VITAL INSTRUMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1940, Page 6

VITAL INSTRUMENT

SUPREME WAR COUNCIL

BRITISH PREMIER’S SURVEY REAL HELP BEING GIVEN TO FINLAND. NAZI POLICY OF MURDER AT SEA. Ueferiing in the House of Commons Io I he meeting last Monday in Paris of the Supreme War Council, the British Prime Minister. Mr Neville Chamberlain, said the council had become a vital instrument for the sn’eeessfnl prosecution of the Avar, a Da ventry broadcast slates. He repeated M. .Daladier’s recent statement that the council conducted its business almost as if it were the Cabinet of a single Government. The bond between the two countries was something greater than even the close alliance which common purpose and common danger enforced; there was a deep and lasting friendship between the two peoples. Referring to the Russian attack on Finland. Mr Chamberlain said Soviet planes had bombed the homes of the poor, shattered hospitals full of wounded men and pursued defenceless citizens with machine-gun fire. The help given to Finland had been a real help. There were loud cheers when Mr Chamberlain said that further help was now on. its way.

Passing on to refer to the decision of the Balkan Entente to renew the pact for seven years, Mr Chamberlain said that decision indicated the determination of these Slates to maintain a state of security in south-eastern Europe. The decision was most welcome, especially if other Slates in the Balkans had that important object at heart, and he believed they had. The claims made by the Germans in their air raid attacks on shipping on the British coast, said Mr Chamberlain, have no relation to the facts. For example, on February 3, the enemy asserted that in an East Coast air raid, on that day at least nine merchantmen, as well as other vessels were sunk, and that the British ships sunk were in a convoy. The facts were that one Norwegian merchant ship was sunk, and that no British ships were lost. On | January 30 a German statement said that a British naval patrol vessel had been sunk by German aircraft. This statement was intended to cover up from the world a deliberate and savage attack on a lightship, whose identity was unmistakable. The killing of merchant seamen, fishing seamen and lightship crews under these circumstances was not war, but murder.