The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-08-30

W N<S1SAANANS V StAAAStAASS 4J S4AS ' for a few pounds Sterling W The same story has featured Bri- tish diplomacy throughout the past decade-and longer. To a lesser extent recently it has tinctured the maneuvering of our own State Department.
 REAL FACT was that a major ity in the British Cabinet never did want an alliance with Russia, looked upon the Soviet as an in- ternational leper, likely to infest the British body polite with loath- some disease.
 The fear of Hitler forced this majority into minority, but the minority remained powerful, and even those within the Cabinet who agreed that Russia was necessary to Britain, sat down with Soviet diplomats as if they had halitosis.
 For instance, instead of send
 ing Sir Robert Vansittart, top
 man in the British Foreign Off,
 flee, to Moscow to do the nego-
 tiating, thus tickling the vanity
 of the Soviets, Chamberlain sent
 a No. 2 diplomat to perform this,
 most important and most deli-
 cate diplomatic job facing Bri- tain.
 Meanwhile Chamberlain was telling his Parliament and the press that g Russian alliance was 8 matter of days, perhaps hours, when he must have known what well-informed observers knew in Washington, that his negotiators were stymied. During the same week that this column, endeavor- ing to report the real news, was predicting that there would be no Anglo-Russia pact, Chamberlain was assuring Parliament there would be no Anglo Russian pact, Chamberlain was assuring Parlia- ment that there would.
 REAL FACT was that during the Moscow negotiations, a group in the British government still continued to try to do business with Hitler, even proposing five billion dollar loan to him. Stalin knew this, so Chamberlain must have know it.
 This was the group from the
 "City" London's Wall Street,
 which firmly believes it would be
 better for Hitler to rule Europe.
 Hitler, the City group argued, cannot rule without cash, so they
 proposed to be his bankers. SPANISH DOUBLE CROSS
 In England, of course, politics and pounds sterling go hand in hand. It was in this juxtaposition that they were travelling as the Chamberlain government started its course in Spain. Next to its failure to tie up Russia, this was the second biggest mistake of British diplomacy.
 It is now an open secret that when General Franco flew from the Canary Islands to start Spain's bloody civil war, British pilot, a British plane and British money carried him. British business, wor- ried over its iron and tin mines in Spain, and over the radical poli- cies of the Spanish Republican government, had determined to crush that government. It did. And in doing so it weakened the entire British empire. For today General Franco. whom British business financed. points his Ger man-made artillery from the hills of Algeciras down on Gibraltar and demands Spain for the "pan- iards; while France now must weaken her army by stationing part of it along the Spanish bor- der.
 Regarding Spain, Mir. Cham berIain was quite frank in ad-
 hitting that politics and cash
 went hand -in hand. "A Span ish Republican victory" he once told Harold Lashi,' would
 strengthen the Popular Front government in France, which in
 turn would give a tremendous impetus to the Labor Party in
 Great Britain.
 WE APE THE BRITISH
 Apparently there were those in Washington who believed as MT Chamberlain. The Roosevelt Ad. ministration is supposed to be pro- labor, pro-democracy and vigor- ously anti-dictator. But in the state Department certain coupon. clipping career boys became the seif.sppointed champions of Franco and for a time barred doctors. nurses and volunteers to Loyalist Spain - even when they