REFUTATION OF NAZI ALLEGATIONS

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21188, 10 August 1940, Page 7

REFUTATION OF NAZI ALLEGATIONS

GREAT ACTIVITY AT LONDON’S DOCKYARDS SHIPS EVERY DAY BIG CARGOES OF FOOD (Official Wireless) (Received August 10, 11 a.m.) RUGBY, Aug. 9 Assertions on the German wireless—for listening to which there is no penalty in Britain—that harbours on the south and east coasts of England have been closed and the Port of London itself ig dead, have sent newspapermen scurrying down to London’s dockland to see for themselves what is happening. Their reports appear in the press, with photographs of what they saw. They found great activity and lightermen and dockers to whom they spoke of these Nazi stories dismissed them with ridicule. One reporter’s enquiries brought forth the intelligence that since the war began the Port of London has not known a day when ships had not come in. The News-Chonicle’s representative found the docks crowded and busy. He watched timber being unloaded and got covered in flour when lie moved to a place where cargo from Canada was being transferred to barges. He found considerable reassurance regarding the country’s food supply as lie saw cranes unloading frozen meat from New Zealand in great stacks of 95 carcases each. Sitting on a barge piled high with boxes of dried fruits from Africa an Evening Standard reporter was told by a docker who has worked for 35 years in the port: “ Ships are coming in all the time, and even with the control of foodstuffs the unloading process is in no way slowed up—the ships are away again in a brace of shakes.” This same journalist describes how “we drove past miles of warehouses and factories teeming with life. Down on the quayside there was great activity. Stevedores and tallymen were working nineteen to the dozen discharging and checking cargoes.”