A LAST ATTEMPT
1rT is impossible as yet to know what success Mr. I Eden will have in the plan by which he has attempted to solve the deadlock in the Non-intervention Committee. In the House of Commons on Monday, Mr. Eden said that success depended on a greatly increased measure of international co-operation. There are few enough signs of such co-operation at the moment. It is only natural that the British Government should favour the withdrawal of volunteers as the most hopeful means of reducing the dangers of the Spanish war ; for if it could be achieved hostilities would probably come to a rapid end. But there are several reasons why it may be impossible to withdraw the volunteers. General Franco is very naturally determined not to part with them, and- there are few signs that his allies wish to recall them ; but even if they did, it is difficult to see in what Government's power it lies to recall the men of the International Brigade, many of whom are exiles from their own country and have adopted Spanish citizenship. There is a serious possibility that efforts to secure the withdrawal of volunteers may merely give an opportunity for inter- minable-discussion and delay. And though what Mr.
Keynes has called the policy of " cunctation " has not been unsuccessful so far, in the near future it may be full of dangers.
Those who oppose the policy of " non-intervention," because it may not unfairly be represented as a means of reconciling the forms of international co-operation with the facts of foreign intervention in Spain, would do well to read M. Blum's speech at the Congress of the French Socialist Party on Monday. " People will realise how narrowly they escaped war when the archives of the period are made public," he said ; and for that reason he took full responsibility for the Spanish policy pursued by his Government. That policy had two objects ; the first was to prevent foreign inter- ference in Spain and the second to avoid international incidents which might extend the sphere of the war. If it failed, as it had failed, in the first, it has until now succeeded in the second ; and for others as well as M. Blum, equally aware of the facts of foreign inter- vention, that is sufficient justification for the policy of France and Great Britain. But that policy has become progressively more difficult to maintain and at the moment is threatened with complete breakdown ; and perhaps it may become all the more difficult because the Spanish, war has by now entered on a new phase.
One year after the, outbreak of the war the Spanish Government at length appears to be capable of taking the offensive. The siege of Bilbao may yet turn out to be the second of General Franco's decisive mistakes. His victory over the Basques has in no way strengthened his military position ; but the respite given by his northern campaign has been invaluable to the Valencia Government. The Government has had time to complete the training of its raw recruits, to reconstruct the Cabinet, reorganise the military staff and to draw up a comprehensive plan of campaign. The victories won by the Govern- ment during the last week are in one respect at least unlike, and more important than, any others of the war ; for they are not the result of accidental or haphazard engagements, but of a planned offensive. And if the Government is able to maintain the initiative, and carry its campaign to a successful conclusion, General Franco's prospects of victory will become even smaller than they are now, and such a turn in the tide of the war must have a decisive effect on the policies of his foreign allies. As things are, they are faced with the dilemma either of pouring sufficient men and arms into Spain to restore General Franco's military superiority or of reconciling themselves to his defeat and the immense loss of prestige which it will involve for them ; and it must be remembered that a loss of prestige is something far more dangerous to a dictatorship than it is to a democracy.
It seems clear that if Germany and Italy take the first horn of the dilemma, and intervene even more decisively in Spain than before, the French Government at least will not be able to maintain its former policy. On Tuesday the control of the Franco-Spanish frontier was raised, though the frontier itself is still closed. But France is sufficiently alarmed by German and Italian activities in Spain and in the Mediterranean to open the frontier unless they are abandoned ; indeed it is almost a military necessity for her to insist on their coming to an end. For this reason alone it appears that " non-intervention " can only be saved if now it is made more effective, what the Japanese would call more " sincere," than before, and by this criterion Mr. Eden's proposals must be judged. In fact, it seems clear that they involve the most serious weakening of the whole structure of non-intervention ; and especially, by the complete abandonment of naval control, they surrender the only efficient safeguard against a large-scale export of arms. Mr. Eden is hardly to be blamed ; it is some- thing, if not much, if in his thankless task he has been able to preserve the Non-intervention Committee and, by the proposals regarding volunteers and granting_, of belligerent rights, provide it with matter for discussion for some time to come. But it appears unlikely that the discussions can have any appreciable effect on the progress of the war, or can remedy the conflicts which it has aroused among the European Powers. Yet so long as those conflicts continue there can be little hope of a lasting peace, especially if the supporters of either General Franco or the Valencia Government take the opportunity which now seems open to them. Mr. Chamberlain's recent metaphor of the trembling avalanche is in many respects an apt one ; yet it may be seriously misleading if, while democracies keep silent, dictators continue to roar at the top of their voices.
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