Abstract
Advising the Foreign Secretary, Mr Anthony Eden, as to British interests in the Spanish Civil War just six weeks after the military revolt of July 1936, a senior official in the Foreign Office presented the following clear alternatives:
… an extreme right victory is likely to be embarrassing in respect of our foreign policy and interests, while an extreme left victory might be equally embarrassing, though in a different way, to any country which desires the maintenance of ordinary democratic government in those countries in which it still survives.1
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Notes to Chapter 1
The military rebellion which began in Spanish Morocco was followed the next day, 18 July, by insurrections in metropolitan Spain. See Luis Bolin, Spain: The Vital Years (London: Cassell, 1967) chs 1–5.
Claude Bowers, My Mission to Spain ( London: Gollancz, 1954 ) p. 291.
See also Ramon Tamames, Estructura Econ6mica de Espana (Madrid: Gomez, 1965) p. 731, n. IO.
Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (Pelican, 1977) pp. 167, 204.
See also Arthur Loveday, World War in Spain (London: Murray, 1939) pp. 55–8, 103.
K. W. Watkins, Britain Divided: the effect of the Spanish Civil War on British Political Opinion ( London: Nelson, 1963 ) p. 41.
Frank Ashton-Gwatkin, The British Foreign Service (Syracuse University Press, 1954) P. 52.
Julio Alvarez del Vayo, Freedom’s Battle (London: Heinemann, 1940) p. 244; also FO 371/20540 W12125/62/41.
Sir Geoffrey Thompson, Front Line Diplomat (London: Hutchinson, 1959) pp. 117–20. Thompson joined Forbes in Valencia (the Spanish Government seat after December 1936) at the beginning of February 1937, remaining in Spain until July 1938.
Lord Avon, The Eden Memoirs: Facing the Dictators (London: Cassell, 1962) p. 400 (henceforth Eden); also FO 371/20536 W9733/62/41, report, 21 August (received 26) 1936.
Ivan Maisky, Who Helped Hitler? ( London: Hutchinson, 1964 ) pp. 21–5.
Thomas Jones (ed.), Diay with Letters ( London: Oxford University Press, 1954 ) pp. 229–30.
Viscount Halifax, Fullness of Days ( London: Collins, 1957 ) p. 193.
John Harvey (ed.), The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey (London: Collins, 1970); henceforth Harvey. ‘Halifax is idle and pernickety,’ p. 51.
David Dilkes (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938–45 (London: Cassell, 1971) p. 12; henceforth Cadogan. His appointment was not officially gazetted until 1 October 1936, but he was much in evidence in the Foreign Office throughout the summer.
Kenneth Edwards, The Grey Diplomatists (London: Rich & Cowan, 1938) p. 246. By 27 July, 5,000–9,000 British and French refugees were streaming across the borders into France and Gibraltar (HCD, vol. 315, col. 1073).
Hugh Thomas, op. cit. pp. 226–7. Also Brian Crozier, Franco: A Biographical History (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1967) p. 192 and, for Franco’s call to arms, p. 522, appendix 5.
Lewis Namier, Europe in Decay, 1936–1940 (London: Macmillan, 1950) PP. 14–15.
Léon Blum, L’Oeuvre de Léon Blum, 1934–1937 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1954–7) vol. IV, part I, p. 417.
D. W. Pike, Les Français et la guerre d’Espagne, 1936–1939 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1975) pp. 36–46, for an excellent survey of the French press.
Daily Telegraph 24 July 1936; Joel Colton, Léon Blum: Humanist in Politics (New York: Knopf, 1966) p. 237.
Lawrence E. Pratt, East of Malta, West of Suez (Cambridge University Press, 1975) P. 43, n. 35.
David Cattell, Soviet Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War (University of California, 1957) p. 6. Comparatively little information was reported from Russia by the British Ambassador, Lord Chilston, and what there was tended to be based on Izvestia and Pravda; but see chapter below on intervention, and FO 371/20530 W8628/62/4I for Chilston’s report of to August indicating… any threat to France is a threat to the Soviet Union’.
Jules Moch, Rencontres avec Léon Blum (Paris: Plon, 1970) p. 195
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© 1979 Jill Edwards
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Edwards, J. (1979). Britain and the Origins of Non-Intervention. In: The British Government and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04003-2_1
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