LAW IGNORED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20099, 20 November 1939, Page 8

LAW IGNORED

ILLEGAL MINE LAYING' WARNING NOT GIVEN NEUTRALS SUFFERING NORWEGIAN CENSURE (Einr. Tfi. Copyright—Unitnii Press Assn.) (British Officinl Wireless.) Reed. 1.50 p.m. RUGBY, Nov. 19. The sinking of the Royal Dutch mail liner Simon Bolivar has evoked feelings of indignation and sympathy. The disaster adds many more lives and another fine ship to the long list of casualties inflicted upon neutrals by German ruthlessness and disregard for international law.

I Among the more recent of these have been the sinking of the Danish liner Canada by an unnotified German mine, or torpedoing without warning jor an attempt to place the crew in safety, of the Norwegian tanker Arne Kjode. International law demands that if a belligerent lays mines lie must take every possible precaution to ensure the safety of commercial navigation and must, for this reason, declare a danger area and warn shipping to keep clear. The Allies have announced every danger area created by them. German Rid For Control j Germany has announced some ■ danger areas, notably those designed •to close the Baltic and force all I neutral shipping passing in or out of that sea to use the Kiel Canal, thus submitting to the German contraband control and bringing to Germany much-needed foreign currency by the | payment of the canal and harbour ■ dues.

German U-boats are, however, making a practice of laying clumps of mines in channels used by merchant shipping on this side of the North Sea. The establishment of these danger areas is not announced, as their whole objective is to infiict losses before the minefields are discovered and swept. In the case ot the Danish ship Canada. Germany at once averred that the ship had struck a British mine. It was hardly commonsense to imagine that a maritime nation should illegally lay mines in channels used extensively by its own shipping. Moreover all the evidence and statement of Hie master of the Canada proved it to be a German mine.

According to Results

If a British warship is damaged by one of these illegal minefields, Germany is only too pleased to claim it j as a great success for German arms. ! yet if a neutral ship is sunk -this way j the German minefield is at once anj nounced as British by the German Propaganda Ministry. Further proof of the illegal laying of mines by Germany in shipping routes on the west side of the North Sea has been secured by the fact that many German mines have been washed up on the British - east coast.

The effect of tiiis ruthless German warfare against neutral shipping is shown by the following quotation from a Norwegian newspaper referring to the torpedoing, without warning, of the Norwegian tanker Arme Kjode: “It is proof of open warfare, excluding aggression from a civilised community. Such matters can only be resolved when the national which thus raises its hand against all finds that every man’s hand is against her. One cannot exceed the bounds of humanity even in. war.’’