Red Fezzes, White Book

Cylindrical red fezzes on their heads, Premier Mustafa El Nahas Pasha of Egypt and nine other Egyptian delegates marched down the aisle of the League of Nations' new Geneva palace last week to bow stiffly before Turkish Foreign Minister Dr. Tewfik Rushtu Aras, temporary President of the League Assembly. The occasion was the formal admission of Egypt as the 61st nation to become a full-fledged member of the League. Most graceful of the 20 speeches of welcome came from Britain's dandified Anthony Eden.

"The admission of Egypt to the League," said he, "sets the seal upon her independence." What he did not say was that with her Dominions and protectorates represented in Geneva, Britain now had eight votes she can direct or control.

Marshaling these votes, the British leadership last week was out to remove foreign troops from Spain. Word had come from Moscow that Russia would recall her aviators and military instructors from the Spanish front if Fascist states did likewise. In Paris, Deputy Leon Archimbaud rose in the Chamber to announce that 1,000 French volunteers had been repatriated. British and French agents in Germany reported that Adolf Hitler had lost all stomach for the Spanish adventure (always unpopular with the German General Staff) and would be glad to pull out of it completely. The strategy of Britain (and France) last week, therefore, was to ignore German participation in the Spanish Civil War and bring, within and without the League, all possible pressure on Italy.

Opening move in this campaign was to permit, at long last, Spanish Delegate Julio Alvarez del Vayo to produce his White Book listing documentary evidence of Fascist intervention in Spain. These documents--mostly photostats of papers taken from captured soldiers--were almost completely limited to evidence of Italian intervention. The press summary handed newshawks listed 100 separate documents. The book contained 101, the hastily suppressed 101st carrying an overlooked reference to German participation. All this deeply planned strategy was knocked higher than a kite at week's end by the bombs that fell on the Nazi battleship Deutschland, the shells that blasted Almeria (see p. 22). Upon receipt of the news, Alvarez del Vayo presented to the Council his country's formal protest. As usual when faced by direct action, the delegates, rushed to their telephones to get in touch with their home capitals.

What galled unofficial Italian observers most about Spain's White Book was not the evidence of Italian intervention, but the startling evidence of cowardice and continued poor morale in the ranks of Italian volunteers. Wrote the Italian volunteers' divisional commander. General Mancini, on March 11: "Commanders must maintain their men in the highest state of exaltation. . . . This will be easy if they are talked to frequently without ever omitting on any subject a political allusion and always evoking in the soldiers' minds II Duce."

On Jan. 12 came a General Order: "Great watchfulness against abandoning arms and equipment must be taken. The most serious feature is that this has been tolerated by commanding officers and even ordered by some."

On March 16, General Mancini issued a long order on discipline:

"Cowards exist even in the best and bravest masses. . . . We will get rid of them.

"1) There have been cases of self-inflicted wounds.

"2) There have been cases of wounded and bandaged soldiers who in fact had nothing the matter with them.

"3) There have been cases where a genuinely wounded soldier was accompanied by others who ... of their own initiative took this chance to leave the firing line.

"Whoever is guilty of any of the fore going acts shall be immediately shot. (Five individuals already since yesterday have suffered this just punishment.)"

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