VISITORS' REPORT

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 131, 30 November 1936, Page 9

VISITORS' REPORT

VERY HEAVY CASUALTIES

APPEAL FOR HELP

APPALLING CATASTROPHE TO CIVILIANS

(British Official Wlrclesa.J (Received November 30, noon.) RUGBY, November 29. The .six members of llie British House of Commons, including two Conservatives, one Liberal, and three Labour members, who have gone lo Spain as a party of investigation, have. communicated with his Majesty's Government through the British Embassy in Madrid as follows :— "After spending some days at Barcelona, Valencia (the seat of the Spanish Government), and in Madrid, where we have been accorded the fullest facilities that circumstances have permitted to acquaint ourselves, with the situation, we venture to issue an appeal. We doubt if the magnitude of the appalling catastrophe that has faced the civilian population of Madrid, is generally realised. We make' no comment upon the military situation, but the city of a million inhabitants is being ■ subjected to attack from the ground and from the air. It is so far invested that one road only is and has been for 21 days past open to the outside world. • The improvised Government machine has its hands full and its resources pledged in the conflict. To the million inhabitants have been added hundreds of thousands of refugees. MjOre than a quarter of the city is.partially destroyed. The civilian casualties are very heavy. Already starvation is at work, and epidemics seem to be inevitable. "We urge the need of immediate and large-scale action by neutral Powers working through the international organisation. Evacuation and partial maintenance of women, children, and non-combatants is urgent in order to mitigate—it cannot prevent—unspeakable horrors."