Portugal & Powers

British money has always talked decisively in Portugal and last week it was appropriate that Mr. William Shepherd Morrison, exceptionally brilliant Financial Secretary to the British Treasury, should stroll over to the Foreign Office and there assume chairmanship of a conference of 26 European States who have pledged non-interference in the Spanish Civil War (TIME, Sept. 7 et ante). Since it is through Portugal that the principal munitions supplies of the Spanish Whites arrive, and since the Portuguese Government under no conceivable circumstances would have failed to send a representative to the conference if pressed to do so by the British Government, the main point of the London gathering last week was that no Portuguese appeared. Soon the 26 nations agreed with Mr. William Shepherd Morrison that the best thing to do was to adjourn until he decides that "sufficient data" has been gathered for another meeting to take place.

The delegates dispersed in London after amiable cordialities, but Red-sympathizing sailors of the Portuguese Fleet in Lisbon harbor were so vexed that they mutinied against their officers on the sloop Afonso de Albuquerque and the destroyer Dao. Immediately Dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar opened fire on the ships with powerful Lisbon fortress batteries, disabled and towed them ashore where it will not be difficult to patch them up. Oliveira Salazar soldiers marched the mutinous sailors to jail whence they expected to be sent to the Portuguese penal colony in the tropics. In an adroit proclamation the Portuguese Government intimated that it had known beforehand of the coming mutiny and, instead of nipping it, had deliberately permitted the sailors to commit a crime and receive a punishment which Dictator Oliveira Salazar trusted last week will impress other Portuguese sympathetic with proletarian Madrid. In Lisbon cafes it was jest-of-the-week to observe: "The Great Powers are so neutral they don't care whether the Spanish Fascists, the Carlists. the Monarchists, or the Moors take Madrid."

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