Mr. O’CONNELL. Well, earlier in that year a group of Congressmen in the 75th Congress, we had a group of Congressmen known as the liberal bloc of Congress headed by Maury Maverick of Texas. The newspapers described us as all fairly young. I was only 27 at the time. We were described as Young Turks and out of that liberal bloc a group of us, 5 or 6 or maybe 4 or 5, went to see Secretary of State Cordell Hull in connection with the Spanish situation and also legislation which was pending with reference to invoking the Neutrality Act as it existed at that time against Germany and Italy for their intervention in Spain, and Mr. Hull told us as far as this Government was concerned there was actually no evidence of Spanish and German intervention or I should say German and Italian intervention. I think I later, along with Congressman Coffee and Congressman Bernard and others, talked with David Niles, who was then executive assistant to President Roosevelt in connection with the situation. It was then suggested, I think just about the time Congress was adjourning, Mrs. O’Connell and I had been married on the 2d of January 1937, and we had had no honeymoon and were going to Europe. My mother and father were both born in Ireland and I had always wanted to go there and we did go to Ireland, to England, France, and so on, had a reception at the Spanish Embassy, I would say probably about a month before adjournment or shortly before adjournment, Ambassador de Los Rios invited not only myself but Congressman Bernard and several other Congressmen to go to Spain and investigate what the situation was there. Mr. TAVENNER. Was he the person who extended the invitation to go to Spain? Mr. O’CONNELL. Yes. He was the one. We of course took care of our own arrangements here, got our passport from the State Department--I think we were issued special passports by the State Department. Our visas were procured. Mr. TAVENNER. Was any contribution made to you for the expenses of this trip for you and your wife, either for transportation or otherwise? Mr. O’CONNELL. No. We paid our own passage. I think we went over on the _Queen Mary_ and came back on the _Normandy_. We paid all of our hotel expenses and we traveled by plane from Le Bourget to Croydon and paid for those. I spent about a month in Ireland where my folks were born and all those expenses were paid by me and in Spain we were the guests of the Spanish Republic and there were no expenses for hotel and transportation in Spain itself. Our entry into Spain was expedited by the American Embassy in Paris. I think Robert Murphy was then Minister Plenipotentiary at the time and Acting Ambassador and he had Col. Steven Fuquay, who was military attaché of the American Embassy in Spain to meet us at the airport at Valencia. Mr. TAVENNER. After your return to this country, did you then become affiliated with organizations which have since been designated as front organizations relating to the Spanish problem?