British Government that its patience is not inexhaustible, and that submerged submarines will be sunk. The statement was very loudly cheered, particularly by the Opposition, some of whose members would like to see an avowed blockade of Majorca. From Salamanca, where the responsibility is denied, the Spanish Nationalists repeat their now long-standing contention that British recognition ought to go much further than it does at the moment. At present they occupy an anomalous position. They are no longer treated as irresponsible rebels, against whom international complaints would have to be made through the only legally recognized Government in Spain, but