PRESS COMMENTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 149, 21 December 1936, Page 13

PRESS COMMENTS

MR. EDEN'S SPEECH

NON-INTERVENTION ONLY RATIONAL COURSE

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received December 21, 11.50 a.m.)

RUGBY, December 20.

Commenting on the Foreign Seer»« tary's speech in the House of Commons yesterday, the "Daily Telegraph" says: "Non-intervention nemains the keystone of British policy with regard to the Spanish civil war. No other rational course is open to us. The British Government's aim has been and is to make non-intervention as effective as possible, 'if the principal Powers were in earnest,' said Mi\ Eden, 'they could make it effective by a quite simple system of control.v If they do not wish it to be effective it is beyond the wit of man to devise a really effective system.' That is the plain truth, of the position. Meanwhile the British, and French Governments are not inactive in their efforts for mediation. If military stalemate continues, war weariness will assert itself the sooner. But the tempo of this murderous conflict cannot be regulated from London or from Paris. It depends on the com-' batants themselves and on those who persist in adding fuel to the flames."

GERMANS ANGERED

BERLIN, December 20.

Mr. Eden's speech has angered Get* many. An official news agency declares: "It astonished competent quarters. It is incomprehensibe that Mr. Eden should have accused Germany; and Italy of not observing the nonintervention pact in the same breath as he mentioned Russia." (Mr. Eden said:, "Despite the fact that arms ara going to Spain from Germany, Italy, and Russia, the non-intervention pact has reduced the significance" of these breaches.") '

The "National Zeitung" says: "Germany long ago proposed a more effective formula, but Britain and France, who are so fond, of speaking in thg first person, turned it down."

The "Boersen Zeitung" regards .Mr, Eden's omission of France from the list of interventionists as . "showing whither blind love can lead."