SAFETY ZONE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 December 1939, Page 7

SAFETY ZONE

POSSIBILITY OF AMERICAN PROTEST AGAINST ALLEGED VIOLATION. GREAT BRITAIN’S ATTITUDE. LONDON. December 14. A message from Washington says that the United States Secretary of State, Mr Cordell Hull, commenting on the naval engagement, indicated that the nations in the estern Hemisphere might consult and possibly protest to Britain and Germany against violation of the pan-American safety zone. A British Official Wireless message states that the engagement naturally recalls the proposal discussed in September at tlie Pan-American Conference at Panama for a 300-mile neutrality zone in the western Atlantic. At the time of the conference British official circles showed sympathy with the object of the scheme, but serious misgivings were expressed as to its practicability, and the difficulties which were envisaged then would seem to have been illustrated by the most recent events. It is obvious that the German battleship was operating within an area corresponding with the proposed neutral zone for one purpose and one purpose only—the destruction of Allied merchant shipping. No belligerent whose shipping was thus exposed to attack could accept restrictions which affected the ability of its warships to afford protection and resist enemy action in a certain area unless it would rely on the same restrictions being effectively enforced against enemy warships as well. It may be assumed that real and practical difficulties such as this, and not a lack of goodwill, account for the fact that the British Government has not yet given formal expression of its views on the scheme formulated by the pan-American States.

WELL EXPLODED GERMAN GAS ALLEGATIONS. TESTIMONY OF PRISONERS. LONDON. December 15. (Received This Day. 10 a.m.) Denying the German gas allegations, the Graf Spee's British prisoners stress that the Germans wore gas masks, but that the prisoners were not masked, and yet were not affected. They added that it was true that food was spoiled, but by a shell exploding in the galley.