On this Stage I desire to say a few words as to why the Bill should not pass. The Minister for Justice, who has left the House, quoted some words of mine, from a speech made at Swinford, on, I think, the guillotine motion to-day about the Irish Brigade having gone to Spain. I accept completely the quotation given from the paper in so far as the Minister read it, but he might have gone a little bit further back and read the following, which went before the particular passage that he quoted:
"We have seen where some 50 men recently left the Free State to fight for religion in Spain; but we know in our hearts that if there is any place where Irishmen can stand together and fight for Catholicism, it is here in Ireland. The young men who went out to fight against Communism, which is attacking European civilisation in Spain, are not representative of a great Catholic nation helping another Catholic nation in distress. If we sent men to Spain, we did not send them from our strength but from our weakness."
I indicated that the reason why we were weak as a Catholic nation, standing by and able to do very little for a Catholic nation like Spain that is in the death struggle with Communistic forces, as it is to-day, was that because instead of developing resources of this country in the way in which they could be developed, instead of linking up international friendships on sound international principles with a decent sustained morality in international affairs, we had put a Government into power here that has turned its back on all these things. What is being done to-day is weakening further the position of this nation here as a Catholic nation, with a Government of its own, from being of any help to any State fighting for Catholicism, or fighting for religion throughout the world against the forces organised from Moscow that are being spread in a most systematic and effective way from one country to another.
This is not a non-intervention Bill. In all the circumstances in which this Bill has been discussed and is being passed, this is an intervention Bill, and it is intervention on the side of the Madrid Government. The Government Party have complained of the misrepresentations that have been made in this House and elsewhere both of themselves and of their policy. It is nothing to the misrepresentation of the situation that is being brought about by their action in stifling discussion in this House and in withholding information from it on perhaps the most vital struggle that is going on in Europe to-day. If the weaknesses of this country, arising out of the political and economic policies that are being pursued here, are grave, every step that the Ministry has taken in connection with the Spanish matter from the time that the question of an international examination of it arose, has made the country still weaker.
The President had to state the other day that our representative in Spain was not an accredited representative to a popularly elected Government. The thing is very far from that. In the brief space of time at our disposal we have been able to point out that the Government that was elected there as long ago as February of last year was a minority Government, that the Cabinet that was set up there represented nearly 1,000,000 votes less than the Opposition represented, and that if it was possible to set up that Government it was because there was unity amongst the Left sections in Spain and that the Right sections could not get unity amongst themselves. Systematic disorder was organised throughout Spain, and one Premier followed another until the forces of disorder put Caballero at their head. The Spanish Government set going the forces of disorder. The fact that we are passing this Bill while leaving the present representative in Spain and allowing the type of misrepresentations that have been made in this House about the situation to stand, weakens us as a nation and weakens us as a people. It weakens our minds, our will and our unity on the present situation. It was possible for a Deputy to rise and say in this House that the present movement of General Franco in Spain arose from an aristocratic military reaction against interference with land in Spain, and it would also be possible to show that land legislation, that was at least as good as land legislation in Great Britain or here, was introduced in Spain in 1935, and that, if land was in any way responsible for the organisation of Franco's forces and the organisation of the Right to combat the Government that was put into power through Communistic force, it was the circumstance in which, over whole provinces, thousands of the peasants seized the land and, I think, hundreds of thousands of acres were taken over in that particular way. No systematic information, however, with regard to the position in Spain was put before us here. No systematic information was put before us here as to what was going to be the possible outcome of the situation there, and, in the face of, admittedly, a gigantic Communist movement in Europe—particularly active in Spain at the present time— having captured the Government of Spain by force, we are preventing in this House a thorough understanding of the situation. We are keeping our representative with that Communist Government, and that can do nothing but weaken us in our efforts to be of use to any progressive forces with any respect for religion in the world. In fighting any battle in the world, or from the point of view of any respect for religion in the world, the kind of situation we have here at present and the type of action that the Government have been responsible for can do nothing but weaken us. I just want to put one small picture before the House of the programme of the people who dominate the Government in Spain to which the Irish Free State has now its accredited representative.