SPAIN: Pilots, Death, Plebiscite

¶ Hilariously celebrating in the ship's bar of the Normandie with their first advance pay checks from Spain's Radical Government, six able U. S. aviators were en route last week for Madrid to join Bert Acosta, pilot of Admiral Byrd's transatlantic flight, in doing battle against Generalissimo Francisco Franco's White planes. Payment for their services: $1,500 a month plus $1,000 for each White plane brought down.

¶ "As many as 500,000 Spaniards have perished since the Spanish War began. By far the greater number were noncombatants who died at the hands of rival firing squads or were killed in the battle for Madrid," declared Rear Admiral Gary Travers Grayson, chairman of the American National Red Cross, back in Manhattan from an International Red Cross meeting in Paris.

¶ Meeting in a stormy secret session at Geneva, the moribund League of Nations Council with unexpected courage approved the British-French plan that a plebiscite be taken among the Spanish people to see what sort of government Spain now wants. Just how to do this the Council did not suggest.