FOR SAKE OF ROUND OF APPLAUSE

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 171, 16 April 1937, Page 11

FOR SAKE OF ROUND OF APPLAUSE

Risk of Damaging- Peace MR. EDEN NOT MOVED BY COWARDICE CHARGE By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright. (Receiveil April 15, 5.5 p.m.) London, April 14. Concluding the debate on Spain in the House of Commons, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Anthony Eden, said that belligerent rights could not be granted only on one side. A British ship attacked on the high seas would be protected, but it was impossible to guarantee safety in territorial waters. British shipowners did not share the indignation of the Opposition. . . For the Fleet to take action within Spanish territorial waters would be intervention as much as if troops were landed on Spanish soil to convoy lorries to a given point. He was not moved by charges of cowardice. It would have been cowardice if, for the sake of a round of applause, the Government ran the risk of damaging peace. Mr. Eden, in reply to the leader of the Liberal Opposition. Sir Archibald Sinclair, said that if food ships lying at St. Jean-de-Luz, France, went to Bilbao in spite of the Board of Trade warning, they would be afforded protection to tlie three-mile limit. He hoped, however, that they would not go, because the Governmetn thought it was unsafe. The motion of censure was defeated by 345 votes to 130. OTHER SPEAKERS View of the Opposition Liberal Party (British Official Wireless.) Rugby, April 14. In the course of the debate the leader of the Opposition Liberal Party, Sir Archibald Sinclair, who followed the Home Secretary, argued that the Government’s action in discouraging British food ships from entering Basque ports was an intervention in the civil war, and not. as Sir John Simon claimed, part of the non-intervention policy. The next speaker was Mr. "Winston Churchill (Conservefive— Epping), who said he was a partisan of neither side in Spain, but it would be madness to break the blockade which the insurgents had established, and according to British naval officers, effectively established. if Great Britain was to retain that pose in relation to the Spanish civil war which was so useful for the prevention of its spreading into Europe. Mr. Churchill ended with a suggestion for the co-operation of the live Powers whose navies were joining in the control scheme in proposing some solution of the Spanish civil war. He hoped such co-operation in the case of Spain might load to a lessening of the tension in Europe generally.