RUMOURS AND SHIPPING

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 December 1940, Page 4

RUMOURS AND SHIPPING

DENIAL OF FURTHER LOSSES [per press association.] • WELLINGTON, December 8. The Director of Publicity (Mr. J. T. Paul) has issued a statement on rumpurs about shipping. “After the official announcement by the Prime Minister (Mr. Fraser) that the Holmwood was overdue and possibly the victim of a raider known to have been off the New Zealand coast about that time, many baseless rumours were circulated,” Mr. Paul says. “It might reasonably have been( expected that when all the known I facts were made available about this particular vessel there would have been less scope for the mischievous intervention of the rumourmonger than in certain other cases where it was not in the public interest to publish the name of the overdue ship. That expectation has not'been realised, and this troublesome pest con-

tinues to exercise his peculiar habit. “Within very few hours of the official announcement it was rumoured that another ship had been lost in I the same locality, that the’ wireless [station at the Chathams was out of action, that the wireless on the ship had been officially sealed, and so on. These and other similar imaginings culminated with possibly the most fantastic, that the Chatham Islands had been occupied by the raider, which I was requested by long distance telephone call at the witching hour of midnight to confirm or

deny. , “The discovery of a royal road for the discouragement of rumours would be most helpful in our community. During this week it has been rumoured that certain ships have been lost and others overdue, but not in one case has the rumour been based on fact. In one instance an urgent inquiry was telephoned from Auckland asking for information regarding an allegedly overdue ship. The vessel in question for some time previously had been safely berthed in port.

“Might I add that the policy fol--1 lowed is not to withhold any information regarding either good news or i bad in connection with our activities in this war, except in those cases where dissemination ’of either would be helpful to the enemy. In this connection it will readily be appreciated that New Zealand, as part of the British Commonwealth of Nations, must act in complete co-operation with Britain. This is a war in which the nations of the Commonwealth must stand or fall together.”