For Britons Only

Virtually certain to win a future Nobel Peace Prize award would be the statesman-conjurer who could persuade both sides of the 23-month-old Spanish Civil War to lay down their arms and peacefully mediate their differences. Last week Great Britain's peace-talking Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, slyly let it be known through "authoritative" sources that he was considering waving a magic wand in that direction.

Mediator Chamberlain was represented as believing it possible: 1) that Fiihrer Adolf Hitler and II Duce Benito Mussolini would persuade Generalissimo Francisco Franco to talk matters over with his enemies; 2) that French Premier Edouard Daladier could press Spanish Leftist Premier Juan Negrin to declare a truce; 3) that Leftists and Rightists would agree to a government of Spain formed by "neutral" Spaniards in which Catalonia would remain autonomous.

To students of the British Prime Minister's "realistic" policy, Mr. Chamberlain's notions were something less than realistic. Neither Germany's Hitler nor Italy's Mussolini showed any interest in the plan; France's Quai d'Orsay remained understandably silent. Unmentioned anywhere were "neutral" Spaniards qualified to run the country.

Mildly irritating at times even to his loyal half-sister-in-law, Lady Austen Chamberlain, widow of the late Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Sir Austen Chamberlain (see cut), the Prime Minister's mediation talk taxed the patience of Laborites and Liberals. The whole thing was probably best explained by United Press as a gesture designed to appease the rising ire of the British public and released to a pro-Government press for British consumption only.

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