FROM JULY 3 TO AUGUST 3
SPANISH CIVIL STRIFE
Class War. —Less emphasized than national rivalries as a cause of war, class strife in Spain developed in July into a desperate conflict which within a month had caused greater bloodshed than the American participation in the World War. It was a war of the upper classes against the lower classes, since in Spain there is no strong bourgeoisie. Monarchists, fascists, and clericals united temporarily to overthrow the Left coalition of Republicans, Marxists, and Syndicalist Workers that has controlled the government since the election of last February. Trouble began with the killing of a lieutenant of the Civil Guards or special “shock police” and the reprisal murder of Senor Calvo Soldo, a deputy and former finance minister of the Right cabinet. Forty deputies thereupon resigned and hostilities began. Rightist generals who had been shifted to isolated posts in Morocco and the Spanish islands led their troops in open rebellion. After gaining control in Morocco, the rebels landed at Cadiz and were soon supported also in Northern Spain. By July 25, twenty-eight out of fifty provinces were in rebel hands and several armies were converging on Madrid. The working classes were armed by the government and joined more effectively than had been expected in its defense. While the outcome remained uncertain at the close of July, much would evidently depend on the extent to which the rebel troops could be controlled by their leaders in this fratricidal strife.
One certainty is that some form of Fascist or army dictatorship will be established if the rebels win, and a closer approach to a socialistic order if they lose. Isolated though Spain is from the rest of Europe, this conflict of opposite political ideas deeply concerns Fascist Italy and the Socialist government in France. Aid from abroad for either faction will be countered by aid for the other, and might quickly involve other European nations. In view of this danger, France on July 31 proposed a conference of Britain, France, and Italy to decide on neutrality policy.
MEDITERRANEAN PROBLEMS
League Ends Sanctions. —At its special session in July the League Assembly adopted a resolution ending the application of sanctions against Italy on July 15. Of the 48 states represented 44 voted favorably and 4 refrained from voting. The resolution provided for a committee of experts to study the legal and other difficulties encountered in this form of League action and to report at the regular Assembly meeting in September. A vote was avoided on the resolution offered by the Ethiopian delegate that no League state should recognize Italy’s conquests, but Emperor Haile Selassie’s speech condemning Italy’s war methods and the League’s failure was accorded high praise, despite a 10-minute hostile demonstration by Italian journalists.
England Placates Italy. —Following the cessation of sanctions, Italy made friendly declarations to Turkey, Greece, and Yugoslavia, but still declined to attend the Dardanelles conference or the projected meeting of Locarno powers unless all hostile measures were ended, particularly the mutual aid agreement which Britain had made with France and the Mediterranean states mentioned above. France withdrew from the accord as early as July 9, declaring it no longer necessary, and at the close of July England announced its cancellation with the other powers. Earlier than this, however, Germany signalized her renewed understanding with Premier Mussolini by being the first to recognize the altered status of Ethiopia and changing her representative at Addis Ababa from a minister to a consul general. Her action served to emphasize the similar problem now faced by the United States and other powers.
Earlier in July British naval re-enforcements were withdrawn from the Mediterranean, though in doing so Sir Samuel Hoare, First Lord of the Admiralty, declared there would be a British fleet there “for another 300 years.”
Turkey Gains Straits Control. — The Dardanelles conference at Montreux ended on July 20 with the signing of a new convention which conceded most of Turkey’s demands for control and refortification of the Turkish Straits and gave to Russia a practically free exit for her Black Sea fleet. The agreement was signed by nine of the powers who were parties to the earlier Straits Convention— Great Britain, France, the Soviet Republic, Japan, Turkey, Greece, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, Among former signatories, Italy alone was not included, but provision was made for her later acceptance. Neither Italy nor Germany viewed favorably the increased freedom granted Russia, even though her Black Sea forces are at present nonexistent. The terms of the Convention may be summarized as follows:
(1) As in the earlier Lausanne treaty, freedom of passage is accorded to merchant vessels in peace and war, unless, when Turkey is a belligerent, such vessels are engaged in unneutral service.
(2) Russia and other Black Sea states secure unlimited right of exit for naval vessels in time of peace.
(3) In time of war, Turkey as a neutral may close the Straits, unless the naval vessels seeking passage are acting under the League or in support of a regional agreement of which Turkey is a signatory.
(4) In peace time, no non-Black Sea state is permitted to have more than 30,000 tons of naval craft inside the Straits. The Straits are closed to aircraft except in designated lanes.
(5) The international Straits commission is ended. Turkey regains practically full control and right of refortification, and even in peace time may close the passage when menaced by war, unless the League Council by a two-thirds vote takes responsibility for her security.
Chief gainers by the treaty are Turkey, the Soviet Republic, and also the League, whose authority is recognized as a factor in Straits control. Germany found a menace in the treaty in that the Soviet government might shift her whole Black Sea fleet to the Baltic before war was declared. In these conditions Germany pointed out that she might be forced to exceed the one-third limits of the Anglo- German naval pact, in order to maintain a strength equal to the Soviet total.
CENTRAL EUROPEAN PROBLEMS
New Locarno Plans. —After unburdening themselves of the Italo-Ethiopian problem at the League session in early July, England and France turned to the more serious issue raised by Germany’s occupation of the Rhineland and the more recent Italo-German agreement over Austria. Invitations to Italy to join in discussion of the Rhineland and a “new Locarno” were met by the condition that Germany must also be invited and that all pacts entered into against Italy in connection with the sanctions must be quickly brought to an end. Both these conditions were complied with before the close of July. At a brief conference in London on July 23, Great Britain, France, and Belgium agreed to invite both Germany and Italy to join with them in framing “a new agreement to take the place of the Rhineland Pact of Locarno,” and if successful in this to grapple with other problems affecting the peace of Europe. The communique announcing this decision was conciliatory in tone, stating that any future agreement must be entered into on a free and equal basis by all powers concerned, and that nothing could be more fatal to the cause of peace than a revival of the pre-war system of alliances and the division of Europe into blocs of mutually hostile nations. Italy at the close of July accepted the invitation “in principle” but set as further conditions that her conquest of Ethiopia be recognized in fact, if not in right, and that the question of Mediterranean armaments be taken up by the five powers alone, and only after arriving at an agreement with Germany. Germany also gave conditional acceptance.
With this new effort to bring Germany into a general European settlement England may be said to face a parting of the ways. Should it fail—and the outlook is none too promising—she will be driven in support of her Locarno pledges into a closer league with France and the Soviet Republic, and the alignment of nations will again resemble that which existed before the World War. That is why a pro- German element in the British Cabinet and many other Englishmen friendly toward Germany would bend every effort to win the Nazi government to a settlement at this time. As stated by Lord Lothian at a London meeting of the Anglo-German fellowship on July 14:
The real danger today is that the world will gradually become locked in an alignment like that of 1914 from which statesmen will be unable to break out and which will proceed from crisis to crisis until it finally explodes in a world war. I believe there is an overwhelming desire in the public opinon of this country that a serious effort should be made to arrive at a final settlement with Germany.
The first essential is for Britain to abandon the method of the recent questionnaire to Berlin and substitute for it free and frank discussion around the table.
The chief deterrent to war is that Germany is not yet ready to fight, and that the Western nations do not want to. But British rearmament measures indicate that England does not intend to be taken unprepared.
Great Britain Rearms. —Whatever changes may take place in the British Conservative Cabinet—and there is much talk of the declining influence of Premier Baldwin—it is certain that the vigorous preparedness program will continue. Rearmament was approved in the last election as a means of supporting the League, but it now stands as vital to the safety of the empire. Objections on grounds of economy are met by the argument that Germany spent $400,000,000 in armaments last year, a sum twice that represented by the British military appropriations. Sir Thomas Inskip, British Minister for Coordination of Defense, announced that 52 factories had been offered munitions contracts, that factories and munitions stores were being shifted to safer locations in the North and West, and that plans were under way for reserve stores of food and other essential commodities, to guard against a temporary stoppage of communications.
Along with the new naval building program, England on July 15 formally announced that she would avail herself of the “escalator” clause in the London naval treaty to retain 47,000 tons of destroyer tonnage due for scrapping this year, an action that will enable the United States to keep to the British level of 190,000 tons. England will also retain four 10,000- ton Hawkins class cruisers. There was agitation in Parliament over German rearmament of Helgoland and other coastal islands in the North Sea, but the Foreign Office indicated that this would be left with other treaty violations for discussion at the projected Locarno conference.
Danzig Nazis Defiant. —At the July session of the League Council Dr. Arthur Greiser, President of the Danzig Senate, assumed an attitude of deliberate defiance, violently attacking the activities of League Commissioner Sean Lester, demanding freedom from interference in Danzig’s internal affairs, and ending with a gesture toward the press gallery that shocked even the gentlemen of that body. Subsequently the Danzig Senate stiffened its measures to curb opposition by further restricting the press and by a decree abolishing political parties which issued propaganda “likely to endanger the state’s interest.”
England turned a deaf ear to the French proposal that the Nazification of Danzig be taken up by a special session of the League Council, and preferred that Poland, as the party primarily concerned, defend her own interests and thus test the value of the 10-year German-Polish peace pact. According to reports at the close of the month, Polish protests had been met by a “favorable” reply. Nevertheless, an armed clash in Danzig might quickly start a European conflagration.
Austro-German Pact. —Simultaneous radio announcements in Vienna and Berlin on the night of July 11 gave news of an agreement between Austria and Germany. The significance of this agreement lay not so much in its actual terms as in its evidence that Mussolini and the Nazis had reached a working compromise over Austria, and that this suggested further co-operation between the two dictator-led nations. This was what, in the conventional phrase, “shook the chancelleries of Europe.” On the surface the pact appeared harmless enough. Germany agreed not to interfere in Austria’s internal affairs, friendly intercourse was to be re-established, and the Austrian government was to recognize the common racial ties—that Austria was “a German state.” This would seem to put the situation in Central Europe on a more realistic basis, breaking down the effort of the Western nations to maintain in Austria an artificial regime without popular support or sound economic basis. But to most Western journalists it meant the first step toward Anschluss. Chancellor Schuschnigg had gone over to the Nazis. The way was now open for German expansion. Recovery of Danzig would be the first step, and the next an advance toward the Danube. The suppressed Socialists in Austria condemned the agreement as creating a bridge between Italy and Germany, the two militaristic and fascist states.
It was believed that the agreement was in two parts, a brief public statement, and a large number of secret annexes. The published communique was in summary as follows:
(1) Germany recognized the sovereignty of Austria along the lines of the Führer’s announcement of May 21, 1936, i.e., Germany pledged non-interference in Austria’s internal affairs but wished the Austrian people to have freedom to exercise the right of self-determination.
(2) Austria was to bring her political policies “into conformity with the principle that Austria professes herself to be a German state,” but this was in no way to affect the trade and other agreements made with Italy and Hungary in the protocols of Rome of 1934 and their supplements of 1936.
(3) Both states were to adopt measures to lessen the tension between them, Germany by lifting restrictions on travel and trade, and Austria by an amnesty releasing Nazi political prisoners and by including a number of moderate National Socialists in the General Council of the Father- land Front.
In the secret portions of the pact Austria was reported to have agreed to increase her armed forces, and to have made a pledge that the restoration of the Haps- burgs was not “a topical problem.” As a first step in this new orientation of policy, the Austrian government announced the early retirement of many army officers of anti-German sentiments.
Pressure on Czechoslovaks. —Among the Little Entente states the one most menaced by German expansion is Czechoslovakia, whose western portion is an enclave surrounded by German territory on three sides and inhabited by two and a half million Germans. It was reported in London that, as the price of non-interference, Hitler was demanding that the Czechs end their military agreements with the Soviet Republic, and give these German districts virtual autonomy.
Needless to say, the Czech state was not ready to sacrifice its Russian safeguards. On the contrary the press in July revealed plans for a new strategic railway to Russia, traversing Rumanian rather than Polish territory, which would bring soviet troops quickly into the heart of Central Europe. Plans for the line were made at a recent meeting of Little Entente military staffs at Bucharest.
UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA
Conference Program Limited. —The agenda for the conference of American nations to be held late this autumn was, as completed in July by the special committee, limited fairly strictly to the original purpose of “perfecting and extending existing machinery for arbitration and conciliation,” and taking up incidentally matters of neutrality legislation and closer cultural relations. Civil rights of women and social welfare of workers were excluded from the program, and questions relating to disarmament and an American league of nations were not stressed.
Boundary Arbitration. —On July 6 Peru and Ecuador reached agreement on the terms on which they will submit to arbitration their long standing dispute over 120,000 square miles of jungle and table-land on their easterly frontiers in the headwaters of the Amazon. Formal hearings before the President of the United States, as arbiter, are expected to begin at the close of September.
FAR EAST
South China Revolt Ended. —The long tension between the southern Chinese provinces of Kwantung and Kwangsi and the Nanking government was ended in July, chiefly, it would appear, by well- placed distribution of funds and promises among the Southern leaders. As the Executive Committee of Kuomintang met on July 10 there was a very general defection of leaders, troops, and aircraft from the Cantonese side. General Chen Chia-tang, Cantonese war lord, fled to Hongkong, and General Yu Han-mou, who had brought planes north, was sent south again as new military and political executive under Nanking. Military forces to an estimated number of 200,000, as well as vast munitions stores, fell under Nanking control and the Central Government’s authority was extended to a point not hitherto reached since the establishment of the republic. Orders were issued for a strong troop concentration against the Kwangsi leaders still in revolt.
Anti-Japanese agitation in the South was checked, since China, as a Nanking leader remarked, has no wish to be a “second Ethiopia,” but the end of the revolt may enable General Chiang Kai-shek to take a somewhat firmer stand against Japanese aggression.