ECONOMIC WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 108, 3 November 1939, Page 7

ECONOMIC WAR

A STRAW IN THE WIND

INDICATIONS OF ALLIED SUCCESS

NAZI DIFFICULTIES

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, November 1

In a broadcast today the Minister of Economic Warfare, Mr. Ronald Cross x said that the question as to the present Allied success in the economic war was not easily answered, because the economic weapon was one which acts gradually, and two months was but a short test. In the first six weeks the Allies intercepted about 488,000 tons of petrol, iron, aluminium, copper, and phosphates among other things destined for Germany, and although the figures for the past fortnight had not really been worked out, the total had "now comfortably passed the half-million mark." The figures did not include direct losses caused by shippers not attempting to send goods to Germany. There was plenty of evidence of the German financial and economic difficulty, which must increase so long as practically all its seaborne trade was lost, and it eventually would end in paralysis. Germany's losses were Britain's gains. Indications of the Allies' success were appeals to the German children to gather nettles from which cloth could be made, and the news that German children were being lectured on the virtues of artificial wool and rubber. Housewives were being told of the excellence of artificial soap. Mr. Cross remarked that although each indication of success an itself might be described as a straw, it served ( to show which way the wind was blowing; "and I think you will agree it is a good wind for us," he commented. THE LEGAL SITUATION. Dealing with the legal situation of economic warfare, the •' Minister said that international law recognised foodstuffs as contraband on condition that they were going to help in the prosecution of a war. At one time it was possible to distinguish between goods intended for the armed forces of the enemy Government and those designed for the civil population. This distinction was now impossible. As an eminent American international law writer had stated: "As war is now conducted it is a probability rather than a possibility that foodstuffs imported into a belligerent territory will serve a military end and so be used for hostile purposes." . This was accepted on both sides in the last war, as General Ludendorff had shown in saying: "In this war it was impossible to distinguish where the army and the navy began and the people ended," and the German Prize Court, in the case of the ship Maria, had condemned a cargo of -wheat: consigned to Belfast and Dublin, though the evidence, showed that the wheat was intended for millers operating for private purposes wholly. The evidence was rejected by Germany on the ground that "it could not be positively established to what use the wheat would actually have been put upon its arrival in Belfast, and whether the English Government would not gladly have purchased it."