§ 1. Mr. BOYTONasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if an agreement is being negotiated on the Pope's initiative, that all prisoners who have been confined for more than eighteen months and are fathers of three children and over will be sent to Switzerland and 466 interned there whether disabled or not; and if Germany accepted the proposal on the 7th July and France has also agreed?
§ The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Lord Robert Cecil)We understand that a proposal in this sense has been made through the good offices of the Pope to the French and German Governments; neither the French nor the German Government appears to have replied at present; we are asking His Majesty's Ambassador at Paris for the details of the proposal.
§ 2. Major HUNTasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the recent murder of a British captain of a merchant ship, and of the ill-treatment of British civil prisoners in Ger many, he will reconsider his decision not to agree to the German offer to send the 4,000 British civil prisoners back to this country and allow the 26,000 alien enemy prisoners to be sent back to Germany?
§ Lord R. CECILHis Majesty's Government have made a proposal to the German Government in the sense of my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, on the 15th July. This proposal, if accepted, will secure the release from Germany of all the British civilians now interned there.