VOLUNTEERS IN SPAIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 June 1938, Page 7

VOLUNTEERS IN SPAIN

THE NONINTERVENTION SCHEME LEAD OFFERED BY BRITAIN. RUSSIA STILL HOLDING BACK. (British Official Wireless.) (Recd This Day, 10.10 a.m.) RUGBY, May 31. The chairman’s sub-committee of the Non-Intervention Committee met today and received a detailed statement of the cost of the scheme for the evacuation of foreign volunteers from Spain. After Lord Plymouth had intimated that Britain was prepared to participate in providing the necessary funds, on condition that other governments also participated, the representatives agreed to refer to their governments the documents concerned. The Soviet representative, however, after restating the attitude of his Government to the withdrawal proposals, said the Soviet would be prepared to consider contributing in common with other governments to the cost of establishing and maintaining the commissions which are to go to Spain to ascertain the number of foreign volunteers and to supervise their withdrawal but that the Soviet would not contribute to that part of the cost of the scheme which included expenditure on the transport of volunteers, since M. Kagan maintained that there were no Russian volunteers. It is understood that the estimated cost of the evacuation scheme is between a million and a million and a-half sterling, which includes the work of the commissions and expenditure on bringing together volunteers, maintaining them in camps and transporting them to ports for evacuation to their own countries. It is contemplated that this cost should be borne in equal shares by the five non-intervention Powers represented on the chairman’s sub-committe. The sub-committee meets again on Thursday.