THE FASCISTS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3895, 28 April 1937, Page 10

THE FASCISTS

WHY THEY FALL OUT. SPANISH AFTERMATH. Mr W. Mansfield Cooper, a Workers' Educational Association tutor, for the north western district, lecturing at a “one day school” in Manchester on “The Spanish Conflict,” said: "If the Fascist Governments survive long enough, an inter-Fascist war is one of the things absolutely bound to happen. The fact that Italy is tending to a conciliatory policy, despite Goering’s visit, shows that Mussolini is tending to resent German dominance in Spain.” Mr Cooper said that all the talk about Socialism and Communism had not prevented many capitalists from supporting the Spanish Government. They knew that a rebel victory would put in power all those forces which had for so long held Spanish industry in bonds. There were fighting for the Government as many loyal members of the Roman Catholic Church were fighting against it. The Franco

party was now using the wireless in criticism of the Vatican. It was dis-

satisfied with the Pope’s Christmas broadcast, because it had not declared in favour of Franco and excommuni cated those priests who were support ing the Government. The German influence was showing itself in the anti Catholic policy.

Franco was unlike the other Fascist leaders in that he had no mass following. Even if he won the first phase of the struggle, he could nol hope to hold the country down. Few countries had so strong a love of liberty. Spain had been working for genuine representative government tor more than a century. But what was going to happen when the Socialists and anarchists in co-operation were victorious? It might be that the anarchists would have found in the turmoil that their anarchist ideas would not work. Alternatively Spain was big enough for an experiment on federal lines. GERMAN INFLUENCES. Mr Cooper went back into the history of Spain.in the last-century and the long struggle for' influence between Britain, France and Germany. He said German .fear of French rivalry in Spain was the root cause of the Franco-German War. There was evidence of a pre-war German scheme to get Gibraltar back for Spain in return for the Canary and Balearic Islands. Germany had for years organised campaigns in the Spanish Press, and Spanish papers received large amounts of German advertisements. Papers found in the German Embassy, in Madrid, when it was left empty, included a request for the names of the German firms advertising in papers hostile to Germany.

Dealing with the post war policy of a discontented Italy, Mr Cooper said Mussolini had been a friend of Germany for years, even though Germany was predominantly Socialist. He turned away from pro-German policy the moment the star of Hitler began to rise. Fascism and National Socialism might have superficial resemblances, but at bottom the policies of the two countries were fatally antagonis tic. Mussolini saw that Europe was not big enough to contain an extended Roman Empire and an empire of all German speaking peoples. If Hitlerian policy was to be fulfilled Italy would have a powerful Germany in-, stead of a weak Austria as its neighbour and would have to return the part of Tyrol (with its compact majority of Germans) ceded to it after the war. EVEN RUSSIA ANXIOUS. Italy’s move away from Germany and toward France was checked by the failure to carry out the full obligations of the League Covenant at the Lime of the war in Abyssinia, and Italy ami Germany at present stood together. But German Governments always overplayed their hands and failed to understand the people they were dealing with. It was significant of the nervousness in Europe that even Russia had been anxious for nonintervention in Spain. In discussion, Mr Cooper said in relation to the subject of volunteers for Spain that though a lawyer he would rather see the law broken than the international system allowed to be destroyed. Without that system there could be no real international law. Those who fought because they believed themselves to be right were likely to prevail rather than those who fought at the command of dictators.