The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, AUGUST 30, 1926. SPAIN AND TANGIER.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 205, 30 August 1926, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY, AUGUST 30, 1926. SPAIN AND TANGIER.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

Spain's action in presenting her demand for control of Tangier on the eve of the meeting of the League of Nations conference gives the impression that she is using the application as a counter in her bargaining for a permanent seat on the League. When Ger-

many's application for membership was considered in March, the claims of Spain, Poland and Brazil to permanent seats simultaneously with Germany caused a hitch, and the whole question was referred to a special committee representing fifteen countries, including Germany. The committee's report approved Lord Robert Cecil's plan of creating more temporary members, of whom tiiree should retire each year and be ineligible for election for three years. Thus three semi-permanent seats would be filled by vote of the Assembly.

Spain agreed to the plan subject to the conditign that her claim to a permanent seat should not be jeopardised, the question of permanent seats being left over to a further meeting of the committee in June. That meeting was not held, however, as it was likely to result in dissension on the main problem, but power to call the committee together was left with the presidents of the council and the committee. It has now been summoned and will meet in Geneva in a day or two, so that its report will be available for next month's meeting of the council.

Spain hag indicated that she will not submit to re-election as a temporary member, and she now links with her demand for a permanent seat the suggestion that she should obtain a mandate for Tangier, seeking to force the one issue by the use of the other. It is not likely that the effort will succeed, or that Spain will receive a greater measure of control in Tangier; her record of government outside her own borders is not one that would justify any present extension. • Tangier has.been a troublesome spot for a century. In 18,56 Britain signed a treaty with Morocco, and in 1861 Spain followed suit, these two documents establishing a system of capitulations which secured recognition of the prin-

ciple that the subjects of those nations who reside in Morocco should be und^r

tho direct control of their own governments. In 1f.30 a convention was drawn up at Madrid extending this concession to all foreign Powers. In 1904 Britain and Fiance came to an agreement on

African spheres, Britain abandoning her rights in Morocco and France doing the same with regard to Egypt. In the same year Morocco was split into three spheres of influence, the French, the Spanish, and the internationalised zone of Tangier. One condition of this agreement was that no coastal fortifications were to be erected along tho coast for a hundred miles within the strait to a point on the Atlantic coast, with the exception of a few minor points in Spain's possession. Since two-thirds of the European population of Tangier were Spaniards. Spain chafed under the agreement, . but France made increasing demands in spite of this. However, in December, 1923, .a convention was signed by representatives of Great Britain, France, and Spain, by which the permanent, neutrality of Tangier and a zone of l-] 0 square miles surrounding it was secured. The government of this zone is under the control of the Powers signatory to the Act of Algcciras. Tho

convention forbids tile construction of fortifications of any sort within the Tangier zone, but it also gives dominant power to France. That power Spain now seeks to break, and she is advancing her claim at a very difficult moment, probably, as we have said, as a counter in the League bargaining. Britain's chief interest is negative—that the zone should not become fortified, thus closing the Straits of Gibraltar to her warships, but apart from that it is believed that any agreement reached between other Powers more closely involved in the Moroccan problem would be sympathetically considered by the British Government.