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Premier Blum heartily wished Spain would float away to some other planet while the French Chamber of Deputies adjourned and the Bank of France was reorganized, but he and Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos had to do something about Spain and kept pressing upon the Great Powers their round-robin resolution for absolute neutrality (TIME, Aug. 17). Benito Mussolini declared that Italy could adhere to it only if all powers signatory to it would bind themselves not only to refuse "State aid" to Spain but to prevent "private aid" as well from reaching Madrid. In a rage at this, some 30 Red and Pink Deputies and Senators of France announced that they had each privately contributed 50 francs ($3.30) to aid the Spanish Government, appealed for as many more private contributions as they could get and defied Socialist Premier Blum to do anything about it. With numerous German and Italian planes already fighting as the Revolution's strongest air arm, the Spanish Government was sold last week a few French bombers and pursuit planes.
At week's end Premier Blum was still in a quandary, and about the only help he had been able to muster was a British Foreign Office statement saying that "His Majesty's Government are continuing to give the fullest support to the efforts of the French Government" and advised "maintenance of a strict, impartial attitude if the unhappy events in Spain are to be prevented from having serious repercussions elsewhere." Simultaneously Whitehall buzzed with rumors that Army, Navy and Air Force experts were actually studying whether intervention by an expeditionary force to Spain may become "requisite." For centuries it has been London's basic policy that Britain must oppose whichever power on the Continent is strongest, lest it overwhelm her in the end. Today an important Cabinet faction close to Squire Baldwin holds that "the strongest European power" is now not any one country but the international Socialist-Communist forces of the "Popular Front" which have taken both France and Spain by ballot and are trying in a dozen countries for more sweeping victories. Britons knew what to think last week when, although there has been no battle in Madrid, 733 political opponents of the Government were revealed to have been killed by the Red militia and the tobacco, oil and other important Spanish industries were turned over by the Government "to the workers."
Spunk. It looked like war last week between President Roosevelt's Coast Guard cutter Cayusa (which Ambassador Bowers used as a "Floating Embassy" before he went to Hendaye in France) and Generalissimo Franco's cruiser Almirante Cervera. As the Cayuga was taking refugees aboard at San Sebastian, the cruiser radioed: "We will open fire on you if you allow Government adherents to escape among the refugees."
"Thank you!" tartly radioed back the Cayuga. When the Almirante Cervera's eight 6-in. guns moved as though taking aim, the cutter unlimbered her one 5-in. gun, her two six-pounders. After this bit of spunk from the minute Cayuga, the stately Almirante Cervera without further interchange steamed out into the Gulf of Gascony and over the horizon.