TIME OF PERIL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 October 1941, Page 5

TIME OF PERIL

CHANCE NAZIS MISSED IN 1939 NOT ONE DIVISION IN BRITAIN FULLY TRAINED AND EQUIPPED. FOREIGN SECRETARY REPLIES TO CRITICS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 23. The Foreign Secretary, Mr. Eden, revealed today that during the summer of 1939 there was one moment when there was not even one fully-trained or fully-equipped division in Britain. Mr Eden was replying to the debate in the House of Commons, in which many speakers, including Mr. Noel Baker, Mr. Aneurin Bevan, Commander Stephen King-Hall, and Mr. J. C. Wedgewood took part. “When the members of the War Cabinet.” said Mr. Eden, “were asked by members to try to relieve their anxiety and tell them something of their intentions, they put a difficult task on the Minister’s shoulders. There would be risk of our plans and strength being made known.” He could give Mr Wedgewood an assurance that the Government did not propose either now or in the future, or at any time, to negotiate with Hitler or his associates on any subject. Reference had been made to Lord Gort’s dispatches—to the shortage of equipment which those despatches revealed —and Mr. Eden declared that every word that Lord Gort had said on that subject was fully justified. They had, however, carried examination of the subject a stage further. All the equipment' being produced at that time was being sent to France, with the result that the position in the Middle East and at home was deplorably weak. There was lost in France at that time about a thousand guns, and the guns that remained in Britain were many fewer than a thousand. Mr. Eden then revealed that at one moment during the summer before last, there was not even one fullytrained and fully-equipped division in Britain. “Added to that,” he said, “our defences were virtually nonexistent, and our Middle East forces lacked practically all modern equipment. Last summer and last winter we had not only to equip the army there but to send out guns, tank's, and aeroplanes even before some divisions of the Regular Army were fully equipped. “We were ready to take that risk. The fact that we took it enabled General Wavell to win his victory and enabled us to send a measure of help to Greece, even though that help was insufficeint to save Greece. I have heard it said that the decision was strategically unsound.. I cannot accept that for a minute. It was the dispatch of those troops to Greece, and the Yugoslav coup d’etat, coupled with the resistance of the Greek armies and our own which, without the least doubt, delayed the attack on Russia by at least six weeks. That in itself was a valuable contribution to the common cause.”