Little Change In Pacific Shipping Likely

Northern Advocate, 9 December 1941, Page 5

Little Change In Pacific Shipping Likely

(Rec. 1.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Dec. 8. The Navy and the Maritime Commission are ready to begin arming all merchantmen! in the Pacific, start convoys, and keep Lease-Lend supplies flowing. Officials said little appreciable change was to be expected in Pacific shipping operations. American merchantmen, convoyed by the Navy, would blast a way through any Japanese offensive. The necessity of speeding the flow of strategic materials from Australia, Netherlands East Indies and elsewhere, and replenishing supplies to American armed forces in Pacific bases, has resulted in plans to induct many more merchantmen into the Asiatic and Far Eastern trades. 1 Merchantmen Captured? The German radio quoted a report from Tokio that Japanese warships had captured seven United States merchantmen in the Pacific. The Japanese High Command announced that the United States mine carrier Penguin and four United States cargo vessels were sunk off Guam, A message from London says the Berlin newspaper “Voelkischer Beobachter,” said: “It. is quite certain that if it were not for Mr. Roosevelt’s interference the European war would have been over long ago. “He now fights Japan with the same hatred with which he persecuted National Socialist Germany. Mr. Roosevelt has brought the American people to the point where Mr. Churchill and Jewry wanted them.”