Non-intervention has always been a farce. Along with rampant hypocrisy, there has always been an air of unreality about the meetings of the Committee and the Subcommittee. Indeed, what kind of reality could there have been when, from its very inception, the Committee was led by two great powers who had set themselves the very definite task of maximum interference in Spanish affairs on the side of Franco?

But today the hypocrisy and unreality reached their apogee. And no wonder! The Italo-German intervention has expanded as never before. Hundreds of German and Italian planes, dispatched in recent weeks to help Franco, are dropping bombs on Republican lines and Republican cities. Hitler and Göring keep saying that they will not permit the triumph of ‘Bolshevism’ on the Iberian Peninsula. In his speech yesterday, Mussolini boasted openly of the exploits of the Italian air and ground forces in Spain. The Italian press glorifies the ‘heroism’ of the fascist ‘legionaries’ in the war against the Republic. Franco’s ambassador in Rome sends his gratitude to the Duce for aid rendered to the insurgents in recent battles…

And at such a moment, Lord Plymouth suddenly convenes the Subcommittee to discuss the final version of the ‘Plan for the Evacuation of Volunteers and for Granting Belligerent Rights under Certain Conditions’, the very same plan that the Subcommittee had been drafting and redrafting for the past six months and that had never seemed particularly realistic. Now that the Spanish Republic might cease to exist within three or four weeks, it is merely a mockery of common sense and the most elementary decorum.

Yes, it was a foul and repulsive show! Especially the sight of the dandified and perfumed Dino Grandi, who turned up at the meeting with the look of a victor. There was nothing to be done. I had to listen to all the nonsense spoken at the meeting while maintaining a serious, business-like air and making occasional remarks. But I did manage to spoil the script somewhat for Grandi. He had prepared a long and doubtless boastful speech (I saw him pulling a thick roll of typewritten pages out of his pocket at the beginning of the meeting) and was waiting for any kind of statement from me in order to assail the Subcommittee with it. So I decided not to speak at all, even though I also had something ready. That upset the Italian ambassador’s apple cart. The speech he’d prepared could not be used. He fidgeted nervously with the text throughout the meeting, turning over the pages and rereading certain passages, but he didn’t manage to employ his poisoned weapon. At the very end, when the communiqué was already being drawn up, Grandi made an attempt to use at least part of his speech against Corbin, but he was unlucky here, too: it was late, everyone was hurrying to have lunch, and Plymouth, with uncharacteristic firmness (he must have been very hungry), rejected the Italian’s attempt to keep us longer under the pretext of his objections to the French ambassador’s remarks.

I had one more reason to refrain from any serious declarations. Chamberlain had clearly made his mind up to sell Spain to Mussolini and to sign an agreement with Rome whatever the cost. Labour–Liberal public opinion, along with that of many Conservatives, will protest against the Spanish price to be paid for the agreement. The PM needs a scapegoat onto whom he can shift the blame for his failure to have the volunteers withdrawn as he had promised, and he would like it best if the USSR took that role. Chamberlain’s calculations must be upset.

At the end of the meeting, Corbin approached me and asked: ‘Can you explain to me why Plymouth convened this completely pointless meeting?’

‘That is not difficult to explain,’ I replied. ‘When he answers questions in the House, Chamberlain can now say: “The Non-Intervention Committee is at work. The British government submitted new proposals to the Committee that are currently being studied by interested governments.’

‘You may be right,’ concluded Corbin with little enthusiasm.

The French ambassador has grown noticeably older in the past year. He now walks with a stoop, his hair has turned white, and his face is covered in wrinkles. He is the very picture of the crisis which France is undergoing!