BOMBING OF SHIPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 September 1938, Page 9

BOMBING OF SHIPS

VISCOUNT CECIL’S ATTITUDE TO GOVERNMENT WITHDRAWAL OF SUPPORT Viscount Cecil has decided that he can no longer be treated as “even nominally a supporter of the Government,” and has asked that the Government Whip should not be sent to him. He has sent a letter to the Earl of Lucan, Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms, who acts as Chief Government Whip in the House of Lords, in which he says: — “In spite of the fact that for some time I have felt unable to vote for most Ministerial measures, you have been good enough to continue to send me the Government Whip. “I am much obliged to you; but after the Prime Minister s speech about the bombing of British ships by the insurgents in Spain I feel bound to ask you to stop doing so in future.

“It is not because I wish to take either side in the Spanish war that I feel that Mr Chamberlain’s attitude is indefensible.

“The ships bombed were acting lawfully in pursuit of their trade. The attacks made were not accidental but deliberate, and even after the ships were holed, the insurgent planes machinegunned' them with the object of killing or disabling the crew. “It is admitted by the Prime Minister that the attacks were illegal—that, in fact, the British subjects killed were murdered. Yet the Prime Minister declines to take any action, economic or military, to protect British lives and property. “I do not recall any incident in British history at all comparable. I do not believe that any other British Minister has ever made a speech like that of Mr Chamberlain’s. It seems to me inconsistent with British honour and international morality.”