WAR IN SPAIN: Agents

Confined at No. 10 Downing Street by gout, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain one day last week had Italian Ambassador Count Dino Grandi in for a cozy, significant lunch. Afterward, Whitehall buzzed with rumors that His Majesty’s Government were about to permit Generalissimo Francisco Franco to open throughout the United Kingdom consulates flying the crimson & gold flag of Rightist Spain. Same day Soviet Russia hastily abandoned the obstructionist tactics by which she has kept the London Committee for Spanish Non-intervention from taking steps to carry out the famed British “Scheme.”

By this Scheme both sides in Spain were to receive recognition of their belligerent rights after the withdrawal of “substantial” numbers of the foreign volunteers now fighting with their troops (TIME, Nov. 1 et seq.). “Please, gentlemen, proceed,” Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky unexpectedly told the Non-intervention Committee last week. “We [the Soviet Union] will step aside and abstain from voting on the controversial portions of the British plan [the Scheme], giving our blessing to the rest of it. Thus the door is not bolted, it is open. . . . Proceed, gentlemen, proceed.”

Meanwhile, the London Daily Herald, newsorgan of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, angrily editorialized that the British Government had secretly “recognized” the Franco Government, getting ahead of Britain’s own Scheme to recognize only Franco’s belligerent rights. “This is a monstrous and disgraceful decision,” cried the Herald. “Recognition of belligerent rights was a concession—a bribe if you like—to be paid for the withdrawal of volunteers, after the withdrawal. Now an even more far-reaching form of recognition is given in advance. The lever which might have secured withdrawal is flung away.”

This series of assertions was premature, but served the Opposition’s purpose, bringing the Prime Minister limping heavily out of No. 10 and into the House of Commons where British sportsmanship assured him a great cheer. Mr. Chamberlain heartily laughed off such Labor questions about his recent exchange of personal missives on Spain with Benito Mussolini (TIME, Aug. 9) as: “Could these letters properly be described as love letters?” The House was told by British War Secretary Leslie Hore-Belisha what has long been known and frequently denied, that the Spanish Rightists have installed artillery commanding Britain’s chief Mediterranean base. “The guns on the Strait of Gibraltar,” said Mr. Hore-Belisha, “are of various calibres from 12-inch howitzers downward.”

Purse-lipped, the gouty Prime Minister hobbled out of the House of Commons without having revealed anything and Labor’s Herald was forced to try again. It charged that His Majesty’s Government were under “ducal influence”—not the influence of the Duke of Windsor but that of the Duke of Berwick & Alba, an immensely rich Spanish grandee descended from a bastard son of Stuart King James II. “The ministers [of His Majesty’s Government],” said the Herald, “having decided that Franco is going to win, have also decided that it is necessary to placate him. Moreover, the Duke of Alba persuaded them that recognition by Britain secured by him would enormously strengthen the Monarchist as distinguished from the Fascist element in the Rebel Government.

“Under the ducal influence they have now been persuaded that the right line and policy is working for the restoration of the Monarchy as a result of a Franco victory, with young Prince Juan, son of former King Alfonso XIII, as King. The duke assured them that the restored Spanish Monarchy would definitely and certainly be pro-British.”

The Daily Herald went on to say for His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition that the Duke of Alba was about to be appointed the Franco Government’s representative in London, and that the British Government were about to send as its “official agent” to the Spanish Rightists Sir Robert. MacLeod Hodgson, until recently British Minister to the Kingdom of Albania. “The fact that Hodgson is styled an official agent instead of a Minister makes no difference,” cried the Herald. “That was the title he had as British representative in Moscow from 1921 to 1924 when the Soviet Government was recognized de facto but not de jure.”

Labor’s charges brought gouty Neville Chamberlain again into the House of Commons. “We are bound to take into account,” he said, “our responsibilities for the protection of British nationals and British commercial interests throughout Spain, including large areas in the northwest and southwest parts of the country as well as the Spanish zone of Morocco, where General Franco’s forces now have effective occupation.

“It has become increasingly evident that the numerous questions affecting British interests in these areas cannot be satisfactorily handled by means of the occasional contacts which heretofore existed.

“Accordingly, the Government has entered into negotiations for the appointment of agents by them and General Franco, respectively, for the discussion of questions affecting the interest of British nationals. These agents will not be given any diplomatic status. The matter is not one requiring consultations with other governments, but His Majesty’s Government has kept the French Government fully informed.”

Major Clement Attlee, the leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, asked if it were not “unprecedented” to indulge .in such a hocus-pocus of exchanging non-diplomatic agents. “I do not know of any exact precedents for this situation,” replied the Prime Minister, but afterward the Foreign Office’s adept precedent-finders found two. There are “British agents” today in Ethiopia and in Manchukuo, they pointed out, and their presence has not constituted recognition by His Majesty’s Government of either the empire in Ethiopia or the empire in Manchukuo.

The fine sieve of this technicality might hold diplomatic eau de cologne, but what British Labor smelled slopping over was yet another British Conservative deal like that Sir Samuel Hoare attempted with Benito Mussolini (TIME, Dec. 30, 1935), only this time a deal on Spain, not Ethiopia. Nevertheless the Labor Party last week put up feeble resistance in the House of Commons, which upheld the Government’s course by 241-to-107.

Meanwhile the Spanish Rightists were so pleased that Generalissimo Franco ordered released to their British owners the freight boats Caper, Bobie, Sanjold, Dover Abbey, Mirupanu, Yorkbrook and Seven Seas Spray, captured since last July running food and munitions to the Spanish Leftists. The Rightists last week retained the cargoes of these ships as “prizes of war”—thus boldly exercising a belligerent right—sent the empty tramps clanking home to England.

These developments got far ahead of the activities of the Non-intervention Committee, rendered it ludicrous. Nonetheless, the Committee went ahead with messages to the Rightist Government and to the Leftist Government, asking each about details of ascertaining the numbers of volunteers preliminary to their withdrawal and the granting of belligerent rights.

The London bureau of Associated Press reported that “all authoritative sources here think Great Britain is ready to climb belatedly on the Franco bandwagon. . ” . There are two reasons:

“1) The Government is convinced now that General Francisco Franco’s forces will win the civil war.

“2) The British Rearmament program needs mercury, iron, copper and other raw materials under [Franco’s] control, and hopes to get commercial concessions at the expense of Italy and Germany, longstanding supporters of the [Rightist] cause.” Since Adolf Hitler has been helping Francisco Franco mainly because Ger many wants Spanish raw materials for Rearmament, the Berlin press in general and Hitler’s own paper in particular raged last week at the prospect that gouty Neville Chamberlain may yet succeed in limping ahead of the healthy Fiihrer, filching away from Germany the lion’s share of Spanish war materials to aid Britain in her Rearmament. In Whitehall, talk of enthroning Prince Juan, 24-year-old third son of Alfonso XIII as King of Spain, and suggestions that the Duke of Alba has the British Government under his “influence” were regarded as so much twaddle — useful, however,to Labor in whipping up public opinion and smoking out the Government into confirming hidden facts. What the civil servants who make British policy have in mind is a Spanish compromise, worked out between the Rightists and the Leftists under British umpireship, and so neatly balanced that no ism or extreme element will appear to have won a clean-cut victory. To avert what Whitehall considers the ‘”danger” of a victory for either the system of Mussolini or the system of Stalin will be in Spain the deli cate task of the “British agents.”