NO SURRENDER AND NO SCUTTLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 58, 5 September 1940, Page 10

NO SURRENDER AND NO SCUTTLE

Painful experience connected with the disposal of the French fleet, following our French ally's decision to capitulate, increases the importance of Britain's pledge to the United States (revealed by the United States State Department) that the British Isles, if defeated, will never surrender or scuttle the British Fleet. When a belligerent Government, considering itself defeated, asks its enemy for

his terms, such a Government is tempted to use its undefeated fleet (if it has one) as something to bargain with. For instance, surrender of the fleet to the enemy might buy from that enemy less harsh terms of armistice. Alternatively, the same purpose (favourable treatment by the enemy) might be secured by the surrendering Government if it agreed to scuttle its fleet, or to disarm and demobilise its warships in ports where seizure by the enemy is possible, and where the. only real barrier against seizure by the enemy is that enemy's fragile pledge. All these temptations confronted the Petain Government, and to the lastmentioned it yielded, thus causing the unfortunate but necessary attack by the British Fleet on the French fleet at Oran. Mr. Churchill's pledge is definite, and its execution is practicable, for if the British Isles were defeated (which they will not be) Canada would beckon the British Fleet as Britain beckoned the French fleet; and the Empire call to the Navy of a smitten England is one which will never fall on deaf ears. Mr. Churchill's pledge is plain Empire duty—it costs nothing to give and it buys American confidence. It reasserts the unity of the British Commonwealth.