MOLTON INCIDENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 14, 16 July 1937, Page 9

MOLTON INCIDENT

LABOUR MEMBERS' QUESTIONS

! (Received July 16, .9.50 a.m.) LONDON, July 15. "Is there no indignity we will not tolerate?" asked a Lr';our member in the House of Commons when Lieut.Colonel J. J. Llewellin, in a statement on behalf of the Admiralty, mentioned that the battleship Royal Oak had protested against the Spanish rebel cruiser the Almirante Cervera firing a third shot at the British steamer Molton after the Moltoa changed course inside territorial waters. Mr. A. Henderson (Labour) followed this up by asking if it were not without precedent in Engr h history for a British warship to stand by and allow a British ip to be attacked. Colonel Llewellin's reply that the shi was not attacked but was merely brought to provoked derisive laughter from the Labour benches. j The British Government's policy, he declared, had remained consistent, namely, that the Nav> would protect British shipping on the high seas, but that if a merchant ship entered Spanish territorial waters she did so at b own risk, and this vessel was in territorial waters. It had been the clear policy of the British Government not to afford protection in territorial waters, and all merchant shipping had been notified.

It is stated that the Molton was carrying no cargo. The "Daily Telegraph" says that she has been chartered by the Spanish Government since the end of June for the evacuation of refugees. In the past few weeks she has evacuated some 2000 refugees, and she is believed to have been on her way to pick up more at Santander when she was shelled. The Molton, it is added, had been waiting outside Santander for two or three days.