HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 188, 6 May 1940, Page 9

HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATE

Mr. Chamberlain’s Statement Awaited RUGBY, May 3. The statement which it is hoped Mr. Chamberlain will make in the House of Commons on Tuesday is awaited with great interest, as well as the debate which is to follow and which will last for two days. Members of Parliament are anxious for fuller information on the Norwegian campaign. There is a general willingness to suspend judgment in the meantime though both in the lobbies and among the general public there is general regret that the withdrawal of the Allied forces in tlie Trondheim area had become necessary.

It is recognized that the local •supremacy in the air established by the Germans by means of their carefully lilanned and suddenly and treacherously executed attack on April 9 rendered the landing of a modern army’s equipment hazardous and difficult. Unsupported by aircraft operating from nearby bases, the Allied forces could not usefully be maintained in the field against motorized and wellequipped German shock troops working in very close co-operation with the German air force. In these circumstances the public are ready to believe that the decision to transfer tho Allied troops to where they could be more effectually employed was a wise one. The Press contains many expressions of admiration for the resistance put up by the Norwegians. The Allies are continuing to afford all the assistance in their power to the Norwegian Government and the events of the last fortnight are only a chapter in a story which is likely to have a very different ending to the one wished for and already being described as though it has been achieved by the Nazi propagandists. The whole of Norway may have to wait some time for -its deliverance, but it will come with the final Allied victory upon which, indeed, the freedom of all European States—those still spared as much as those already the victims of Nazi aggression—ul I ini a tel y depends.