SHIPS IN SPAIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 June 1938, Page 7

SHIPS IN SPAIN

STATEMENT BY GENERAL FRANCO BRITISH SHIPS NOT SINGLED OUT. NEUTRAL HARBOUR PROPOSAL. (By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright.) LONDON. June 28. General Franco has denied that his airmen are deliberately seeking out British vessels for attack. The height from which bombing is usually effected, said General Franco, varied from 9000 feet, and it was, therefore, impossible to distinguish between ships in the danger zone. Many British ships recently sunk were not really British, but were the property of companies registered in Britain since the war began with the sole object, of benefiting from the protection of the British flag. These facts were well known to the British Government. In an interview with the Saragossa correspondent of “The Times,” General Franco declares that there is only one solution to the problems created by the bombing of republican ports by nationalist aircraft — namely, the setting apart of a single harbour far from the seat of war and devoted solely to commercial traffic of a non-military nature. Such a port would be stripped of military objectives and would naturally have to be controlled by neutral countries. General Franco described the offer thus made as being an important sacrifice of its legitimate rights by the Burgos Government and as being unprecedented in history. GANDIA RAIDED AGAIN. BRITISH CRUISER IN PORT. MADRID, June 28. The British cruiser Arethusa was anchored off the breakwater today when six nationalist bombers raided the British-owned port of Gandia, destroying several dwellings near the water’s edge. None of the bombs fell near the cruiser, which afterward took off 34 refugees.