VANISHED FLAG

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 114, 15 May 1940, Page 4

VANISHED FLAG

THE NAZI SWASTIKA

DRIVEN FROM THE SEAS

THE WORK OF THE NAVY

There seem to be few thing more irritating to the Nazi propagandists in Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne than the existence of British sea power. And not without reason. Sea power is still the. basis of Britain's existence, and months of war have left its strength unimpaired, writes W. G. J. Knop in the London "Daily Telegraph."

The exploits of the Navy, from the shores of Uruguay to those of Norway, have been spectacular and inspiring. No less great has been the achievement of the thousands of merchant ships, bringing their cargoes to the ports of Britain from every corner of the world. The German campaign of cowardly murder could not stop them. Many a good ship has gone to the bottom of the sea, and many brave sailor.with it. But for each ship the Nazis sink, nearly five hundred reach port safely. On the other hand, the German mercantile marine has been all but swept from the seas. Now and again :. German ship escapes from a neutral port and manages to slip through the blockade into the safety of the Baltic Sea or the Heligoland Bight, but outside these regions German shipping has to choose between inactivity in neutral ports, capture by the Royal Navy, or scuttling. USE OF PROPAGANDA. There is, of course, a large difference in the relative importance of Britain's ability to maintain her command of the seas and Germany's hurried withdrawal from the world's waterways. To Britain the freedom of the seas is a sine 'qua non of existence; to Germany it is not. None the less, the fate that has befallen German shipping is causing much heartburning in Germany. There are a number of reasons for that. . ,-' Since the day when Kaiser Wilhelm II proclaimed, "Our future lies on the water," Germany has been shippingconscious. The fact that the German navy, by scuttling itself in Scapa Flow, committed the only major act of defiance against the Allies after. the Armistice endeared it to every German nationalist. The merchant marine has benefited from that sentiment. The Germans, moreover, have always regarded their merchant fleet as more than merely an economic asset. "Our merchant ships have to serve ideal as well as material purposes," wrote the "Frankfurter Zeitung" shortly after Hitler came to power. "We must make the fullest use of the propagandist effect of the appearance of German ships in foreign ports and develop the cultural propaganda which is always carried out by a good German merchant ship and its crew." It was no coincidence that in the period of economic reconstruction after the Great War, when Germany had lost nearly her entire. merchant fleet, one of her first measures was to carry out a spectacular shipbuilding programme which almost brought her merchant fleet back to pre-war size. FIFTH IN THE WORLD. Under the Nazi regime a curious situation developed. On the, one hand the, Nazis improved on the;prbpagandisfe dharacter of the merchant fleet, turning each single ocean-going ship into a miniature department of.-' Dr. Goebbels!s Ministry. In some cases German ships were even used for purposes of military and political espionage. On the other hand, especially in the last two or three years, the Nazi Government took into account the probability of war with Britain. It decided that it would be wise to follow a short-term policy of earning foreign exchange by building ships for foreign countries, rather than provide f.. future earning capacity by building ships for German owners. As a result, when war broke out the German merchant' fleet, with a tonnage of 4,244,000 tons, was slightly smaller than it had been in 1931 and 1,200,000 tons smaller than in 1913. Among the merchant fleets of the world it occupied fifth place, against second place in 1913. The following table shows how the world's largest merchant fleets stood in 1914 and 1938:— Registered tons. Isl4. . 1938. Britain and' British Empire 21,045,000 20,945,000 U.S.A. ...'. .. 3,015.000 9,486,000 .Tapan 1,708,000 5,007,000 Norway 2,505,000 4,614,000 Germany 5,459.000 4,244,000 Italy 1,665,000 3,290,000 Yet even the relatively small merchant fleet of Nazi Germany proved a great economic asset. In 1938 it contributed some £35,000,000 to the German balance of payments, £25,000,000 of which was in free foreign exchange. At the same time it Saved Germany another £35,000,000 in foreign exchange which she would have had to spend if unable to use her own ships. Without the foreign exchange earnings of her shipping Germany would have been severely hampered in her war preparations. MOSTLY AT HOME. The outbreak of war found some twothirds of Germany's merchant marine in home waters. Other ships had sought refuge in neutral ports and still j others were using every device of ingenuity to escape the watch of the Royal Navy. One German ship, the Erlangen, which at the outbreak of war had just left New Zealand, hid in the bay of an uninhabited South Sea island. Her cre.w spent a month cut-' ting trees, then improvised sails, and [ with their help and by burning every piece of her timber cargo and wooden floors and furniture, managed after a j month and a half to reach a Chilean i port. Other Nazi ships were less lucky— 15,000 tons were seized in Allied ports at the outbreak of war; 105,000 tons have been captured by the British and French Navies and added to the Allied merchant fleets. Some 175.000 tons have been scuttled by their German crews—including the ocean liner Columbus, whose first trip in 1924 was celebrated in Germany as a visible sign of German's national rebirth. Altogether, up to March 2, the Germans had lost approximately 300,000 tons of shipping. In relation to its size this total is twice as large as the total of the losses suffered by this country. No doubt the total will increase still further as more German ships try to run the blockade. At present there are nearly 1,000,000 tons of German shipping waiting in neutral ports for their chance to return home. THE LOST EXCHANGE. But the loss of ships is only a small blow as compared by the loss of foreign exchange suffered by the withdrawal rof Germany's shipping services.

At a time when Germany has already seen the greater part of her foreign exchange revenue vanish through the crippling of her export trade and the complete loss of her tourist trade, the loss of shipping revenue is not lightly to be borne.

Driven from the Atlantic and the Pacific. German shipping is now concentrated in the Baltic. German ships have taken the place of British ships

which have had to be withdrawn, and of those Swedish and Danish ships which find more profitable employment in the Atlantic. There has been a certain increase in traffic between Germany on the one hand and Russia, Sweden, and Norway on the other. However, compared with the German shipping debacle elsewhere, the gains are insignificant. They do not alter the fact that the ports of Germany are filled with idle ships.

It is, therefore, all the more striking that Germany's shipyards should be far from idle. A large proportion of Germany's shipbuilding capacity is taken up by naval building. Moreover, the British Ministry of Economic Warfare has not so far raised any objection to Germany building for neutral countries, and in fact several large ships have been delivered by Germany since the outbreak of war. For the rest Germany's shipyards are producing river craft for use on inland waterways and especially the Danube.

A fate similar to that of the merchant marine has befallen the German fishing fleet. For years strenuous I efforts had been made by the Nazi authorities to increase the consumption of fish in Germany. Many tributes were then paid to the good taste of the British people (consumption of fish 25 kilograms per head of population, as against Germany's 12.5 kilograms). UNMENTIONABLE FACT. The' German fish propagandists did not mention that a large part of the fish Britain eats it eats for breakfast —a thought which would strike every Teuton's palate with horror. The campaign met with some success. The consumption of fish was rising, and it helped to make the shortage of. meat felt less severely.

The war has laid the German high seas fishing fleet idle and reduced to one-fifth the amount of fish caught. To some extent this has been made good by the Norwegians, Belgians, and Dutch, who under the eyes, of the British Navy continue their deep-sea fishing and sell a large. proportion to the Germans.

Another result of Britain's - command of the seas has ,been the enforced idleness of the Nazi whaling fleet. Created as recently as 1936, when Germany's raw material shortages became serious, the German whaling fleet soon grew to the very considerable size of of 63 ships. In the last pre-war whaling season it produced over 100,000 tons of oil. As the combined German consumption of vegetable and whale oil was 900,000 tons in 1938, the whaling fleet's activities had become important to the German supply position.

In the circumstances, all sections of German shipping having disappeared from the open seasi' it is, to say the least, a little comic tb hear the Nazis proclaim the end of British sea power. They have resorted to piracy and murder, and it may well be that their campaign has not yet reached' its climax.. Yet if one thing is certain .about the present war it is this: the swastika flag has disappeared from the.seas for good: it will never come back.