Bloodless Hands

With Generalissimo Francisco Franco's troops edging nearer to Barcelona, France last week began to jitter over the probability of a Fascist victory on her southern frontier. In the Chamber of Deputies there were shrill demands--mainly from the Left--that France renounce the Spanish non-intervention policy and openly aid the Spanish Loyalists, just as Italy and Germany are openly helping the Rebels. The realistic French General Staff was reported to be contemplating occupying the Island of Minorca and Spanish Morocco if the Italian-backed Rebels win the war. There were scary rumors that the Rebel-held side of the French-Spanish frontier had been fortified. There were predictions that a Mediterranean "Munich," with Italy the victor and France the loser, was in the offing.

Despite the clamor, Premier Edouard Daladier's Cabinet decided to adhere to strict nonintervention, keep the border sealed, let the Spanish Loyalists sink or swim on their own. All week their boat sank lower in the water. An army man himself, for nearly three years Minister of National Defense (a job he still holds as Premier). M. Daladier could scarcely have failed to realize the dangers of letting a puppet of Italy and Germany take over all Spain. It was reported that he wanted to help the Loyalists, but French diplomacy was again stymied, as it had been when Germany rearmed the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismembered Czechoslovakia --and for the same reasons. Britain, pressed the French Government not to precipitate matters.* And in France itself opinion was sharply, almost evenly divided between desire to rescue the Spanish Republic and fear of provoking war.

Former Premier Leon Blum, originator of nonintervention, denounced his own handiwork in a leisurely Chamber debate, declared that non-intervention should be "reciprocal." wrote in his newsorgan, Le Populaire, that it was at present "inadmissible and intolerable." Said Deputy Alfred Margaine, member of Premier Daladier's own Radical Socialist Party: "We have been duped in the policy of nonintervention."

Most fiery speaker was former Air Minister Pierre Cot, renowned for baiting Adolf Hitler, who contended that the Mediterranean would no longer be free if the Italians were allowed to hold to the Balearic Islands, hinted that French deputies had been influenced by Nazi anti-Bolshevist propaganda, wound up by describing Germany's internal weakness. Said M. Cot: "The Hitler regime's only hope lies in bluff or, at worst, in a short war. Thanks to the excesses of Nazi rule France can now count on ten American workers behind every French soldier."

Opposed to the pro-intervention speakers was onetime Premier Pierre Etienne Flandin, who has made no secret of his fondness for Herr Hitler. He moralized: "The French Government should be able to say to the Spanish people, once the war is ended, 'I have no Spanish blood on my hands.' "

Throughout the debate Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet sat unmoved. Earlier in Geneva, he had turned a deaf ear, to pleadings for help from Foreign Minister Julio Alvarez del Vayo, of the Loyalist Government. As the lengthy debate neared its end, M. Bonnet was expected to play his trump card: an assurance by Dictator Mussolini, given to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in Rome fortnight ago, that as soon as Generalissimo Franco won the war, Italian troops would leave Spain. Since Il Duce has often found it convenient to forget his solemn pledges, this argument was not calculated to impress the French Left. The Government was slated for a rough time in the Chamber before a final vote is taken this week.

Meanwhile, as fear of Italian trouble enveloped France, it became known that Ally Britain had actually "invaded" it. Deputy Michel Geistdoerfer protested the occupation by the British of the French Minquiers Islands, a group of tiny, rocky islets in the Gulf of St. Malo, halfway between St. Malo and the Isle of Jersey, which have long been used for French lighthouses. Deputy Geistdoerfer said that British "penetration" had been, going on there since 1839 on the basis of a 1360 treaty, and that now the Union Jack was floating over the islands.

"Don't take me too seriously," the Deputy said. "I am not asking you to make war on Britain, but we ought to clear up a question that threatens to compromise French rights. We have occupation of factories, occupation of the Rhineland, occupation of Ethiopia and now part of French Somaliland and, finally, of the Minquiers Islands. Nobody has ever done anything about any of them."

Proudly up spoke M. Bonnet at that point: "Yes they have. Both I and my predecessor have protested."

*British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain promptly turned down a request from Opposition Laborite Leader Clement R. Attlee to call Parliament immediately to reconsider British non-intervention policy. The Prime Minister declared any change in non-intervention would merely "prolong the war."

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