SPAIN'S CRISIS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22618, 5 January 1937, Page 9

SPAIN'S CRISIS

besieged_madrid EPIDEMIC of typhoid FOEEIGN ATT) SOUGHT MEDICAL delegations ONE SEEKING VACCINE By Telceraph—Press Association—Copyright (ReccivpfJ January 4, o.«> p.m.) LONDON, Jan. n A correspondent of the Daily Mail jn'a despatch from Perpignan, southeastern France, says the long feared epidemic of typhoid fever, due to siege conditions, broke out in Madrid on Christmas Day. It is confined mostly to the civil population. The Spanish Government has despatched two medical delegations from Valencia to seek help from Paris and from the League of Nations. The former delegation will procure vaccine from the Pasteur Institute. A message from Geneva 011 December 31 stated that the League of Nations had agreed to the request of the Spanish Government that experts be sent to Spain to suggest measures for the prevention of epidemics. A member of the French Academy of Medicine and tha head of the Polish Government's Department for the Study of Epidemics •were appointed. PLIGHT OF PEOPLE SUFFERINGS IN CAPITAL PRIMATE'S URGENT PLEA British Wireless RUGBY, Jan. 3 In a New Year diocesan message, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Cosmo Gordon Lang, refers to the situation in Spain. "Although there has been a temporary slackening of strife, there seems to be little prospect of its cessation," he states. "So one can read the accounts of the sufferings of the people of Madrid without a sickening of the heart. We must all earnestly hope and pray that foreign intervention may not endanger the already sorely-tried hope of European peace." WAR MATERIALS SHIPMENT FROM MEXICO PRESIDENT IMPOSES BAN (Received January 4, 6.30 p.m.) MEXICO CITY, Jan. 3 As a means of co-operating with President Roosevelt ip his "good neighbour policy," the President of Mexico, General Cardenas, has ordered Customs officials to bar the shipment of United States war materials through Mexican ports to Spain.. A message from Washington states that the Acting-Secretary of State, Mr. R. W. Moore, said the Mexican action was purely voluntary and not the result of any protest by the United States. He praised General Cardenas. Observers regard the incident as a concrete proof of the value of the recent Peace Conference at Buenos Aires. The Mexico City correspondent of the New York Times stated 011 December 31 that American aeroplanes, notably bombers, were being purchased for Mexican interests, which in turn resold them to the Spanish loyalists' Embassy in the Mexican capital. Shipments to Spain were made from Vera Cruz. Four such aeroplanes had been flown direct from the United States in the previous few days.

AIR RAID VICTIMS PATHETIC INCIDENTS MANY HOMES DESTROYED Describing an air raid on Madrid the *ar correspondent of the News Chronicle wrote: The centre of the city to-day bears terrible scars from last night's air raid. In 12 great holes which gape in the Puerta del Sol lie a tangled mass of paring stones, piping, twisted iron, broken balustrades from the underground entrances and plaster from the walls of a building near by. A bus-stop sign leans over, touching a tramrai! which has been uprooted and blown five yards from the tramway. In the streets in the vicinity smoke still rises from smouldering buildings, and house after house shows shattered walls find broken windows. One block is almost burned out, and the Carmen Market, a small Co vent Garden, is a mass of ruined stalls and ashes. Firemen and housebreakers are still searching the ruins for dead and wounded. In a house just off the Calle de Montera I saw the bodies of two women in a crouching position wedged under a beam in a room on the ground floor. In another house firemen and militiawen were working furiously to clear a pile of debris 30ft. high. From inside faint cries have' hcen heard. It is believed that a whole family is still trapped there.

One bomb fell in the dispensary of the San Carlos Hospital, damaging it severely, though the rest of the hospital, which was'crowded with wounded, ff as not harmed. Outside the radio station there is a deep hole, and the e *plosion blew out some of tho windows °f Madrid's one-price store. ]t scattered dolls and cushions from a window display all ovpr the pavement. On corner is a pile of rubbish • ro ® the store buildings among which Jjttle boys looks for things of value. Street doorways are crowded with refugees, many of whom spend the night ln the open, huddled in the nearest shelter to their' ruined homes. In one place I saw an old woman w 'th nothing, but a canary in a green £ a ge and a bifndlc of bedding saved from the wreck. In another was a mother —whose sole belongings were a bag of vegetables and a blanket—a baby, at her breast, while ® pirl stood by with wondering eyes. is a refugee from Gctafc" (Madrid s aerodrome), a man standing by told me. "Her husband is a militiaman "i the Guadarramas. This is the second home which has been destroyed over head."