NORWAY AT FAULT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20176, 20 February 1940, Page 7

NORWAY AT FAULT

AMERICAN OPINIONS GREAT WAR CITED BERLIN'S' "WILD CRIES" TURNING OF TABLES (Reed. Feb. 20, 9 a.m.) NEW YORK, Feb. 19. While the State Department declines to comment on the Altmarck incident, as American interests were not involved, all unofficial Washington opinion agrees that Britain has tenable grounds in international law to support her action. Leading jurists declare that Norway was at fault in not determining the true status of the Altmarck and freeing the prisoners. They cited the Appam case of 1916, ' in which the United States Government was forced to free 429 British prisoners taken to Newport News aboard a liner captured by a German raider. Mr. Gerard, a former Ambassador to Germany, said: “Just suppose the Atlmarck put into New York harbour. Would we have stood for it?” The New York Herald-Tribune says: “There is grim humour in Berlin’s wild cries of anger, pain and outraged moral virtue of a nation whose governors have made brute force their deity and has had, relatively mildly, the tables turned. Norway, of course, is protesting with one eye on Germany, but no one outside of Germany really is profoundly shocked. Many Americans are not repressing sardonic smiles at the German outcries.” The New York Times says: “Few incidents of the war have surpassed in sheer, dramatic interest H.M.S. Cossack’s rescue. The failure of the Norwegians to discover the prisoners is incredible, but it is conceivable that the unhappy Norwegian Government was acting on German pressure. This is the only explanation too, for Sweden’s refusal to allow the passage of foreign troops to Finland."