NEW NOTE DETECTED

Taranaki Daily News, 26 September 1940, Page 7

NEW NOTE DETECTED

British Official Wireless.

GERMAN COMMUNIQUES

Rec. 5.5 p.m. Rugby, Sept. 24. A new note has been detected in the German communiques, which for the first time on Friday admitted plane losses greater than the British. Friday s communique stated that only one British machine had been brought down, whereas three German planes failed to return. Again on Monday the communique admitted the loss of one plane, while stating that no British machine had been shot down. It would appear that the German propagandists are becoming anxious about the lack of credence given, even at home, to their figures and have taken the opportunity afforded by a lull in operations, when losses on either side are msignificant, to try in a small way to restore their damaged reputation for

veracity. A further motive for this sudden access of modesty, it is suggested in Britain, may be a belated recollection of Herr Hitler's own precepts in "Mem Kampf," in which he said: "It was a fundamental mLstake to ridicule the worth of the enemy. Once the German soldier came to realise what a tough enemy he had to fight he felt he had been deceived by the manufacturers of information givfcn him. He therefore lost heart." Dr. Goebbels has been making precisely the same, mistake. His sneers at the London defences, denials of the true figures of German losses. and boasts of England's occupation by Germany stimulated the German people to an mitial effort, but that phase is past, and as the falsity of prior claims is revealed by the continued absence of a German victory the danger for German morale cannot apparently be neglected.