OPINION DIVIDED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 176, 25 June 1938, Page 11

OPINION DIVIDED

BRITISH POLICY IN SPAIN. GOVERNAIENT AIEAIBERS. ANALYSIS OF VOTING. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received June 25, 8.5 a.m. LONDON, June 24. Tho Australian Associated Press states that the Government’s majority last night on tho motion for tho adjournment was qne of the smallest on a major issue of the present Parliament. The division lists reveal many Conservative abstentions. Uneasiness is spreading throughout the Government ranks as a result of tho ceaseless and definite bombing of British ships. The Government members have no desire to harass Mr Chamberlain, but are divided into two camps. One accepts Mr Chamberlain’s policy that intervention would mean war and consoles itself with the reassurance that ships enter at their own risks, the owners and crews earning large profits. The other is deeply distressed and anxious that Mr Chamberlain should restore British prestige and discover an effective counter without risking war. NO INTERVENTION. BOMBING OF BRITISH SHIPS. DEBATE IN COMMONS. fßritish Official Wireless.) RUGBY, June 23. Speaking to his motion on the adjournment of the House of Commons on tho subject of further attacks on British ships in Spanish waters Mr C. R. Attlee (Labour Leader) claimed that it was a really extraordinary position if the powerful British Navy could not assure protection or exact immunity for British shipping from General Franco, whose naval forces were relatively negligible. , Mr Attleo recalled that Mr Chamberlain had insisted that the attacks must be regarded as made by ’planes and pilots under the control of General Franco, and argued that in that case the position was simplified, for if tho Government took action no complications, he inferred, could arise with anv other Power —least of all, he suggested, with any other Power represented on tlie Non-Intervention Committee, which must share the British feelings regarding these attacks on merchant ships operating within the provisions of tho non-intervention system and under the surveillance of the Non-Intervention Board’s officers. Mr Chamberlain (Prime Minister), in reply, twitted the Opposition with a new-found enthusiasm for the defence of British rights and property andexpressed doubt if their motives were entirely unmixed. He charged them with really desiring to see intervention on the side of the Spanish Government, and when the Opposition Leader intervened to assert that the Labour movement had accepted the non-interven-tion policy until it had been shown to be absolutely one-sided, he said that if any of the Opposition were still for non-intervention it behoved them not to be diverted from it by any provocation. The Prime Minister was subjected to considerable interruption from the Opposition benches, and at one point in his speech interrupters had to be ejected from the public gallery.