Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1936. INTERNATIONAL ISSUES IN SPAIN

Evening Post, Issue 30, 4 August 1936, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1936. INTERNATIONAL ISSUES IN SPAIN

While the military situation in the life-and-death struggle in Spain remains obscure, each side making claims thai can hardly be reconciled, the international aspects of the civil war are now beginning to cause serious concern in the rest of Europe, which fears complications. This fear was expressed unequivocally by the "Morning Post's" diplomatic correspondent as quoted in a cable message on Saturday:

The discovery that Italian aeroplanes are supplying the insurgents with arms is causing acute complications in view of the statement by the F ( rench Foreign Minister that, if it was proved that other Powers were arming the rebels, France would be free to reconsider her refusal to assist the Government. It is now considered .that the situation will require very skilful handling to prevent the civil war becoming an international • issue. . .-. Whatever'is the final result of the civil war, it can only widen ,the rift in Europe. If the Government is victorious, it will tend to make' Fascist Italy and Germany turn more closely to 'each other. On the other'hand, a rebel victory would lead France to rely more on Soviet Russia

What the intentions of the rebels are, if they.succeed in war, has been made quite clear by the declarations of their leaders. General Mola, the rebel commander in the North, was reported, in a message on July 29, as saying in an interview:' "We shall then [after the capture of Madrid] concentrate on building up the army and making Spain one" of the strongest nations in Europe. Government will be by military dictatorship.?' General Franco, the Southern leader, has spoken to the same effect in several interviews. Leaders of the "Spanish Phalanx," the Fascist party, are quoted today as demanding a "pre-eminent European position for Spain" which will be a "totalitarian State" like Italy and Germany. On the other hand the "Daily Mail" declares that Moscow is plotting to use the' civil.war»in' Spain to bring about the creation of a Spanish Soviet republic. Whichever party wins, it will 1 go to the extreme of its doctiirie and! Spain will tend to be either fully Fascist completely Socialist. That is the inevitable result to a fight to a finish on issues of principle. Do^s' this prospect' justify intervention by outside Powers according to the direction of their interests? International law, ,which is far from being as' precise and definite as the law prevailing within a State, 'is generally against intervention. The American Civil War was fought on a question of principle, and, whatever the L sympathies of foreign nations, there was no intervention, though, at times, as in the famous Trent incident in' 1862, a' delicate situation arose, kept within bounds only by temperate judgment' and diplomacy. On the other hand, Britain had to pay the United States by award of arbitration the sum oi 15,500,000 .dollars for the damage done to American commerce by the notorious Confederate cruiser .Alabama, built and equipped at Liverpool and allowed to leave port for the Azores, where she received crews and military supplies. • The arbitrators, who met at Geneva, ruled that: .'

A neutral Government Is bound—, First, To use due diligence to prevent the fitting out, arming or equipping within its jurisdiction of any vessel which it has reasonable ground to believe is intended to cruise' or carry on war against a' Power with which it is .at peace, and also to use like diligence, to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise or carry on war against a Power with which it is at peace, such vessel having been specially adapted, in whole or in part, within such jurisdiction to warlike use.

Secondly, Not to permit or suffer either belligerent to make use of its ports or waters, as the base of naval ■ operations against the other, or toi, the purpose of the renewal or aug-l mentation of military supplies or arms, or the recruitment of men.

Thirdly, To exercise due diligence in its waters, and as to all persons within its jurisdiction, to prevent any violation of the foregoing obligations and duties.'

This is the rule which is generally admitted as guiding the conduct of neutral Powers towards the-parties in a civil war in another country. What, in the Alabama case, applied to ships is certainly just as applicable to aeroplanes or any other form of munitions of war. Nominally, there is no right of intervention in a civil war. Intervention, according to the late Earl of Birkenhead, in his book on International Law, may be defended on two occasions only:

I. When it is made necessary by selfpreservation.

2. v When it is undertaken by the general body o£ Powers.

Discussing' the. first case Lord Bir-

kenhead slates that "every claim to intervention on these grounds must l)e judged by its own particular facts." He instances as an illustration the war in which Britain became involved in consequence of the French Revolution. "Prima facie," he says, "France in 1792 was as much entitled to enjoy an utiinlemiptcd revolution as England in 1688," but he goes on to quote natural alarm of other nations at the "aggressive propagandism of revolutionary principles" as "contemplated by the French National Convention" which in 1792 issued the following:

The National; 'Convention declares that it will .accord help to all the peoples who desire to recover their liberty, it charges the executive to give^orders to., the generals of the French armies to help citizens who. have been.or are likely to be oppressed for the cause of liberty.

In comment the distinguished jurist adds: "It is easy to say how that the menace was never more than verbal, but it must have appeared terrible enough to those who viewed with deepening apprehension the conceptions of la liberte which were growing in French favour." A generation later the instinctive sense of fair play,in the British mind, as repre-, sented* by Lord Castlereagh, checked the plans .of the Holy Alliance to suppress "dangerous thought" wherever it cropped1 up in Europe. Castlereagh said that the proposals of the Holy Alliance;,"were adapted to give the great Powers of the European Continent a perpetual pretext for interfering in the internal concerns of, its different States." Britain therefore declined to intervene. History on the whole shows the vanity of such vinlervenlion even in' recent -times.

The conclusion therefore is that, not only on grounds of international law, but in the name of fair play to a nation undergoing a frightful ordeal to settle its own fate, the altitude of neutrality taken up by Britain and France is the correct one The struggle in Spain is to determine how this unhappy;' country shall be gov- v erned in the future. Spain alone can1 decide that for herself, and any intervention from outside in favour of one party or the other will inevitably cloud the issue, There is nothing as yet to show that such intervention is justified as "necessary for the self-preservation", of the would-be intervening State. On the other hand, should the conflict in Spain result in a , deadlock from which there'seems no hope of satisfactory emergence, then, if both parties to the conflict are agreeable, intervention may be undertaken, as Lord Birkenhead puts it by "the general body" of Powers." His bookwas written long before' the establishment of the League of Nations, but there does seem to be, in his'definition, the nucleus'of an opportunity, sooner or later, for the League.