Julio
Alvarez del Vayo
was
born in Spain in 1891. He became a journalist
and was an active member of the Socialist
Party (PSOE).
In
September 1936, Francisco Largo Caballero
became prime minister. Largo Caballero immediately appointed Alvarez
del Vayo as minister of foreign affairs.
After
the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he
worked hard to persuade foreign governments to provide military aid
for the Republican Army. His attempts to
deny international support for General Francisco
Franco and
the Nationalists meant he spent a great deal of time at the League
of Nations in Geneva.
Alvarez
del Vayo managed to convince Joseph Stalin
to provide the Republic with military aid. In October 1936 Soviet
tanks and aircraft began arriving in Spain. They were accompanied
by a large number of tank-drivers and pilots from the Soviet
Union.
His
close relationship with the Soviet Union disturbed Francisco
Largo Caballero who
considered removing him from office. He eventually lost his job on
17th May, 1937.
Juan
Negrin brought Alvarez del Vayo back to office in April 1938.
Alvarez del Vayo tried to persuade Neville
Chamberlain to
mediate in the war in February 1939. This ended in failure and at
the end of the war Alvarez del Vayo emigrated to the United
States. Julio Alvarez del Vayo died in New
York in 1974.
(1)
The Manchester Guardian (28th
September 1936)
Yesterday Senor Alvarez del Vayo, the Spanish Foreign
Minister, sent to the Secretary General of the League documents containing
the latest information in regard to alleged violations of the non-intervention
agreement by Germany, Italy, and Portugal. It is understood that the
documents contained detailed information of a grave nature.
I understand that so many
airplanes have been supplied to the rebels by Germany and Italy that
they now have about three times as many as the Spanish Government
whereas at the beginning of the civil war the Spanish Government had
about four times as many as the rebels. The rebels themselves are
unable to manufacture airplanes, so that all these additional airplanes
must have been supplied by other nations. German and Italian airmen
who have been taken prisoner have confessed that they were acting
under orders of their Governments.
The documents are understood
to contain evidence showing that during the military operations of
the rebels in Estremadura the air bases, the supplies, and the movements
of the rebel troops were organized on Portuguese territory with the
help of the Portuguese military forces. Airplanes and other arms that
have fallen into the hands of the Government are of a type that has
never existed in the Spanish army and reveal their foreign origin.
The Spanish Delegation
asked that the documents should be published and should be distributed
to the members of
the League. They have not yet been distributed, and it is impossible
to obtain from the Secretariat any information as
to whether they will be published.
(2)
Julio Alvarez del Vayo, speech, League of
Nations (11th December 1936)
Last September, I alluded to the tragic proof supplied by the youth
of Spain, who fall in thousands in the trenches of freedom as the
victims of Fascist aeroplanes and of the foreign war material delivered
month after month, despite the non-intervention agreement, by those
who base their international policy on the systematic breaking of
treaties and of their international undertakings. Today, Madrid has
become one more irrefutable proof. No one can doubt the validity of
this evidence. Every foreign mission which has visited Spain has brought
back fresh accusations against this monstrosity: that the capital
of a State Member of the League has been reduced to ruins, and that
the women and children of this capital have been butchered in hundreds
by bombing planes under the orders of rebel generals and supplied
by States which have, in fact, begun a war, and which are continuing
to make war, while statesmen talk of preserving peace.
The war is there; an international
war is raging on Spanish soil. We have seen how, in the last few days,
the rebels, after the failure of their Moroccan troops, are now preparing
to receive the assistance of fresh forces which they themselves call
"blond Moors." Moreover, we must expect that poison gas,
which has already been employed these last days, will continue to
be used in the attacks against Madrid, and that the parts of the city
in which the workers live will be bombed more and more violently in
order to try to obtain by panic what the rebels have failed to obtain
by other means. It would be both useless and dangerous to continue
to ignore the situation. The worst thing that could happen to the
League of Nations would be to contribute by its own silence and inaction,
to the spread of this war.
Such a peace, it is true,
would have cost the lives of millions of men,
women and children and would have meant that many capitals
would have suffered the fate of Madrid, that hundreds of towns
would have known the fate of Cartagena and of Alicante. But,
from a formal point of view, peace would not have been disturbed.
When the Spanish Government decided that it was its duty to
assume the grave responsibility of requesting a meeting of the Council
of the League, it did so precisely because it wished, so far as
it was concerned, to declare in the most solemn fashion its firm decision
to oppose any such paradoxical and murderous "peace policy."
Allow me to recall just
what were the reasons that made the Spanish
Government feel it was necessary to demand a meeting of the
Council. In the first place, the Spanish rebels have just been recognised
as a legitimate Government by two great European Powers
- Germany and Italy. The moment the rebels had received this
recognition their chief threatened to start a blockade of the Government
ports in the Mediterranean. At the same time, naval attacks
took place at different points on the Spanish coast by warships
whose nationality it was impossible to establish. Two Government
warships have been attacked by two submarines also of unknown
nationality at the entry to the port of Cartagena.
(3)
Konni
Zilliacus
wrote about the Spanish
Civil War and the League
of Nations in his unpublished autobiography,
Challenge to Fear.
In September 1936 del Vayo had appealed to the League under Article
10 of the Covenant to provide the Spanish Government with the arms
it needed to defend its territorial integrity and political independence
against Hitler's and Mussolini's aggression. I can still remember
that black day in the Assembly, listening to Eden droning away from
the rostrum, explaining why it was contrary to the Covenant of the
League to interfere in an ideological conflict. What cunning bastards
they are, the damned hypocrites, thought I, standing there with death
in my heart, light-headed from the stench of catastrophe, feeling
a little sick with the "steely taste of defeat" in my mouth.
(4)
The Manchester Guardian (19th
November 1936)
Senor del Vayo, the Spanish Foreign Minister, yesterday
laid his Government's case before the League Council that had been
called at Spain's request, but he did no more. He did not ask for
League intervention in the Spanish war (or, as he called it, 'the
international war on Spanish soil'). The meeting had been asked for
to show the Council the danger to international peace in the Spanish
situation.
He spoke of the Fascist
intervention in Spain, warning the other democracies of the serious
danger of the extension to
them of these Fascist methods. He envisaged the time when there might
be a Europe 'wholly pacified because all problems will have been settled,
thanks to the decisive action of international Fascism'.
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