TO BE TRIED NEXT WEEK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 38, 15 February 1939, Page 8

TO BE TRIED NEXT WEEK

300 SPANISH LOYALISTS NO PERSONAI, REPRISALS * Received Feb. 14, 5.5 p.m. LONDON, Feb. 13. The Barcelona correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph Company says that at a court martial next week at least 300 loyalists will be tried who are accused of meting out summary justice and also with espionage and counter-espionage. General Franco announces that he does not intend to take personal reprisals. He desires civil life in Spain to settle down without vindictiveness, and therefore he strictly defines culpable political responsibility. Sentences will be retroactive to 1936. General Franco has decreed that political responsibility attaches to subversion of national order in Spain by active and passive opponents of the nationalists and members of the Popular Front since 1936. The lastnamed will be outlawed and deprived of their property. Freemasons will be penalised. Punishments will include varying degrees of exile, exclusion from public office, restriction of place of residence, forfeiture of property, and fines. The Barcelona correspondent of The Times says that the devastation from which the city is beginning to recover reached terrible proportions under the loyalist regime. Two thousand priests, including several bishops, and possibly families which tried 1o protect them, were killed, and some were compelled to starve. Nearly all the churches were sacked and many were burnt. Salamanca reports that the rebels claim to have hit a loyalist destroyer during the bombing of Cartagena and to have shot down a loyalist chaser plane. MADRID SHELLED 20 KILLED BY BOMBS. Received Feb. 14, 5.5 p.m. LONDON, Feb. 13. Madrid reports that the insurgents are again shelling the city and the republicans are replying. The Madrid correspondent of The Times says that 20 people were killed in a bombing raid on the city.