CUCKOO IN THE NEST

Taranaki Daily News, 23 September 1940, Page 8

CUCKOO IN THE NEST

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.

British Official Wireless.

nazis' despoliation

Rugby, Sept. 20. The plundering by the Germans of the :ountries they have enslaved is discussed in the Times, which notes that Rumania celebrated her adhesion to the Axis by rationing the consumption of the bread of her people on the pretext of a poor harvest. The real reason, it says, is that the Nazi war machine requires to be fed more and more at the expense of the countries it has enslaved. From Rumania it expects com as well as oil, and to supply corn the people of Rumania must go on short commons. Remarking that the procedure varied from country to country and describing the open despoliation and enslavement of Czechoslovakia and Poland, The Times says: "In the more recently conquered Scandinavia, the Low Countries and France, where it is felt necessary for a time to present a less forbidding face, different .tactics were necessary. The methods employed were those of the card sharper rather than of the highway robber, but whatever method is employed the result is the same. The real wealth of the subjugated peoples finds its way to Germany. "New Order." "What has occurred in all these countries is only a demonstration of the kind of 'new order' Germany seeks to establish in Europe. No other people are to have any independent life or will of 1 their own. All of the economic resources of the Continent will be enlisted to supply the German machine of conquest, Dr. Walther Funk, German Economic Minister, has explained that the standard of living of the conquered peoples must be reduced to maintain the standard of living in Germany. "For those countries which have so far escaped German domination the warning is plain. For us, there is an equally plain lesson. Since everything the subjugated peoples produce for themselves or import from abroad is at the disposition of the German masters, the blockade must be drawn tighter and tighter. The recent extension of the navicert system seeks to be working effectively,' backed as it is by regulations ensuring that facilities at British ports shall be available only to shipowners who conform to the system. Controlling Trade. "These regulations have now been strengthened by a revival of a black list of ships, which will be denied all facilities and refused navicerts. It will be an offence for any person to transact business with any shipowner named in this list. The object of the system is to shut off trade with the outside world from the whole area controlled by Germany and Italy. Other countries from which goods might find their way without difficulty into this area are being rationed to ensure they do not receive more supplies than are required for their own needs. "This rationing system must inevitably raise problems of real difficulty, as ir. the case of oil imports to Spain, concerning which an agreement has just been reached. but these problems have to be faced. We are fighting for our lives and we must prevent all possible falling into the hands of plundering Nazism."