Spain, Geneva and Brest The Spanish conflict has bulked more
largely this week in France and at Geneva than on Spanish soil. In Spain itself only sporadic fighting has taken place, with no major movement. At the League of Nations Assembly the Spanish Prime Minister, Sefior Negrin, has delivered a convincing denunciation of the external aggression which alone protracts a war that would have ended long ago if it had been fought between Spaniards only. He alleged, moreover, that Italy was intending to send another hundred thousand men to Spain. Little that the Spanish Premier said can be contro- verted, but the Powers are—rightly—thinking more of the peace of Europe than of the peace of Spain, and that at least has been preserved so far. Spain has failed to secure re-elec- tion to the League of Nations Council, partly owing to a growing dislike of the principle of semi-permanent seats— Turkey is also displaced, for the same reason—and partly owing to the opposition, from varied and abstruse motives, of most of the Latin-American States. On France the conflict has impinged in the form of a sensational attempt by insurgent agents to suborn the captain of a Spanish Government sub- marine undergoing repairs at Brest, and gain possession of the vessel. As a result a number of Franco agents, most conspicuous among them a Major Troncoso, Governor of Irun, have been arrested. Evidence of their complicity in last week's bomb outrages in Paris is accumulating, and there is pretty certainly more to come yet.
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