MR. ATTLEE IN SPAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 23, 28 January 1938, Page 18

MR. ATTLEE IN SPAIN

A DUFF COOPER ATTACK i

Criticism of Mr. Attlee's recent visit to Spain was made •by Mr. Duff Cooper, First Lord of the Admiralty, speaking at a Conservative meeting at Pimlico recently, says'the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post." "I say, without the slightest hesitation, that the encouragement that Mr. Attlee gave to *the Government forces in Spain was more valuable than if he had sent- them machine-guns and ammunition," he declared. "I sometimes think that there is nobody who is really neutral with regard to the war in Spain today except the British Government," he said. "The Labour Party is not neutral. They would not even claim to be neutral, and it is useless to say that they are not for intervention, because they actually have intervened. "A few drys ago the leader of the Labour Party visited one side who are carrying on this civil war, and did, everything in his power to encourage them to' continue fighting. If that is not intervention I do not know what is. "Mr. Attlee is a soldier. I have no wish to underrate his military capacity, but I say that if he had gone there with a battery of machine-guns he would have been less valuable to the side he was supporting than going there as the Leader of his Majesty's Opposition and representing an enormous political party in this country." AGAINST INTERVENTION. At the last election, hundreds of thousands of people voted for Socialists, and they might possibly vote for them at the next election. Yet they would vote solidly today against intervening in the Spanish war. Referring to the situation in China, Mr. Duff' Cooper said that they all deplored the fearful occurrences of a recent Weekend, when innocent neutrals were killed and wounded, "They were sent to their death, and it could only have been due to the ineptitude or indiscipline of the troops that fired upon them," he continued. "The Japanese Government have expressed their deep regret in unqualified terms, and their determination to bring retribution upon those who, either by folly or lack of discipline, were the guilty parties. ' "We should accept that full apology and hope that the necessary steps will indeed bs taken to prevent a repetition of such a disaster, remembering, as we 'must, that this is not the first disaster of the kind that has taken place since these hostilities began.'