A REVISED BLOCKADE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 28, 1 August 1940, Page 10

A REVISED BLOCKADE

With the exception of parts of the Baltic Sea, Hitler's word now goes on all the coasts of western Europe from northern Norway south to the Pyrenees. Hitler's fleets and air fleets can issue from these coastal ports and coastal territories over their whole length except the coast of unoccupied France, and that exception holds good only so long as the Petain Government carries out its pretensions. So far as is known, however, the Petain Government does not pretend to stop war supplies from going to Germany through French ports and over French communications. South of the Pyrenees, neutral or non-belligerent Spain continues to be a country through which enemy imports and exports may go; but the fall of France has intensified the problem that Spain presents to the British blockader, because Germany now has not only a sea route to Spain (via Italy and the Mediterranean) but also a land route via France. At one blow (in MayJune) Britain lost the blockading help of French naval patrols, and Hitler found a French land route to Spain .and Portugal, by which his power to import and to export is proportionately increased. Control of enemy imports and exports is thus made more difficult, and is more than ever tangled up with the neutral trade of Spain and with new French claims. to. neutral rights. Loss of French ports also makes it difficult to maintain the old Allied system of contraband control ports, whereby the Allied naval patrols could bring neutral ships to port for search. Diversion of ships to search ports was always difficult and a cause of international friction. To make much longer diversions of ships from their trade routes to "contraband control bases in British waters either in the United Kingdom or in Western Africa" would be, Dr. Dalton states, impracticable. He also states that Britain must how

control not only shipping approaching the Mediterranean Sea, but all ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and must control not in the old manner of search but by "navicert." That system of certification will now be applied "to all sea-borne goods for any European port, as well as to certain Atlantic islands, and certain neutral ports in North Africa." In lack of a certificate all importing and exporting ships will be liable to seizure by the patrol. "The British Government," Dr. Dalton adds, "has decided with regret that it must treat the whole of France, as well as Algeria, Tunisia, and French Morocco, as enemy-controlled territory for the purposes of contraband and export control. Goods for all those territories and originating from them are liable to be placed in prize." The need for these steps —if the blockade is to succeed —is obvious. Equally obvious is the probability of opposition in countries claiming neutrality. Of great concern is the still unascertained reaction of Spain; and Spanish hostility might raise Portuguese questions. The effect in several capitals of the new blockade must be awaited with interest.