AFTER ALMERIA
GERMAN ships in the Mediterranean having bom- barded the sleeping population of the Spanish port of Almeria, killed between 20 and 3o and wounded an unknown number, in retaliation for the 26 killed and 8o wounded in an aerial attack on the battleship ' Deutschland,' the German Government has declared its honour satisfied• and reprisals at an end. Mr. Eden has said in the House of Commons that he regretted the ' Deutschland ' incident and regretted the Almeria incident, and from some points of view the expression of emotion can best be left at that. The attack on the ' Deutschland ' was an act of criminal folly indis- tinguishable from crime. The bombardment of Almeria was a criminal act made the more criminal by the fact that it was the fruit not of folly but of deliberate policy. The impulse on which Herr Hitler acted is no doubt intelligible enough. An attack on a German battleship had resulted in more casualties than any ship in the fleet had sustained since 1918. Dictators cannot hesitate in such cases. They live in an atmosphere of melodrama and it is essential to maintain it. No impartial tribunal can be tolerated. They must be judges in their own cause and take the law into their own hands, even if it is the law of the jungle. Hence the instant order for the attack on Almeria, followed by the declaration that the death and mutilation inflicted there on women and children who had never heard of the ' Deutschland' was sufficient reparation and no further measures of reprisal would be taken. The lex talionis had been executed and the dead of the Deutschland' were avenged.
That is now history. The provocation to Herr Hitler, it must be conceded, was intense. Not all the facts about the attack on the ' Deutschland' are clear. There is a conflict of evidence in particular as to whether the vessel fired on the Spanish aeroplanes which flew over her as she lay in harbour at Iviza, but the allegation of the Spanish authorities that she did is unconfirmed. Her duties did not take her to Iviza, but she was per- fectly entitled to be there, as much entitled as H.M.S. ' Hardy was to be at Palma, in Majorca, where she narrowly escaped being hit in an air-raid last week. Clearly there is danger to any foreign vessels in such a case, for it cannot be expected that their presence in a port held by one of the two Spanish combatants should confer on the port immunity from attack by the other. At the same time the question how far the Spanish internal conflict is to be allowed to endanger ships of all nations in the vicinity of Spain may very properly be raised. If the non-intervention States were working in genuine cor cut for the sole purpose of confining the Spanish war to Spain they could very properly demand, and enforce, the cessation of the bombardment of Spanish ports by Spaniards, whether from the sea or the air. If the non-intervention patrol is effective neither side need fear that the ports in the hands of the other are being used for the landing of munitions or volunteers, and if Spaniards must kill one another it should involve no grave sacrifice to confine the opera- tion to the land.
That proposal is still worth considering. It would meet Herr Hitler's demand for " sure guarantees " that no incident similar to the attack on the ' Deutsch- land ' shall recur. And it is consistent with his desire for joint action by the non-intervention Powers in the case of infringement by either Spanish belligerent. Short of that—and it is to be feared that only some measure falling short of that will be practicable—Mr. Eden's proposal for the general establishment of safety zones in Spanish harbours, such as already exist at Barcelona and elsewhere, would go far towards meeting the need. It is idle to pretend that, for all the sincerity our sympathy with Germany in the loss of life on the ' Deutschland,' the retaliatory bombardment of Almeria is not universally reprobated and condemned. But the Non-Intervention Committee has to go on working. There must be either non-intervention or intervention. And unless we are to revert to the latter, with all its incalculable perils, the return of the German delegate to his place on the committee is essential.
Since that is so, and since Herr Hitler announces that there will be no more reprisals, and implies that Germany is ready to continue the non-intervention policy, every practicable step to ensure the safety of foreign ships, whether British, German, French or. Italian, in Spanish waters must be taken. It is something, as a German paper has observed, that events so dramatic and dis- turbing as those of last Sunday and Monday should have been treated everywhere as local in their significance and not as tinder from which a universal blaze might spread. But congratulations on such an escape may be over-confident and premature. The recurrence of an in- cident like the attack on the ' Deutschland' would have very different effects from the incident that is agitating the different capitals today. And even that incident is not liquidated yet. Until it is, and Germany has resumed her work as a member of the Non-Intervention Com- mittee, the situation must remain grave.
Certain French papers fear that Germany and Italy may yet use this crisis as an excuse for resuming intervention against the Spanish Government. That may well represent Italy's desires, if not her fixed inten- tion. In the case of Germany there are better reasons for rejecting the conclusion till it is forced on us by facts. There have been many signs that Herr Hitler is genuinely tired of intervention in Spain, and would be glad to see German troops there withdrawn if the withdrawal were comprehensive and included all for- eigners fighting on both sides. At the same time the negotiation of a Franco-German trade treaty portends some slight relaxation of tension in another quarter, and observations like those of the German Ambassador at Washington last month on Germany's willingness to discuss arms limitation, and of Dr. Schacht at Paris last week on Germany's willingness, under certain conditions, to return to a reformed League of Nations, suggest, for all their vagueness, that there are avenues needing to be explored, apart from, and in addition to, Western Pact discussions. The new British Ambassador in Berlin said in that city on Tuesday that a Germany standing for peace in Europe would find Britain. her best friend. That is profoundly true, and the friendship of Great Brtan is not negligible.
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