NEWS OF THE WEEK
TO have secured complete agreement (apart from the always equivocal Portugal) on the banning of volunteers to Spain at this late hour is a great deal better than not securing it at all—for Europe, if not for Spain itself. It is true that Italy has been rushing troops into Spain in the last week—a large detachment is said actually to have dis- embarked from a warship—and there may well be a final influx before the ban becomes effective at midnight on Saturday. Even then the problem of establishing an effective control on Spain's sea and land frontiers has to be solved. If Portugal still considers that her amour propre requires her to resist a frontier-control to which France has readily consented the naval patrol should be extended without more discussion to cover her coasts as well as Spain's. It is hard to resist the conclusion that Germany and Italy have at last abandoned their objections to the ban and the control scheme because they believe that General Franco has now enough foreign support to give him victory. A French estimate, not likely to exaggerate foreign help to the Spanish Government, puts the foreigners (other than Moors) on either side at about the same figure--6o,000—but the insurgents have a heavy advantage in the matter of munitions and equipment. That may turn the scale, for the defenders of Madrid, who might be expected to relieve the pressure on the capital by a concerted offensive, are withheld by shortage of ammunition. Madrid is in greater danger today than at any moment since the war began.
