NEUTRAL SHIPS IN CONVOY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23574, 7 February 1940, Page 10

NEUTRAL SHIPS IN CONVOY

The suggestion put forward a few weeks ago by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill, that neutral countries wishing to maintain their trade with Great Britain would be well advised to place their shipping under the protection of the Royal Navy, has apparently been acted upon without delay. That Mr. Churchill's offer of adequate protection was no idle boast is revealed by the fact that, out of 360 neutral vessels travelling under the British convoy system up to January 31, only one was lost. A demonstration that neutral shipping can be thus safeguarded must be straining the inventive capacity of Goebbels and his associates who have been doing their best to persuade Germany's non-belligerent neighbours that British sea power has been shattered. In accepting tho protection of the Royal Navy neutral shipowners are taking the only course open to them unless they are content to have idle tonnage on their hands indefinitely. If they were prepared to take part in a carrying trade for the Nazis they would have to run , the British blockade and, even if they managed that successfully, they could not be certain of acceptable payment. If they endeavour to carry on their normal activities as neutral traders they expose themselves to treacherous U-boat attacks without warning—attacks so flagrantly maintained in defiance of international law that Sweden alone has already lost more than 30 ships and more than 200 lives, while the Norwegian, Danish, Dutch and Belgian merchant fleets have also suffered heavily. And so the neutrals have been forced to rely on the Royal Navy as their guardian at sea. They have , been threatened in advance that the acceptance of this protection will cause their ships to be regarded by Germany as belligerent vessels, but this is a fairly empty threat when the German Navy has shown itself more eager to attack neutral shipping than to molest the convoys of Britain and Franca.;