WAR IN SPAIN: The Scheme (Cont’d)

“The Scheme” (Cont’d)

Some London wag nailed a horseshoe last week to the door of the International Committee on Non-intervention in Spain. Hitherto deadlocked, the Committee was soon lucky in reaching virtual unanimity on the British scheme to secure “substantial” withdrawal of volunteers fighting on both sides in Spain, then accord full belligerent rights to both Leftists and Rightists (TIME, Nov. 1). “There is not a single member of the committee who does not accept [The Scheme], excepting Russia,” announced Viscount Cranborne, an acting chairman. “Yet I think it may be that even Russia tomorrow may see her way to accept.”

Meanwhile London correspondents gleaned from the entourage of Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky and at the British Foreign Office that a struggle was going on in Moscow to dissuade Dictator Stalin from what was said to be his preference for withdrawing Russia entirely from the Non-intervention Committee and even refusing to participate in the Nine-Power Conference on China and Japan soon to meet at Brussels. Soviet Foreign Commissar Litvinoff, whose office is not in the Kremlin and who is not especially close to the Dictator, was said to be urging strongly that Russia keep her place at London and appear at Brussels. The British and French embassies in Moscow made representations last week urging Russia to cooperate and Soviet Ambassador Maisky was said to be asking Moscow urgently to grant him some latitude of action in London, so that at the right moment he could take advantage for the Soviet Union of an advantageous compromise.

Instead, all indications were that Stalin last week proceeded to balk. Worried-looking Ambassador Maisky was forced to deliver a note he had managed to keep from delivering for a fortnight declaring that Russia for the time being will cease paying her share of the committee’s expenses. “The question of belligerent rights,” Maisky on instructions told the committee, “has nothing to do with and is foreign to the problem of non-intervention.”

This meant that Russia had balked completely at adopting the plan the others were ready to adopt, and dispatches excitedly rumored that at this point Britain, France, Germany and Italy would act in the spirit of their Four-Power Pact signed in 1933 and settle the question without Russia. Just arrived in London from Rome, where he had conferred at length with Premier Mussolini, was the German Ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop, chief confidant of the Führer on foreign affairs. He surprised the Nonintervention Committee by declaring that Germany demanded it act in unanimity—that is, fail to act if Russia continued to balk— and Italian Ambassador Grandi backed up Herr von Ribbentrop. This week the committee was to meet further, but Germany and Italy appeared to prefer that it remain deadlocked, so long as this can be blamed on Russia, while the Spanish Rightists launch against the Spanish Leftists the last major offensives possible before winter sets in (see below).