WELL SAFEGUARDED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 March 1943, Page 4

WELL SAFEGUARDED

NEW ZEALAND TROOP CONVOYS DEFENCE MINISTER’S TRIBUTE TO NAVY. PRE-WAR PREPARATIONS IN PACIFIC. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.30 a.m.) RUGBY, March 18. “I do not think one man out of thousands of New Zealand troops has been lost en route to the Middle East, the South Pacific or to Britain,” said Mr Jones, the. New Zealand Minister of Defence, at a Press conference in Cairo. That result, he said, was a tribute to the Navy. New Zealand’s naval personnel had increased and at the present moment it was ten times greater than before the war. Several thousand men had joined the Royal Navy and were attached to minesweepers or working with the Fleet Air Arm. Referring to the Army, Mr Jones paid a tribute to the New Zealand forces in the Middle East, who had proved a credit to the Dominion. He said the Government was now tackling the problem of rehabilitation and a board had been appointed and legislation passed for the purpose of finding employm'ent. Discharged men would be given three years’ training and paid a wage while learning a trade until they completed their training. Mr Jones also told how the possibility of Japan declaring war on Britain had been discussed in peace time and a conference in March. 1939, of British. Australian and New Zealand authorities had decided that the area from Port Moresby to the New Hebrides should be the responsibility of the Australian Government, while New Zealand should be responsible from the New Hebrides to Tonga. The idea was that if they had air forces operating throughout the area they would be able to give early advice to both countries of any big movements of enemy forces down towards the south. That preparation had been justified.