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To emotional, intuitive Adolf Hitler the state of affairs in Spain last week was such a stimulus to do something that he virtually denuded Germany of naval defense, sending the Fatherland's three "pocket battleships" to Spanish waters. Their commander, Rear Admiral Rolf Carls, bombarded Spanish Government ships with radio threats that if force was again used to so much as search another German steamer "we shall answer force with force!"
Meanwhile calm professionals of the British Admiralty and Foreign Office, without even bothering vacationing Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, applied quiet screws to Madrid. Although His Majesty's Government have always been able to interpret the laws of blockade to give the Royal Navy freedom of action, they last week easily overwhelmed Spanish Premier Jose Giral, a pharmacist by profession, with awful reasons why it would be not only against international law but positively wicked for Spanish warboats to interfere with British ships on the high seas. At week's end, Premier Giral gave the fullest assurances that British ships will not be thus molested by Spanish war boats, and London expressed urbane confidence that this went for German and other ships as well.
Another professional move was by Benito Mussolini who has been rushing every kind of Italian aid to the White forces battling Madrid. IL Duce kept this up until 48 hours before a great mass meeting of French radicals was about to force the hand of Premier Leon Blum with demands that his Cabinet rush similar aid to the Spanish Radical armies. At this psychological moment Premier Mussolini had his son-in-law Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano announce Italy's adherence, with reservations, to the French Cabinet's round robin, not to aid either side in Spain (TIME, Aug. 17). This week Premier Blum was able to enjoy a "diplomatic victory" when the Soviet Union and Germany decreed arms embargoes. Always glad to come in on anything of a pacific nature, the For eign Ministers of Norway, Sweden, Den mark and Finland met in conference at Copenhagen, solemnly pledged Scandinavia not to ship arms to either the Whites or the Government of Spain.
In Washington official suggestions from Uruguay that mediation by the U. S. in the Spanish civil war might be the course of wisdom were sidestepped by President Roosevelt. "This country," announced the U. S. State Department, "is committed to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries."
—On first seeing this name in dispatches, many U. S. rewrite men and columnists jumped to conclusions, tagged Deputy Dolores "beautiful," "exotic." She is a plain, middle-aged ex-laun-dress of cyclonic violence who insists upon wearing "widow's weeds" although her husband is alive. What Spaniards call a "Passion Flower" is an exceedingly fragile plant which shrivels at a touch. Old friends say that after she and her husband left each other to struggle separately for Communism her air of "quiet sorrow" at this estrangement earned her the nickname of the Passion Flower.