History of the Week

Northland Age, Volume 6, Issue 29, 9 April 1937, Page 9

History of the Week

MEXICO AND INTERVENTION IN SPAIN

A significant item in the past

week’s cable news is the declaration by the Mexican Government that it will aid the Spanish loyalist govern-

ment in every way it can. The Mexican Government has also forwarded a note to the League of Nations in which it asserts that the present non intervention activities simply constitute a cloak for Fascist and Nazi aid to the rebels. Mexico, though the breadth of the Atlantic apart from Spain, is vitally interested in present events there, for on the issue of the struggle in the Iberian peninsula may depend whether the tragedy that has overtaken Spain may not be her illfortune next. Mexican institutions closely resemble those of its mother country. When President Cardenas re-organised his Government in June, 1935, he found himself facing the same problems which had been agitating Spain since 1931. Both countries returned to power advanced Liberal governments with strong socialistic backing, and both Governments found themselves opposed by powerful re-

actionary forces, composed of the large landowners, financial interests and clericals, determined to oppose by every means in their power the agrarian and social reforms demanded by the masses of the people. Both regimes have been consistently loyal to legal and constitutional methods of reform and opposed to violent change. In Spain the Government has been forced however to abandon the middle way in order to preserve its very existence. It has found out that there are times when there is no part for moderate men or measures, and the liberal bourgeois state with which President Azana hoped to replace feudal Spain is gone forever. President Cardenas in Mexico has been more fortunate, but how far no one can safely prophesy. He is very popular with the great mass of peasants, workers and even business men. He has acted with a good deal of energy and firmness in carrying out agrarian reform. He has effectively broken up the “Gold Shirts,” the Mexican Fascist organisation, who were a constant threat to law and order, anti has removed many corrupt and self-seeking generals from the army. But notwithstanding these measures, a complete rebel victory in Spain might easily be the signal for a rising of all the reactionary forces in Mexico, and that country made to suffer the catastrophe that has overtaken its mother country.

GIRDLING THE EARTH When the Pan-American Airways’ “Clipper” emerged from the mist that overhung the Hauraki Gulf last Tuesday week and gracefully circled from the Rangitoto channel to head up the harbour, gradually losing altitude, until she came to rest on the bosom of the Waitemata, it marked a new era in transport so far as Chs country is concerned, and completed a link in the system of airways chat is girdling the earth with New Zealand in its path. The next link will be the establishment of an air service across the Tasman with Australia to connect there with the vast Imperial Airways system which serves so many of the British possessions in Asia and Africa, and when the link between Europe and America is established the girdle encircling the earth will be complete. This new system of transportation, which has been brought before us so impressively by the flight of the “Clipper” will serve to draw us closer to our cousins in Canada and Australia and to the great republic of the Western Hemisphere, and bring us nearer to our Mothercountry and Europe. It will reduce weeks of travel to days, and must ultimately have a marked effect on our outlook on the world, and modify our racial characteristics, by promoting a broader spirit of internationalism.