A KNOTTY PROBLEM.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 21, 18 October 1937, Page 4

A KNOTTY PROBLEM.

The week-end reports of proceedings at the resumed ^ittkigs of the I^Qn-Intervention Committee do tiot furnish any very great promise of a satisfactory solution of the Spanish prpblem in its international aspects. Neither Italy nor Qe^many has so far giyen any indicatiqn of beipg prepargd to fp.ll in with proposals for elfeptive steps bpjng t^ken for the withdrawal of foreign "volunteers" from the military ranks of the two contending factions. Both Count Grandi, for Italy, and Herr Ribbintrop, for Germany, aire manifestly bent on delaying action that would dpubtless be to the disadvantage of the Spanish Fgscist Party. Count Grandi bas certainly gone so far as to suggest, as a beginning, the recall of an equal number of foreign volunteers from each side. This is, bowever, an obviously specious proposal. lt would mean leavmg with General Franco a vastly greater body of outside fighting men than with Ihe Republican Government, for there are probably niore Jtaiians engaged on hjs sidp. th9.11aH the Other volunteers in Spain Laken together. The great difference between the eharacters of the external military support g|ven to the opposing Spanish factions lies. in the faet that, ^yhile that on thp Republipan §ide is of quite c.asual crpation, tliat on the Fascist side.has originated, in \ fully organised form, with the Governments of the eountries from which lt has been mainly drawn. Jn G^nnany's c-^se it was quite impossible to conceal this fact, while. in Italy's it has heen made the subject of a good deal of vain-glorious baasting on the part of Signor Mussolini. It is quite likely that there are a fair, even a substantial, number of Russians and perhaps also of Frenchmen enlisted in the Republican armies, but jn nejther instance can it. be said, as of the Italians and GPfmans on the other side, that they have .been equipped and §ent there by their re.spectjve governments. Herr Ribhentrop hiinself practically aeknowledges this when he speaks of "Bolsheviks who have arrived from all over the world." The Russian delegate, M, Maisky, had much greater reason on his side when he spoke of the purpose in loguacious delays while Italy was still concentrating air forces — in the Baleanc Isies for example — for attacks on Spanish towns. Herr Ribhentrop is. repqrted as complaining that Britain and France were handling the non-intervention 'ssue as if it vvere a special privilege of their own. There can be little substance found in this contention when We consider the patience, now seemingly quite mistaken, with which" both Britain hnd France have consuited the susceptibilities..of Jtaiy and Germany and awgited from them sorae shqw of practical sincerity in their professions of a desire to see Spain's internal conflict ended. The present session of the Non-intervention Committee is in itself the latest and quite irrefutable evidenqe of this. Thus the only conclusion to be reached is that both Count Grandi and Herr Ribhentrop are merely fencing fqr further delay in the hope that meanwhile some decisive victory will crown the Fascist arms. It might possibly have been shrewder diplomacy to have opened the sitting by calling upon Italy and Germany tp state specifically their own proposals for attaining the purpo§e they make show of desiring. But probably the result would have been much the same in the end. As matters stand now, the present mecting would not s.eem to have carried them much further forward, and itMvill be soipqthing of a pleasant disappointmeqt if anything satisfactory emerges when the Committee reassembles tq-morrow. In the meantime it can searcely be regarded as a friendly gesture on Signor Mussolini's part that he continues to pour fiirther troops by the thousand into Libya, an action which can be interpreted only as a threat t.o Egypt, who has still to (00k mainly to Great Britain for the protection of her frontiers. This may, of course, be only another of IhDuce's many pinpricks directed against Great Britain. but it. may have been noted that only a few days ago a considerable body of British forces was transferred to Egypt from Palestine, whence they could probably ill be spared. At the same time, too, he is strengthening his hold in Spain's Balearic Islands, thus adding another possible diihculty in the way of settling the Mediterranean problem. Thus, unless there is some correction i.n the Italo-German attitude, the situation, as both the British Prime Minis'ter and his Foreign Secretary have said, "must cause increasing anxiety."-