Mr. Eden on Spain The speech delivered by Mr. Eden
in the House of Commons on Tuesday on the eve of his departure for Geneva covered a wide field. ,He justified, by no means to the full satisfaction of the House, the belated applica- tion of the Foreign Enlistment Act to the Spanish conflict by the disclosure that if some British volunteers have enlisted (as they unquestionably have) from principle, others have gone under the lure of lavish financial offers. He stated his own conviction, which there is every reason to regard as well founded, that n) Spaniard on either side in the present conflict would submit to foreign domination after the struggle is over ; and, with obvious reference to Signor Mussolini's remark to a Volkischer Beobachter interviewer that the establish- ment of a Soviet Republic in Catalonia would obviously involve a change in the status quo within the meaning of the Anglo-Italian agreement, the Foreign Secretary declared categorically that " there is no word, no line, no comma in the Anglo-Italian Declaration which could give any foreign Power a right to intervene in Spain, whatever the complexion of the government in any part of that country." It is well to have that explicit declara- tion put plainly on record, but that Signor Mussolini can interpret the Declaration one way and Mr. Eden another is disconcerting.
