p Taking advantage of the policy of “non-intervention”, pursued by Britain, France and the United States, the fascist powers were acting with growing impudence everywhere, Spain included. They decided to block up Republican Spain from the sea. Fascist submarines started piratically attacking ships bound for her ports. Merchant vessels of the USSR, Britain, France and Greece, Scandinavia, and some other countries were attacked by “unidentified” submarines. It was an open secret, however, that those " unidentified" submarines were Italian, that is, those coming from the Apennines. Enough documentary evidence has since appeared to confirm this. For example, on December 16, 1936, Mussolini disclosed, in a conversation with the German Ambassador U. Hassell, that seven Italian submarines were active in those operations.^^116^^

p Soviet steamship Timiryazev was sunk in the Mediterranean on August 30, 1937, and the Blagoyev on September 1. The Soviet government lodged a strong protest with the government of Italy.

p Increasingly brazen action of pirates in the major imperial lines of communication routes of Britain and France could not but anger their own ruling establishment. After an “unidentified” submarine torpedoed the British destroyer Havoc, on August 31, Britain, which once ruled the seas, found it impossible to tolerate such humiliation any longer. So when the Frencli government, early in September, called for a conference on action to control piracy in the Mediterranean, Britain seconded that initiative.

p An international conference met in Nyon on September 10-14, 1937, to work out a specific and effective agreement to control piracy in the Mediterranean. Speaking at the conference, Litvinov declared that the Soviet Union was interested in the questions it dealt with not only because the USSR had its shores washed by the waters mixing with those of the Mediterranean, which linked the Soviet ports with the outside world as well as between themselves, but also because "the Soviet Union as a major power, conscious of its rights and obligations, is interested in keeping up the international order and peace and in opposing all kinds of aggression and international violence”. ^^117^^

p It was decided at the conference to destroy the submarines that would attempt to attack merchant shipping and appropriate measures were outlined. Their effect at once put an end almost totally to fascist piracy in the Mediterranean.

p The Nyon Conference was of great importance also in that it showed the possibility and effect of collective action against aggression. It offered conclusive evidence to show that, given joint determined action by the USSR, Britain and France, the aggressors would have to retreat. Its decisions were a great achievement largely due to Soviet diplomacy.

p The Washington Star, in an article "Victory of Red Diplomacy”, said on September 12, 1937, that one had to recognise that the result of anti-pirate conference in Nyon looked too much like a victory for Soviet diplomacy. That Conference had been organised by Britain and France, but it was thanks to Russia alone that the Conference was compelled to take prompt and concrete decisions.

That positive experience of collective action against the aggressor was not, unfortunately, taken into account by the ruling circles of Britain and France subsequently in what was a far more complex setting.