Canada Sends Delegai-ion 'l'o Visif Boys

LAST June The Friends of the Mackenzie/Papineau Battalion

decided to send a delegate to Spain to accompany the
shipment of goods, which had been collected for the battalion.
I was selected to make this trip and on July 1st I found a dele»
gation in New York which was going to visit the Abraham
Lincoln Battalion. The whole consignment of goods amounting
to 32 tons, arrived!" at Le Havre, France, shortly after we reached
Paris.

We arrived in Paris on July 9th and I was unhappily de»
tained there until July 22nd, waiting for the consent from
the Department of External Affairs at Ottawa, which would
enable me to secure the validation on my passport of the Paris
Prefecture of Police in order to cross the border into Spain. I
was advised by the Secretary of the Canadian Legation that

in reply to his cable in connection with this matter Ottawa had
asked the question: “Who is this Mr. A. E. Smith?”

I had written Ottawa before leaving Canada informing
them fully as to who I am and what I was going to do when
I went to Spain. My mission was wholly humanitarian, as
much so that of any doctor or that of any nurse.

Finally, after long last, impatient with this waiting, I left
for Spain on my own. ’

I first set foot on Spanish soil at Port Bou on August 3rd
at about 5 o’clock in the morning. There were thirteen of us

representing ten different nationalities. One young lady had .

come from the Far East, having been deported to France be»
cause of her activities in the labor movement. Ano-ther woman
was a lawyer from Czechoslovakia. There were two doctors,
one a German, who had made his escape from a Hitler con’
centration camp after many months of imprisonment. There-
were two pharmacists. One had come from the Soviet Union.

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