THE SPANISH WAR.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 156, 3 June 1937, Page 8

THE SPANISH WAR.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —In your issue ,of the 31st inst. there was a report of a meeting held under the asuspices of the Talmerston North Spanish Relief Committee, the speakers being Mr S. J. Bennett ami JL)r. AV. M. Smith. The keynote was England’s wrongs. l)r. Smith, said, in reference to the nurses being questioned at Auckland, that the British Foreign Office was the culprit, and the meeting was brought to a finish by passing a vote of censure on the police. AVhen the Abyssinian AAar broke out certain people said that England would join in oecause of vested interests. England stayed out and then she was declared to be frightened. Mr Bennett in his address said that the people were lacking in imagination. 1 think not so much as in the past, and they are waking up. Some wonder why there was no mention made of assistance for the Abyssinia ns when Mussolini was pouring down vengeance on helpless women and children. Some said that lie was going to convert them from savagery to Christianity, but all the missionaries had to leave shortly after M.ussolini arrived there. No, Mr Bennett, the people are not lacking in imagination; they are beginning to think. If the Abyssinians were unworthy of help, 1 why be so anxious about Spain, whose people gathered in thousands periodically to see a fight between an infuriated bull arid a man on horseback and cheered themselves hoarse, in many cases the horse staggering around the ring disembowelled. —I am, etc., AHGILANT. May 31, 1937.