“LAMENTABLE AFFAIR”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 May 1940, Page 6

“LAMENTABLE AFFAIR”

MR AMERY ASKS QUESTIONS

(Received This Day, 11.35 a.m.) LONDON, May 7. Mr L. S. Amery (Con) asked who countermanded the hammer-blow against Trondheim and added that there clearly was no plan for meeting the German invasion of Norway. He said: “The whole conduct of the war calls for searching inquiry (cheers). Nothing in Mr Chamberlain’s speech suggested that the Government had any foreknowledge or any clear decision after the German invasion or consistent swift action throughout the whole lamentable affair. We must have a supreme war directorate of a handful, free from administrative routine. Members of the Opposition must take thpir share of responsibility. Somehow or other we must get a Government with a fighting spirit." EXAMPLES OF CONFUSION CITED DY SIR A. SINCLAIR. EARL WINTERTON SUGGESTS INQUIRY. (Received This Day 12.55 a.m.) LONDON. May 7. The Liberal Leader (Sir Archibald Sinclair), exemplifying the confusion that had occurred in the expedition to Norway, said two anti-aircraft guns were landed unsuitably mounted, with no means of testing the sights, no trained gunners and no range tables. One transport sailed without a chronometer, without a barometer, without arms and without escort. It had food for less than half the men aboard, no medical provision for wounded and no charts for the fiords to which the ship was directed. Earl Winterton said that if the situation in Norway was as grave as was feared, a committee should be appointed, empowered to examine military and civilian officials, to discover the cause of the setback. THREATS HF DANGER NOT ONLY IN NORWAY. OBSERVATIONS BY WAR MINISTER. (Received This Day. 1 p.m.) LONDON. May 7. In the House of Commons debate the War Minister. Mr Oliver Stanley, said: “The Government did nothing to encourage false optimism. Norway is not the only point from which danger threatens. Just because there has been little Western Front activity for some months, it is unwise to assume that the greatest storm the world has seen may not occur there. The dispersal of ships was one cause of the Norwegian delay.”

Mr Stanley, answering criticism regarding inability of the intelligence service to reveal the German plans, said: "It is not easy to find out the plans of Germany. Yet we should have lost prestige if we had not tried to help Norway. At anyrate we made Germany pay a price.”