ENEMY SHIPPING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1943, Page 3

ENEMY SHIPPING

GERMAN & ITALIAN LOSSES ABOUT 7,500,000 TONS TO DATE. EFFECT OF ALLIED ATTACKS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, February 7. The extent of the damage which has been done to German and Italian shipping can be gauged from British official statements, which show that 6,180,000 tons of German and Italian had been sunk, captured, or damaged from the beginning of the war up to June, 1942, and that in the last six months of 1942 the losses are estimated at another 1,300,000 tons. The Admiralty announced that over 1,000,000 tons of German and Italian merchantmen have been sunk by submarines in the Mediterranean alone. Thus the total Axis shipping losses in Europe already amount to about 7,500,000 tons. This figure is about equal to the total tonnage of the German and Italian fleets at the beginning of the war. However, since the outbreak, Germany has seized part of the Norwegian, Dutch, French, Danish, Greek and Yugoslav fleets. Of ,the total of 14,170,000 tons belonging to those six

that they were going to win. In an advertisement which appeared in the Christchurch newsparers on Friday the following appeared: ‘Polling day majority, Horace Herring, M.P. and the rest. R.I.P.’ Unfortunately for them, it is Mr Herring, R.I.P. Without doubt their true feelings were expressed by Mr Herring when he said, ‘I am very disappointed with the result.’ “As for Mr Holland’s claims of a Nationalist advance, all I have to say is that a few more advances of this nature and the Nationalist Party will be off the map altogether. “The fact remains,” Mr Fraser continued, “that Labour has retained the seat by a large majority and. will welcome to its ranks a member of Parliament who in fidelity to principle, loyalty to the war effort, and general capacity will prove a worthy successor to the late Mr Armstrong. “During the course of the war period, the Government has necessarily introduced and enforced measures of a restricted nature, and has necessarily and unavoidably laid burdens upon the people which the unthinking, no doubt, resent. The common sense and intelligence of the people of New Zealand are reflected in the Christchurch East results. “The peculiar characteristic electioneering methods of Mr Lee and company will be adequately met in the future, and wherever used, will prove a misfire just as on this occasion. “Mr Holland, who is ‘gratified’ by the results, considered it necessary to emulate and propound a very considerable part of Labour’s platform to obtain even the votes .he did manage to retain. “The outstanding factor,” Mr Fraser concluded, “is that after seven years of office, three of them under war conditions organising the country and its resources for our war effort, when the war effort had to be built up from the very foundations, when regulations had to be passed, when mobilisation had to take place, when compulsion had to be used in a thousand different ways Labour has lost only one seat, and that a historically Conservative one. This must be a record for any New Zealand Government. I also take the result of the Christchurch East by-election as a complete endorsement of New Zealand’s war effort.”