FRANCO'S REJOINDER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 June 1938, Page 7

FRANCO'S REJOINDER

THE BOMBING OF BRITISH SHIPS Says Remedy is to Stop Contraband Trade REPORTED SHIPMENTS OF WAR SUPPLIES TO LOYALISTS By Telegraph.—Press Association—Copyright. (Received This Day, 9.55 a.m.) LONDON, June 12. General Franco has issued a statement that over two hundred ships under the British flag have carried contraband to the Spanish loyalists since January 1 and suggests that Britain’s remedy against the bombing of merchantmen is to prohibit the use of the British flag to protect an illegal * The Franco authorities publish a list of British shipping companies allegedly shipping material to the loyalists. One, owning two ships before the civil war, now owns nineteen, and its organisers formed five other companies for the same trade after the war began. A categorical list given of contraband cargoes included shells, cartndges, explosives aeroplanes, light and heavy machine-guns, lorries, barbed wire and tanks, the sources being Greece, Russia, England and France. PROTEST IN FRANCE. M. FLANDIN DENOUNCES TRAFFIC IN ARMS. URGES FRANCO-ITALIAN CO-OPERATION. (Received This Day, 9.55 a.m.) GENEVA, June 12. A former French Foreign Minister, M. Flandin, addressing the DemoAffiance congress” declared that fortunes were scandalously being amassed from the traffic in war materials from France to Barcelona and Valencia. He urged a profits tax and an abandonment of the policy of urolonging the war, which was preventing Franco-Italian collaboration. P M Flandin said the anger at the bombing of pseudo-merchantmen Spain to deliver illicit cargoes was hypocritical. Many Frenchmen had been astounded to learn that a general mobilisation order was ready on May 21. Mobilisation was impossible while France was not attacked.