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The Spanish Embassy to the Department of State
No. 141/15
The Government of the Spanish Republic decided the total withdrawal of foreign volunteers and accordingly the Prime Minister, Dr. Juan Negrín, announced this resolution in his speech before the League of Nations:
He asked that a Commission be appointed by the League of Nations to go to Spain to control and ascertain the actual withdrawal of foreign volunteers. The Commission is at present in Spain and has attended the farewell of the volunteers who fought in favor of the Spanish Republic.
The Spanish Government had adopted this resolution unilaterally, without taking into consideration the intentions of Germany and Italy—who have openly helped the rebels—with regard to the withdrawal of their regular forces from rebel territory.
The intention of the Spanish Government was to do everything necessary in order that the Spanish conflict remained exclusively a conflict between Spaniards, making by this an important step towards its solution.
Mr. Mussolini announced then the retirement of 10,000 Italian soldiers, confessing once again the official intervention of Italy in the Spanish civil war. The withdrawal of these 10,000 Italian soldiers was offered having in view the possibility of putting in force the Anglo-Italian pact.
But the Spanish Government has information of absolute truthfulness that the 10,000 Italian soldiers retired from rebel territory are ill and invalid men of no use for military service and, therefore, the withdrawal of Italian volunteers has been only one more farce to be added to the many already realized by the great farce of nonintervention. The rebel General Staff is these days working intensely [Page 251] in the reorganization of two new Italian shock divisions and trying to camouflage the rest of the Italian troops as volunteers with the Foreign Legion. This authentic information coincides with the news of a new violent offensive by the rebels, made with Italian and German men and materials, which could give them in a short time an appearance of a small military advantage as justification of the beginning of coming into force of the Anglo-Italian pact.
The Government of the Spanish Republic most emphatically demands the complete and total withdrawal of the foreign troops fighting with the rebels. This withdrawal to be controlled as has been done with the foreign volunteers who have been fighting for the Spanish Republic.