Welsh Basques

At Immingham Dock, Humber River, in the north of England, the little freighter Backworth last week loaded $10,000 worth of sugar, flour, fruit and dried salt fish for starving Basques in Spain's besieged Bilbao. More than one-tenth of the cargo was paid for by David Lloyd George who seldom misses a chance to make political capital of anything. Down to the dock hurried Britain's Wartime Prime Minister to wring Captain Russell of the Backworth by the hand.

"I too am a Basque!" cried he, shaking his white mane. "Marshal Foch was a Basque! The Welsh and the Basques are the same race."

Off to run the Bilbao blockade went the Backworth with the blessings of most Britons behind it. Not Lloyd George or even the Back-worth was responsible for the sudden pro-Leftist switch in British opinion last week but a group of blustering captains of rusty little British freighters. While the British Cabinet worried over Generalissimo Franco's blockade, the captains, three of whom were named Jones, and their cargoes of spoiling food remained marooned in the French harbor of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. First to catch the public eye was Captain David ("Potato") Jones, part-owner of the Marie Llewellyn and nicknamed for his cargo. Roaring, "Has our Navy lost its guts?" Potato Jones put out to sea to run the blockade unprotected, to find himself hailed as a hero by British sentimentalists (TIME, April 26). Changing his course at sea, Potato Jones last week was heading not for Bilbao but Alicante. Before he could reach it another British tramp, the Seven Seas Spray, had already run the gantlet and warped to a Bilbao pier, after having been halted, then wished unofficial Godspeed by a British destroyer. Reported her Captain, W. H. Roberts:

"I didn't see a single damn Rebel warship or a single mine. I'll go anywhere merchant ships can go as long as I've got a sturdy British bottom like the Seven Seas Spray, a good crew and my daughter Fifi. . . . She has no intention of marrying, but prefers to remain with me. She doesn't know what fear is, and during our trip from Saint-Jean-de-Luz she was right there on the bridge, wearing trousers."

Potato Jones and Captain Roberts having started the parade, within six days half-a-dozen freighters ran the blockade into Bilbao, if not with the official protection of Britain's Navy, at least within range of its guns.

Doubting Thomases suggested that there was more to the British sympathy for Bilbao than pure altruism for a besieged city. Vitally needed for Welsh steel mills, now on 24-hour schedules as part of Britain's rearmament, is iron ore from Basque mines. And Welsh farmers have long had a private arrangement with Basque potato growers. From carefully tended fields they ship high-priced seed potatoes to Bilbao twice a year, take back in exchange mature food potatoes, grown in Spain's warm and dry climate.

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