BRITAIN’S WAR EFFORT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 October 1939, Page 7

BRITAIN’S WAR EFFORT

GERMAN PROPAGANDA ANSWERED A DISPASSIONATE SURVEY. MEASURES OF CO-ORDINATION WITH FRANCE. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. October 15. Much is being made in German agency reports of passages appearing here and there in French newspapers which give an impression of voicing disappointment or dissatisfaction with the character or the scale of British military assistance. The French Press, like the British, but unlike the the German Press, is free, and British and French newspapers expressing varied and hide pendent views contain opinion and comment both well-informed and less well-informed, and considered and less well-considered. Extracts from French newspapers chosen by the Nazi propagandists could well be matched in substance and sur passed in vigour by the comment in certain English newspapers but i: would not serve the purpose of the Germans to reproduce it, nor, incidentally, in the case of either the French or the British Press, docs such comment reflect responsible or gener ally prevalent opinion. It is understood by the public, both here and in France, as it has long been well understood between the two Governments. that the roles of the two countries in war. determined as they must be by historical, geographical and economic factors, cannot be identical. The form and extent of British military intervention on the Continent has been clearly expounded in speeches of Mr Leslie Hore-Belisha, Secretary for War, in the House of Commons on the Army estimates and in other pronouncements which have been the subject of approving notice in both coun • In Britain the Military Service Act has made all fit males between the ages of 18 and 41 liable to be called up, and although at present only the 20 to 21 age groups are being registered for immediate training to supplement the numbers already under arms, approximating a million men, volunteers up to the military age limit are being enrolled simultaneously. Mr Hore-Belisha revealed last week that since the outbreak of war 50,000 volunteers had been accepted. The British and French authorities are assured of the endorsement of the best informed opinion ,in both countries if, in a war not of their seeking they practise what “Scrutator” in the “Sunday Times" today calls “the wise economy of man-power.” and this not only in the field and in such operations as those of the French in the Saar to which this writer was referring, but on the economic and industrial front as well. In the latter sense “wise economy means a well-thought-out, planned, and controlled disposition of the available resources of man-power. As Mr Hore-Belisha declared last Wednesday, referring to the haphazard recruiting and the drafting of skilled men out of industry into the army in the last war, “Experience has taught us to avoid many of the errors of the last occasion.” To a mentality which takes little account of the deeper politico-strategic considerations and which is aptly expressed in the catch phrase, “This is a funny war,” the transport of 158,000 men to France with the vast equipment of a modern army and the installation of bases and the lines of communication may not be an achievement of sufficiently spectacular character to give satisfaction, but a truer estimate of their significance is given in the statement of a French military expert that it ranges with the greatest military feats and is the “first victory for the Allies in the war.”