Typhoid & Terror

A case of typhoid having broken out, 400 of the 3,800 refugee Basque children sheltering in Britain were packed off by the Salvation Army to quarantine in Clapton, a north London suburb. One morning last week 50 were found missing. Kind-hearted Clapton residents, having heard rumors that the children "were being beaten & kept prisoners," had crept up to the hall, lured them away with candy, cigarets, beer. Distracted Salvation Army officers had to scour the streets to recover the truants.

Few days later Sir John Reith, chief of British Broadcasting Corp., decided that he, too, would give the Basque children a treat. To the tent-city near Southampton where 2,000 of the refugees are being housed, he went with a radio van. When news came that Bilbao had fallen (see p. 20), Sir John, against the advice of the camp's Basque officials, decided to broadcast the bad news.

The loudspeaker blared forth. For a few seconds there was a deathlike silence. Suddenly the whole camp burst into shrieks and sobs. The children grabbed stones, sticks, tent-pegs, rushed to smash the van. Frenzied and heartbroken 300 fled from the camp, were not rounded up until next day. Bleated John R. MacNamara, M. P. and a camp leader, "It was considered better to tell the children the news after they were fed and before they went to bed so they could sleep on it." When the first shock had passed 50 of the children sent apologies to Camp Commandant Henry Brinton, declared: "Some of us decided the news was being broadcast by a person of Fascist sympathies."

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