ECONOMIC WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 November 1939, Page 5

ECONOMIC WAR

EVIDENCE OE EFFECT ON GERMANY PROSPECT OF ULTIMATE PARALYSIS. THE LEGAL SITUATION. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY November 1. In a broadcast today I lie Minister of Economic Warfare, Air Ronald Cross, said that the question as to the present Allied success iii the economic war was not easily answered, because the economic weapon was one which acts gradually, and two months was but a short tesl. In the first six weeks the Allies intercepted about 488,000 ions of petrol, iron, aluminium, copper and phosphates among other things destined for Germany, and although the figures for the past fortnight, were not really worked out, the total had "now comfortably passed the half-million mark.” The figures did not include direct losses caused by shippers not attempting to send goods to Germany.. There was plenty of evidence of the German financial and economic difficulty, which must increase so long as practically all its seaborne trade was lost, and it eventually would end in paralysis. Germany’s losses were our gains. Indications of the Allies' success were appeals to the German children to gather nettles from which cloth could be made, and the news that German children were being lectured on the virtues of artificial wool and rubber. Housewives were being told of the excellence of artificial soap. Mr Cross remarked that, although ejfich indication of success in itself might be described as a straw, they served to show which way the wind was blowing: "and I think you will agree it is a good wind for us," he commented.

Dealing with the legal situation, the Minister said that international la>v recognised foodstuffs as contraband oncondition that they were going to help in the prosecution of a war. At one time it was possible to distinguish between goods intended for the armed forces of the enemy Government and those designed for the civil population. This distinction was now impossible, as put by an eminent American international law writer, who had stated: “As war is now conducted it is a probability rather than a possibility that foodstuffs imported into a belligerent territory will serve a military end and so be used for hostile purposes.” This was accepted on both sides in the last war. as General Ludendorf showed in saying: "In this war it was impossible to distinguish where the army and navy began and the people ended,” and the German prize court, in the case of the ship Maria, condemned a cargo of wheat consigned to Belfast and Dublin, though the evidence showed that the wheat was intended for millers operating for private purposes wholly. The evidence was rejected by Germany on the ground that “it could not be positively established to what use the wheat would actually have been put upon its arrival in Belfast, and whether the English Government would not gladly have purchased it."