Spanish Medical Aid Committee : inter-departmental correspondence (copy)

              DR. H.B. MORGAN. 
MR. H.V. TEWSON. 
Social Insurance.
10th November, 1939.
Spanish Medical Aid Committee.
The Spanish Medical Aid Committee has now closed up or disbanded itself, and concentrated its work into the hands of three Trustees, appointed by them to wind up the Committee's business and to bring its commitments to a termination. The Trustees are the Chairman, Dr. H.B. Morgan, the Hon. Secretary, Mrs. Leah Manning, and the Organising Secretary, Mr. George Jeger.
Before the Committee disbanded it had been agreed that the Maison des Blesses in Paris should be given a grant of £1,000 for Artificial Limbs for Spanish disabled needing such limbs who were in France.  But on my instigation it was agreed that before the grant should be paid over the Committee should be assured that it was going to be used for the purposes allotted, and that definite evidence would be given as to the number and authenticity of the alleged wounded with information as to the price of the limbs in France and their availability. The grant has not been paid over yet, but this institution has been pressing the Trustees to pay over this amount without having complied with the conditions originally insisted on. The  Trustees have up to the present decided not to make any grant.
I am very suspicious of both the Maison des Blesses of 4, Cite Monthiers, Paris-9e, and the Centrale Sanitaire International of 33, Rue de Chateaudun, Paris. I am not sure whether they are genuinely doing the work that they are alleged to be doing, and I have always been suspicious of them. I wonder if it is possible for the organised Trade Union Movement in France to give me confidentially, for confidential use of the Trustees, any information they have about either of them.
Jeger, the Organising Secretary, thinks from their personnel that even now if they are allowed by the French Government to be still active, there is still Communist influence in them. We doubt also whether the artificial limbs are available for purchase by the Committee, even if a grant is made to them, owing to the claims of the French Government on the manufacture of such limbs for French wounded in the war.
So far, the names submitted are in different Camps scattered throughout France. I doubt whether at present the Maison des Blesses has machinery for visiting these Camps or getting authentic information as to the need for artificial limbs by Spanish wounded there, and very few of the names submitted have apparently a Spanish nationality.
The total funds remaining in the hands of the Trustees amount to about £1300, and we will not agree to the grant of £1000 being made unless we are absolutely certain and confident that: (1) artificial limbs can be obtained and 
/ purchased,