Attacks on British Shipping

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22437, 25 June 1938, Page 14

Attacks on British Shipping

The action of two Conservative members of the House of Commons in joining with the leaders of the Liberal and Labour opposition to force a debate on the bombing of British ships in Spanish waters will do good only if it results in a stiffening of the Government’s attitude to the whole question of foreign intervention in Spain. Its effects will be bad if it accentuates the present tendency to view the problem of attacks on shipping in isolation from its context. For it must be emphasised that the solution of the problem lies, not in Burgos, but in Rome and Berlin. Once intervention by Italy and Germany on behalf of the Nationalists has been stopped, the problem of attacks on shipping will cease to exist. Indeed, these attacks are probably regretted as sincerely by General Franco as they are by Mr Chamberlain. With increasing insistence, the British Government is being urged—and justifiably urged—to' deal more firmly with the Spanish situation. But it is most desirable that firmness should be reserved for the essentials and not squandered on a side issue. That was Mr Eden’s mistake; if he had been as firm over intervention as he was over piracy in the Mediterranean, there might now be peace in Spain. Liberal and Labour members of the House of Commons who are trying so hard to stampede the Government into action by protests, which come strangely from such a quarter, against “insults to the British flag” are playing a very dangerous game. The use of force in an effort to protect British shipping in Spanish waters inevitably involves abandonment by Great Britain of the policy of nonintervention and a very real risk of a European war. If risks must be run, it is surely more desirable that they should be run in the attempt to make the policy of non-intervention effective in practice.