TREND OF THE WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1940, Page 5

TREND OF THE WAR

MR CHAMBERLAIN’S SURVEY GERMAN SHIPS SWEPT FROM SEAS BRITISH LOSSES ON SMALL SCALE. ASSOCIATION WITH FRANCE. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.45 a.m.) RUGBY, January 9. In his eagerly-awaited speech today, the Prime Minister (Mr Chamberlain) said it was only at sea that the war could be said to be in full operation. “It is on the sea,” he added, “that we can discern most clearly the trend of hostilities. The oceans have been swept clear of German shipping. “At sea Germany has lost by capture and sinking, and above all by scuttling, 228,000 tons. The rest of her merchant fleet is either bottled up in foreign ports or confined to the Baltic. On the other side, if we subtract from our losses our gains by captures, by new ships, or transfers from foreign flags, we have lost to date. 122,000 tons —less than one per cent of our merchant fleet. “Meanwhile every day there are passing on the world's oceans no less than eleven million tons of British shipping.” In reference to the aggression on Finland, Mr Chamberlain said Britain’s response to the League resolution would be no mere formality. The French and British co-operation in rendering assistance to Turkey after her terrible earthquake was an example of the intimate association between the two nations. Mr Chamberlain added: “I cannot help thinking that our experience of this association during the war will prove so valuable that when the war is over neither will want to give it up. It might even develop into something wider and deeper, because there is nothing which would more facilitate the task of peaceful reconstruction which has got to be undertaken some time.” Turning to the home front, the Prime Minister said that with the numbers registered last June, the total number of men who since the introduction of compulsory service had been registered or had become liable to be called up was between two and a half and two and three-quarters millions. Adding those -who were already members of the Regular Reserve and Auxiliary forces before the war. Britain’s mobilisation of man-power clearly was on a prodigious scale. Members of the German Government, Mr Chamberlain said, were admitting that they desired to achieve the ruin of the British Empire. We on our side had no such vindictive designs. It was fantastic to put about a report that the Allies desired the annihilation of the German people. “On the other hand,” said Mr Chamberlain. “the German people must realise that responsibility for the prolongation of the war is their’s as well as that of their tyrants who rule over them.”