852.00/8164: Telegram
The Counselor of Embassy in Spain (Thurston) to the Secretary of State
[Received 6 p.m.]
989. I requested Del Vayo this morning (an appointment yesterday had been canceled) to inform me with respect to the reports currently circulating that the Government may undertake retaliatory air raids over foreign territory. For reply he cited paragraph 3 of his response (apparently dated June 27 and published in today’s papers) to the note of June 24 from the British Embassy announcing the formation of the British-Swedish-Norwegian commission to examine the scenes of air raids. The paragraph in question may be translated as follows:
[“]The Spanish Government has considered, and continues to do so, that there is no place in its conception of the real character of the struggle in progress in Spain or in the sentiments which inspire the entire Spanish people for the policy of replying to the mass murder of women, children and noncombatants in general by balancing the great losses in Republican Spain with other Spanish lives torn from the civil population of the rebel zone. Any reply which may become necessary as a result of persistence in aerial aggressions of the kind mentioned will be based on the foregoing considerations.”
Senor del Vayo added that the Spanish Government has felt it to be good policy not to increase inter-Spanish bitterness by air raids in rebel territory apparently as a measure in conjunction with its endeavor to emphasize in both the Rebel and Loyalist zones that the conflict now has become a war of independence and liberation from [Page 222] foreign moves in which all Spaniards can find a common cause. In answer to my specific inquiry he stated that Spanish air operations “abroad” would depend upon the continuance of or discontinuance of the air attacks on the cities.
He appeared to be hopeful that the newly created commission may serve to curtail such attacks and expressed satisfaction over its establishment. He did not mention our abstention. An editorial in La Vanguardia, however, attributes our action in this respect to the belief that the commission probably will merely pronounce “platonic condemnation”, and points out that such abstention is in contradiction to the Secretary’s recent statement on air bombardments.