BLOCKADE GRIP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 May 1941, Page 5

BLOCKADE GRIP

TELLING HEAVILY AGAINST GERMANY IN SPITE OF HER MASTERY OF EUROPE. LIABILITIES HITLER CANNOT ESCAPE. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 4. The importance and efficiency of the British blockade was stressed by Mr Wilmot, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Economic War-, fare, in a speech in Birmingham. “Because Herr Hitler temporarily is master of most of Europe,” Mr Wilmot said, “some people imagine that he now has access to vast, unlimited supplies which will enable him to carry on the war indefinitely. They either forget the blockade or attempt to argue that it no longer counts. Let me disillusion. them. Herr Hitler controls the western seaboard of Europe from Narvik to Biarritz but from the point of view of supplies it avails him nothing, for no German ship dare sail the surface of the Atlantic to bring him goods from the Americas. "If the conquered countries are to be of any use to him Herr Hitler must feed them, organise their industries and adapt their transport systems. This means sending valuable stocks of food, raw materials and machinery which Germany can ill afford to spare. “Immediately on occupation the Germans looted everything of value in the conquered countries and so made up many of their own defiiciencies. Now they grudgingly have to return some of the spoils. A conquered country is a liability as well as an asset. More and more the Germans are going to feel the pinch but whatever shortages there may be in Germany they will not be felt by the army first. It is the civilians who have to bear the brunt of want and it may well be that under the strain they may break as they did in 1918. irrespective of the victories of German arms. That is why the blockade must be maintained.”