Letter : Artificial limbs ; Letter (copy) : Artificial limbs ; Letter

              INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS
9, AVENUE D'ORSAY, PARIS-VIIe
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE : President: W.M. Citrine, Great Britain
Vice-Presidents:  H. Jacobsen, Denmark; L. Jouhaux, France; E. Kupers, Holland; M. Meister, Switzerland; Corn. Mertens, Belgium
General Secretary: W Schevenels
TELEGRAMS : INTERFED-PARIS
TELEPHONE : INVALIDES 45-88
AFFILIATED COUNTRIES : ARGENTINE BELGIUM CANADA CHINA CZECHOSLOVAKIA DENMARK DUTCH EAST INDIES ESTONIA FINLAND FRANCE GREAT BRITAIN HOLLAND HUNGARY INDIA LUXEMBURG MEXICO NEW ZEALAND NORWAY PALESTINE POLAND RUMANIA SPAIN SWEDEN SWITZERLAND UNITED STATES YUGOSLAVIA
SCH/H
Letter Sec. rep div.
No. 90
16th January 1940.
Mr. H.V. Tewson,
LONDON.
Dear Comrade Tewson,
ARTIFICIAL LIMBS
Thank you for your letter of the 6th January. I am afraid that there has been some misunderstanding about this matter.
Having gathered from your letter of the 13th November last that the Spanish Medical Aid Committee was ready to supply artificial limbs to some of the combatants who had been disabled in the Spanish civil war, I was very anxious to find the right organisation here to carry out this work, and I thought we could be helpful to the Medical Aid Committee by setting up a committee here.    In my first letter, I informed you that both of the bodies which the Medical Aid Committee had at first considered ( namely, the Maison des Blesses and the Centre Sanitaire International ) were not only under Communist influence but were unable under the present circumstances to carry on any practical work.    At the same time, I got into touch with our Spanish comrades, asking them to appoint a few persons to get into contact with experts in orthopaedics and with the competent French authorities, with a view to carrying out the relief work desired by the Spanish Medical Aid Committee. I had taken it that they would provide £1,000 for this work, subject to the necessary guarantees being given of the proper use of the money in every respect, both as regards recipients and expenditure.
I should like to make it clear that our proposed committee was to be constituted solely for this purpose; it would not have any activities of its own. In other words, if the Spanish Medical Aid Committee decides against the suggestion I have made, our committee will not be constituted at all.   For this reason, I