Disease Area

The most important piece of international collaboration since the League of Nations commissioned a joint British-Italian-Dutch-Swedish Army to supervise the Saar Plebiscite (TIME, Jan. 21, 1935 et ante) was the decision in London of 27 nations at the International Committee for Non-intervention to keep out of Spain further volunteers and ammunition (TIME, March 1). Last week the committee agreed how best to do this. The coast of Spain was divided into sectors, and part of the international fleet was assigned to each. To Russia was assigned patrol of the northwest sector of the Bay of Biscay, though it was clear that her few creaky vessels surviving from Tsarist days could never stand up to those storm-lashed seas. Russia refused the assignment, "saved face" by demanding to patrol part of the Mediterranean though it was equally clear that Dictator Mussolini would never allow Russian ships to ply Mare Nostrum ("Our Sea"). This was all an elaborate diplomatic finesse, staged by Britain, who knew that Russia never wanted to participate in the blockade, wanted only to establish her right to do so.

Up got the Portuguese delegate who declared that his country, too, refused to contribute to the International fleet, thus leaving Britain, France, Germany and Italy to do the job. These four powers resolved to take over the whole blockade from midnight of March 6. Each ship will fly in addition to its national flag a "neutral blue pennant with a yellow cross." Italy will patrol the eastern coast of Spain from the French frontier down past Barcelona and Valencia to Alicante. From that point Germany will patrol the southeastern coastline to Malaga. British ships will patrol from Malaga through the Strait of Gibraltar to the beginning of the Portuguese coastline. Over the Spanish-Portuguese land frontier 130 "international observers" will keep watch. French and British ships jointly will pick up the blockade on the northwest Spanish seas at Vigo where the Spanish coastline begins again, will patrol the Bay of Biscay around to the French frontier. France has already closed its Spanish land frontier, has posted gendarmes and military police along the French side of the Pyrenees. Spain will thus be completely ringed in like a disease area.

On Spanish soil meantime last week the bloody war continued with neither side making much headway. The three-week-old struggle for the Madrid-Valencia road, the capital's only outlet to the sea, raged indecisively. For the first time in five weeks, long-range shells from Generalissimo Francisco Franco's White guns zoomed into Madrid, struck the long-suffering, U. S.-owned telephone building, killed a half-dozen citizens. From the Madrid deadlock Generalissimo Franco turned to strike at Valencia where the Radical Government is taking cover, sent an attacking force to Viver, 34 miles northwest of Valencia, while invading White planes dropped incendiary bombs on Valencia itself. At Oviedo the Reds gained their only success. Reckless Asturian miners paced the streets, lit dynamite fuses from their dangling cigarets, caused a stampede among the White band bottled up in the city whose condition last week was reported to be "critical." According to neutral observers "the war is as far from ending as ever."

It was during a White air raid on Valencia that a Red anti-aircraft shell landed squarely on the quarterdeck of the British battleship Royal Oak, injuring four officers and a seaman. Not wishing to stir up pro-Valencian British Laborites, the British Admiralty made light of the whole affair. Declared an Admiralty official: "We might reproach the Loyalists for the awkward aiming of an anti-aircraft shell, but there is no question of malice. It was more or less an act of God."

Correspondents of the United Press at Gibraltar and of the Associated Press at Lisbon reported last week that beauteous, copper-haired Spanish Cinemactress Rosita Diaz, who once sat naked in a bathtub for nine hours during a Hollywood film-shooting, had been shot as a radical spy by the Whites. This made big news. Rosita's picture was splashed over the world's press. At week's end a Hollywood friend sent a cautious cablegram to Segovia saying she had heard that Rosita had been in "a serious accident." Back came a cablegram signed "Rosita" saying, "I am well. Fondest greetings." It seemed that Senorita Diaz had scooped the finest publicity of her career, that Generalissimo Franco had no designs on her. On other film figures, however, he frowned angrily last week, banned from White Spanish territory all films to which the following "radicals" have contributed: writers Upton Sinclair, Clifford Odets, Liam O'Flaherty, Dudley Nichols, Humphrey Cobb; screen stars Paul Muni and Luise Rainer; directors Lewis Milestone and Frank Tuttle; producer Kenneth Mac-Gowan. In reply last week, 98 U. S. writers signed a manifesto against General Franco. Declared they: "We cannot keep silent when war becomes a slaughter of the unarmed, the innocent and the helpless. . . . We condemn the deliberate bombing of hospitals, playgrounds, orphan asylums, relief stations and breadlines, and the cowardly and cruel bombardment of Madrid."

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