BRITAIN READY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 September 1940, Page 6

BRITAIN READY

PREPARATIONS FOR ACTION AT HOME & ABROAD MEDITERRANEAN FORCES INCREASED. MR CHURCHILL’S HOPEFUL SURVEY. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) i RUGBY, September 5. Turning to the air activity of the last two months, in his speech in the House of Commons, Mr Churchill said that though August had been a real fighting month, neither side had put out its real strength. The Germans had made a very substantial and important effort to gain the mastery and they had certainly put forth a larger proportion of their total air strength than Britain had found it necessary, up to the present, to employ against them. “Their attempts to dominate the R.A.F. and our anti-aircraft defences, by daily attacks,” he continued, “have proved very costly to them. The broad figures of three to one in machines and six to one in pilots and crews, of which we are assured, do not by any means represent the total injury inflicted upon the enemy. We must be prepared for heavier fighting in this month of September. The enemy’s need to obtain a decision is very great, and if he has the numbers with which we have hitherto credited him, he should be able to magnify and multiply his attacks during September.” Adding that firm confidence was expressed by the R.A.F. in its ability to withstand a largely-increased scale of attack, Mr Churchill, referring to the great expansion in the R.A.F., said Britain was far nearer the German total of aircraft than was expected at this early period of the war. AIR WARFARE. “As far as air attack-is concerned,” he said, “we have found it to be, up to the present, far less severe than what we prepared ourselves to endure and what we are still ready to endure.” He instanced the fact that over 150,000 beds had stood open in war hospitals for over a year. Damage as a result of air attack had been far less than had been estimated by a committee which considered and decided against the possibility of an insurance scheme against air raid damage to property. He had therefore asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to consider the best way of making a further- review of the possibility of such a scheme, in light of the facts as they were now known. Meanwhile the Chancellor had agreed, in addition to the satisfactory provisions already made in respect to the personal injuries and immediate needs of those smitten, to abolish the upper limits of payment to such persons for clothing and to pay up to one hundred per cent for such damage to claimants of an income not above £4OO a year. Similar treatment would be accorded to workmen whose tools had been lost or damaged, and to small retailers, to enable them to replenish stocks essential for tht continuance of trading.

BANSHEE HOWLINGS. Speaking of the system of air raid warnings, which he felt might well be revised, Mr Churchill said there was really no use and no good sense in having these prolonged ‘’banshee bowlings” ,of sirens two or three times a day over wide areas, simply because hostile aircraft were flying to or for some target which no one can possibly know or even guess. He had, therefore, asked the various Departments concerned to review the whole position as' a matter of urgency. Mr Churchill, concluding, said: “Nb one must suppose that the danger of invasion is past,, but I am not giving away any military secret if I say we are very much better off than we were a few months ago, and if the problem of invading Britain was a difficult one in June, it has become a far more difficult and a far larger problem in September. CHALLENGE TO ITALY. ‘’While all preparations for home defence have been going forward on a gigantic scale, we have not hesitated to send a continuous stream of convoys with reinforcements to the Middle East. In particular, a few days ago we found it possible almost to double the effective strength of our Fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean, by sending some of our most powerful vessels to reinforce the flag of Sir Andrew Cunningham, Admiral in the Eastern Mediterranean. This move-’ ment, plainly visible to the Italians, was not molested by them. We have every intention of maintaining our positions there with our utmost strength ,and of increasing our sea power and the control which follows from sea power throughout the Mediterranean, not only in the Eastern basin but in the Western Basin. In this way, both at home and abroad- we shall persevere along our course, however the winds may blow.”