ITALY WARNED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 117, 19 May 1936, Page 7

ITALY WARNED.

AGENT'S OPERATIONS.

Frank Statement Necessary to Dispel False Reports. AMBASSADOR'S REGRET. British Official Wireless. (Received 2 p.m.) RUGBY, May 18. Concluding his statement in the House of Commons regarding the alleged supply by Britain of dumdum bullets, Mr. Eden said it was suggested to the Italian Ambassador that the continued employment of a man of a disreputable type such as Lopez would not be conducive to the maintenance of good relations between Italy and the United Kingdom.

The Ambassador, Signor Grandi, replied that he himself Avas quite unaware of the existence of the individual in question and expressed most grateful thanks for the information, which he regarded as likely to prove of great benefit to British and Italian relations.

Subsequent, however, to this warning, Italian propaganda on the alleged supply of dumdum ammunition by British firms was revived through the public Press, which also published a copy of the letter which Lopez himself dictated to the secretary and managing director of Messrs. George Bate and Company.

Mr. Eden then described another aspect of Lopez's activity. On March 31 under another alias, namely, Mezler, he called on the Abyssinian Minister in London and offered, in return for concessions in that country, to supply the Abyssinian Government with large quantities of arms and ammunition.

He asked for a letter from the Minister authorising Coionel Gustave Mezler to buy these goods, adding that he would be prepared to obtain necessary permits. He induced the Abyssinian Minister to sign a paper containing a long list of the required ammunition.

The Minister had stated that among many items listed he omitted to notice one for 3,000,000 soft-nosed cartridges, and it was obvious that he could not have noticed it for, apart from everything else, he knew that no export license for these rounds could ever have been obtained from the Board of Trade.

Their purchase, therefore, would have been utterly useless, and, in fact, no application for a license for any of the munitions in this list was ever made, but a paper signed by the Abyssinian Minister was later published in the Rome newspaper "Messagero." Foreign Secretary's Regret. Mr. Eden also said that it was with the greatest regret that he felt compelled to deal frankly with what could only be described as an attempt to fabricate evidence that the Abyssinian forces had been supplied with illegal ammunition by British interests.

It was necessary, however, to protect the good name of British industry and that there should be 110 misapprehension abroad as to the very careful steps taken by the British Government, to control not only the quantity but the types of arms "and munitions exported from the United Kingdom.

The Italian Note addressed to the League of Nations , a week ago and then withdrawn reproduced the letter from Messrs. Bate and Company and the Abyssinian Minister's paper. Although officially withdrawn, copies had been circulated informally to foreign delegations at Geneva, and the publicity which ensued compelled him to make a full statement of the facts without any desire to excite controversy or criticism.

Asked whether there was no case for prosecution, Mr. Eden • replied that the Director of Public Prosecutions had come to the conclusion that although there might have been a minor contravention of the Firearms Act of 1920, the facts did not afford a satisfactory ground for prosecution for an indictable offence. Lopez was a British subject of Polish origin. Mr. Will Thorne (Lab., Plaistow): Is there not some power to expel an inhuman brute like this? Mr. E. J. Williams (Lab., Glamorgan): Is this not evidence that the private production of armaments shomd be prohibited ? The Speaker closed the incident by proceeding with other business.