COMMONS DEBATE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 80, 5 April 1938, Page 11

COMMONS DEBATE

ATTACK BY LABOUR

FOREIGN POLICY

INTERVENTION QUESTION

(British Official Wireless.) \ Received April 5, 11 a.m.)

RUGBY, April 4

Rising to take part in the debate in the House of Commons on the Labour Party's motion of censure of the Government, the Prime Minister, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, who was received with prolonged cheers, said it was the fifteenth debate on foreign affairs in nine weeks and that such concentrated attention on one subject must be unprecedented in British Parliamentary history.

The debate was raised by Mr. Arthur Greenwood, who directed chief attention to the Spanish situation and to the question of foreign assistance to nationalist forces. Mr. Greenwood said he could give particulars of the number of new aeroplanes which had gone to Spain since Mr. Anthony 1 " ',->n's resignation" as Foreign Secrej. He could prove that there had jeena large accession of military strength to the nationalist forces. "I have figures and the numbers and types of aeroplanes that"" have gone ; there," he declared. "I have photostat copies of German documents showing the structure of German air squadrons, one of which destroyed the last British ship that was destroyed. I have the names of the Germans who were in the aeroplane that destroyed that ship. It was brought down when bombing a Spanish railway line. I have here a photostat copy of the identification card of an officer who makes, very serious admissions and who obviously does, not speak without knowledge." NO INTENTION TO CHANGE POLICY. In replying, Mr. Chamberlain said that the policy of the British Government had won the general approval of the wholfe country and practically the whole world. It was still a fact that the Government looked forward to the time when the League of Nations would be so strengthened and so revitalised as to fulfil its purpose to be an effective instrument for the prevention of war and the establishment of a settled peace in the world. "We shall 'do.our' best to increase ■the efficiency of the: League until it is capable of performing those functions," he said, "but it cannot perform them today." , , • , ' The Prime... Minister said that the Government had no intention ... of changing its policy regarding nonintervention in Spain. •• The Liberal Leader, Sir Archibald Sinclair, said he thought it a -mistake to have had a debate. The Prime Minister's policy had not won the country's approval, nor that of the Dominions and the whole of the rest of the world, as JVtr. Chamberlain claimed. "Call the "League of Nations together before it is too late to rally the forces of freedom and justice," he urged. "We wan to put peace, law, and justice in the world on the' moral basis of the Covenant of the League of Nations." The Labour censure motion was as follows:-T-''That as the foreign policy of the British Government cannot arrest the dangerous drift towards war and is inconsistent' with" its election pledges, the House is of opinion that the issue should be submitted to the, country without delay."