Turning to the fall of Gijon, the Prime Minister said the British Government had instructed its Ambassador to support, to the fullest, the appeal of the French Government io Gen. Francisco Franco to use prisoners in the most humane manner.
He mentioned that British ships, under the protection of the British Navy, had removed from Gijon 30,000 refugees (cheers).
Turning to the Balearic islands, Mr. Chamberlain said he accepted the repeated and most categorical assurances of the Italian Government, that it had no territorial or strategic designs in Spain, as being given in good faith, They had relieved Britain of the necessity of considering a situation which, if it had arisen, might have materially changed military conditions in the western Mediterranean and would have been a matter of serious concern to the British Government, The Prime Minister hoped that the development of—non-intervention might be taken as the commencement of a process of removing the danger of the conflict in Spain from spreading to the outside.
Once that question was out of the way, he added, "we might get down to the deeper and most serious cause of European unrest and anxiety.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.