ENSLAVED EUROPE

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21224, 21 September 1940, Page 9

ENSLAVED EUROPE

BRITAIN’S DETERMINATION SHUTTING OFF SUPPLIES (Official Wireless) (Received Sept. 21, 11 a.m.) RUGBY, Sept. 20 The plundering by the Germans of the countries they have enslaved is discussed in the Times, which notes that Rumania has celebrated her adhersion to the Axis by rationing the consumption of bread by her people, on the pretext of a poor harvest. The real reason, it says, is that the Nazi war machine requires to be fed more and more at the expense of the countries it has enslaved. From Rumania it expects corn as well as oil, and to supply the corn the people of Rumania must go on short commons. Remarking that the procedure varied from country to country and describing the open despoliation and enslavement of Czecho Slovakia and Poland, the Times says: “In the more recently conquered Scandinavia, the Low Countries and France, where it is felt necessary for a time to present a less forbidding face, different tactics were necessary. The methods employed are those of a card-sharper rather than a highway robber, but whatever method is employed the result is the same. The real wealth of the subjugated peoples finds its way to Germany. “What has occurred in all these countries is only a demonstration of the kind of ‘new order’ Germany seeks to establish in Europe—no other people to have any independent life or will of its own, all the economic resources of the continent to be enlisted to supply the German machine of conquest. Plain Warning “Dr. Funk has explained that the standard of living of the conquered peoples must be reduced to maintain the standard of living in Germany. For those countries which so far have escaped German domination the warning is plain. “For us there is an equally plain lesson. Since everything the subjugated peoples produce for themselves or import from abroad is at the disposition of their German masters the blockade must be drawn tighter and tighter. “The recent extension of the navicert system seems to be working effectively, backed as it is by regulations ensuring that the facilities at British ports shall be available only to ship-owners who conform to the system. “These regulations now have been strengthened by the revival of the black list, ships on which will denied all facilities and refused navicerts. It will be an offence for any person to transact business with any ship-owner named in this list. The object of the system is to shut off trade with the outside world from the whole area controlled by Germany and Italy. Other countries from which goods might find their way without difficulty into this area are being rationed to ensure they shall not receive more supplies than are required for their own needs. “This rationing system must inevitably raise problems of real difficulty, as in the case of oil imports into Spain, concerning which an agreement has just been reached, but these problems have to be faced. “We are fighting for our lives and must prevent all possible goods from falling into the hands of plundering Nazism.”