ECONOMIC WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 22, 26 January 1940, Page 6

ECONOMIC WAR

BRITAIN'S METHODS

THREE LINES OF ATTACK

CERTAIN VICTORY

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, January 24

Explaining the work of the Ministry of Economic Warfare in a broadcast tonight, the Minister (Mr. Cross) said it was the business of his Department to prevent the enemy from obtaining a supply of those! things necessary to keep the German i fighting forces properly clothed, fed, and armed. To effect that object there were now three lines of attack. The first was the contraband control, whereby Germany was prevented from obtaining from overseas those goods which tended to increase, her military strength. The second was the stoppage of enemy seaborne exports, which action was a reprisal for the ruthless sinking of neutral as well as Allied shipping. Mr. Cross described this line of attack as a bitter blow 9 to the Nazis, who depended upon exports to obtain the foreign money needed for buying goods and making propaganda. The third line consisted in competing in those markets which Germany could reach overland. "The merchants of these neutral European countries." the Minister said, "are beginning to get better prices and returns from us, and as they do they will find it more unprofitable to send supplies to Germany, and our net will be drawn even tighter." UNITY WITH FRANCE. Mr. Cross added that the sea, land, and economic fields were a united British and French effort. He pointed out that it had been said and published that the quantity of German imports and exports seized was not large compared with the German needs. His opinion was' that the actual seizures were comparatively unimportant and showed only part of the picture. "They don't show—no figures can show—the volume of goods which have not left port for fear of o^r, contraband control," he said. "Compare the immense volume of goods shipped in peacetime, from overseas to 'Germany and from Germany to overseas with the volume of her present overseas trade. Then you will begin to appreciate what our contraband control has effected." Dealing with the question of intercepting food, the Minister said that in these days it was impossible to separate foodstuffs from industrial raw materials. After instancing the manufacture of bakelite from' milk and high explosives from fats, he continued: "Above all, I want to make it absolutely clear that there need be no starvation in Germany,, no matter how long the war may last. "Germany is practically self-sufficient if the Nazis use. their plentiful foodstuffs to feed the people and not the guns.. "It has been a really painful choice for the German people. It may become more painful yet, but it is the Nazi Government which made the choice and which will have to unmake it. It is they, not we, who starve the German women and children."

Mr. Cross concluded by saying that economic warfare meant a hard struggle against the accumulated Nazi stocks. "We have already achieved something and I am confident that the co-operation with the Dominions and the French will achieve much more;" he said. "Our share of the ultimate and certain victory will not be small."