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Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 July 1940, Page 5

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NG OF FRENCH SHIPS AT ORAN BROADCAST BY GENERAL DE GAULLE. NOT A DIRECT NAVAL SUCCESS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, July 8. General de Gaulle, in a broadcast in French, referred to the tragic shelling at Oran, which he described as a particularly cruel episode. There was not a Frenchman, he said, who had not heard with grief and anger that units of the French fleet had been sunk by the Allies. The French fleet was at its moorings, unable to move or scatter, and the officers and men had been corroded foi a fortnight by the worst moral sufferings. It gave to the British ships the advantage of the first salvos, which General de Gaulle added are decisive at short range. “Spare us from an interpretation that their destruction resulted from a fight,” he continued. "This is what the French soldier tells the British Allies —all the more clearly as he respects them in naval matters.” For this reason he asked the British people not to regard Oran as a direct naval success. , . Next, speaking to the French people, General de Gaulle said: “I would ask you to consider this from the only point of view which must count—that of victory and liberation following the dishonourable agreement which the Government at Bordeaux accepted to hand over our ships to the enemy’s discretion. There cannot be the slightest doubt that, on principle and out of necessity, the enemy would have used them either against Britain or against the French Empire. “And I say without hesitation that it is better that they should have been destroyed. I would rather know that the Dunkerkue—our beautiful and beloved Dunkerque—is aground at Oran than see her one day manned by Germans shelling British ports or Algiers, Casablanca, and Dakar.”