REARMAMENT EFFORT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 January 1939, Page 5

REARMAMENT EFFORT

STRENGTH OF GREAT BRITAIN AND THE EMPIRE INCREASING EVERY DAY EARL WINTERTON’S SURVEY. ADMISSION OF REFUGEES. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, January 14. Earl Winterton, President of the Board of Education, referring in a speech today to the progress of rearmament, said that the Government and the country had been carrying out the greatest strengthening and extension of the armed forces ever attempted in peace time, in addition to a huge and novel scheme for civilian and passive defence. Britain, and the Empire as a whole, was becoming stronger every day. He hoped that there were no potential enemies, but, if there should be any, it would be deplorable if they should fall into the same error as those nations which were ranged against Britain in 1914, some of whom, before August 4, underrated the actual strength and the • residual power of Britain and the Empire. Touching on the refugee question and the work of the Evian Committee, Earl Winterton said that every sort of human and economic question was involved in this matter. Involuntary migrants who had come to Britain or gone elsewhere had not, as some critics suggested prejudicially affected the employment market. On the contrary, the industrialists among them had actually increased employment by starting new businesses. Some 15,000 British people at least had found jobs as a result of the setting up in Britain of businesses transferred from Germany because their owners found in impossible, because of their race or religion, to remain there.

CAMP IN KENT TEMPORARY HOME FOR EXILES FROM GERMANY. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, January 14. The Council for German Jewry has been granted permission by the Home Office to open a camp on the Kent coast as a temporary home for German refugees, who will ultimately emigrate. The council hopes that some 3500 persons, mostly young men, will be brought from Germany and that, as they leave the camp, others will take their places.