Foreign News: Tyrants & Liberty

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This scene in the House of Commons disclosed the underlying sympathies of the British Cabinet, but their handsome young idealist, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, busied himself meanwhile bringing in one more proposal to occupy the International Committee on Non-intervention of 27 states in London. This British scheme was to take steps to have volunteers withdrawn from the Spanish conflict and grant "belligerent rights" to each side in the civil war.

"Non-Intervention/' Members of the Non-intervention Committee, while privately describing their proceedings as a "farce," also privately maintained that this is the best way to keep the war now stewing in Spain from bubbling over and stewing in Europe generally. In a bitter war-birthday speech at Valencia, Spanish Leftist President Azaña cried: "The only intervention the London Non-intervention Committee has prevented is that of the League of Nations for peace!" Same day General Franco made a speech strongly implying that he would favor restoring the Spanish Throne, not to Alfonso XIII but to his third son the Infante Don Juan, adding. "Certainly if the Monarchy is restored it will be very different from that which left in 1931, both in character and in person."

First Year. Statistically the first year of the civil war ended with a loss to Spain conservatively estimated by United Press at least 350,000 lives and 30 billion pesetas ($1,725,000,000) although many authorities put the figures much higher. Pope Pius vouched last week for the statistic that 80% of all Jesuit priests in Spain have been slain by the Leftists. Spain's outstanding neutral and longtime representative on the League of Nations, Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo, appealed from Switzerland to Rightists and Leftists to sign a truce. "Spain can never be either Communist or Fascist" he postulated. "Both are moved by noble patriotism toward a better Spain—in their eyes. But while fighting for an ideal Spain, are they not destroying that real Spain without which their ideal nation cannot materialize? . . . The real Spain will not be committed to a victory which—whoever wins —will be a foreign victory! . . . Lured by somewhat shallow parallelisms, foreign men, institutions and even governments have been adding fuel to the fire which is consuming our unhappy country."

Meanwhile the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln battalions of U. S. citizens fighting for Leftist Spain were joined last week by enough more U. S. volunteers to form a third battalion. According to dispatches the new arrivals fell to "arguing angrily" over whether to become the Thomas Jefferson Battalion with the slogan "The Soil of Revolution Must be Watered by the Blood of Tyrants" or alternatively the Patrick Henry Battalion with the slogan "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death."