Mediation in Spain With the threatened attack on Madrid still
postponed and the number of foreign soldiers fighting on Spanish soil increasing daily, the most important feature of the Spanish situation today is the concerted movement for mediation launched by the British and French Governments. The urgency of the need for an armistice is obvious. The military situation is virtually a dead- lock. Madrid is untaken and will only fall, if at all, after prolonged and bloody street-fighting ; what the capital and its civilian population are suffering already the British M.P.'s who have just returned from there have testified. Winter is setting in. Both sides are now, in obvious breach of the non-intervention agreement, being supplied with munitions sufficient for a prolonged contest. At the same time the flow into Spain of rival contingents of French and Russians, Germans and Italians, is turning the conflict into an international war which may at any moment expand beyond the Spanish frontiers. Statesmanship as well as humanity counsel mediation, but the concurrence of Germany and Italy is necessary and it cannot yet be counted on. If Signor Mussolini still claims to ,dictate, or veto, a particular form of government in Spain any mediatory action by Italy must be suspect. But the Anglo-French initiative is amply justified, and it may bear fruit.
