GRAVE CONCERN OF LABOUR

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 152, 24 March 1937, Page 11

GRAVE CONCERN OF LABOUR

Intervention in Spain

DELAY IN OPERATION OF AGREEMENT Decisive Control Urged (British Official Wireless.) Rugby, March 22. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Anthony Eden, and the chairman of the Non-Intervention in Spain Committee, Lord Plymouth, today met a deputation of representatives of "the Trades Union Congress who conveyed to the Ministers a resolution passed at the recent international conference in London. The deputation expressed the grave anxiety felt in the Labour movement at the" delay in the operation of effective control in connection with the NonIntervention Agreement. The present arrangements, in its view, were operating greatly to the detriment of the Spanish Government, as was evidenced by reports of the continued landing of Italian and German troops in Spain. The deputation urged that decisive steps should be taken to establish an effective system of control and to secure the early withdrawal of the foreign troops from Spain.

Mr. Eden said that in his view the essential thing was to bring into effective operation the supervision scheme at the earliest possible moment. The Government would do everything in its power to expedite the solution of other pressing problems in connection with the situation in Spain, including the withdrawal of foreign national.' taking part in the conflict. Foreign Combatants. The problem of the withdrawal of foreign combatants from Spain was referred to in a question in the House of Commons this afternoon.

In replying, Mr. Eden recalled that the question had been raised in the NonIntervention Committee by Lord Plymouth on the basis of suggestions made by the German and Italian Governments in their replies to the Notes addressed .to them by the British Government on the prohibition of the dispatch to Spain of foreigners for the purpose of taking part in the civil war. He added that the subject was now under diesussion in the committee. Mr. Eden was also asked whether the landing of Italian troops with arms and munitions in Spain before February 20 for the purpose of making war on the constitutional Government of that country did not constitute a violation of the Non-Intervention Agreement, of the Briand-Kellogg Pact, and of the Covenant of the League. Meeting Postponed. He replied that if by Italian troops units of the Italian army were meant, he had no evidence which established the landing of such units in Spain. In any event the question of violation of the Non-Intervention Agreement w.as one for consideration by the NonIntervention Committee itself. He did not feel called upon to express an opinion with regard to the remaining parts of the question. The meeting of the International Committee of Non-Intervention in Spain which was provisionally arranged for this afternoon to give final approval to the appointments under the scheme of supervision was postponed until to-morrow, when a meeting of the chairman’s sub-committee will also be held. •