SHIPS FOR FRANCO

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 27, 2 February 1938, Page 11

SHIPS FOR FRANCO

ITALY ACCUSED

DESTROYERS RENAMED

"ACTS OF PIRACY"

.NO REBEL SUBMARINES . \

(Uiiitcii I'ress Association—-Hy Klcctric Tcltgrapli—Cnpyriglit.) (Received February 2, noon,) LONDON, February 1. The Spanish Ambassador in London has sent a Nole to the British 1 Foreign Office accusing Italy of extensive naval assistance to General Franco, "in patent violation of international pledges." He asserts that the Italian Govi ernment has given the insurgents the i destroyers Aquila and Falco, which i are sailing under the Monarchist flag and have been renamed Velasco , Ceuta and Velasco Melilla. The rebels arc also said to have . received the destroyer Alessandro Pocrio and Gulielmo Pepe under ■ identical conditions, but it is not ■ known what they have been renamed. The Note adds that two submarines which have been assigned to the rebel naval base at Sollcr, Majorca, are carrying rebel flags and that the crews have renamed them Mola and the San Jurjo. ,Tlie Embassy, in an additional Press statement, refers to newspaper statements that the British steamer Endymion was sunk by a rebel submarine, and states: "The Spanish ' Government categorically denies that the rebels have any submarines of their own, and it must be clear to the whole world that Italian submarines are committing these acts of piracy.''