EARLY ACTION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23721, 30 July 1940, Page 7

EARLY ACTION

ATTACK ON BRITAIN INDICATIONS SEEN ACTIVITIES IN FRANCE STOPPAGE OF TRAFFIC By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright (Received July 29, 8.15 p.m.) LONDON. July 2!) Various reports of German activity in northern France are thought in 'some quarters to indicate that operations against Britain are imminent. An official French communique yesterday stated: "The return of refugees to occupied zones and the transfer of Government services to Paris have been provisionally stopped." Trains are being held up at Moulins, preventing refugees, including 100 bank .workers, * from reaching Paris. The Germans have closed road as well as rail traffic between occupied and unoccupied France. The French radio announced that occupied France had been split up into five zones. Refugees were forbidden to enter or leave two strategic areas, one embracing the Channel ports and the hinterland, and the other taking in the Maginot Line from Switzerland to Belgium. Special permission to travel in other zones must be obtained and will only be granted to farmers, doctors, nurses and officials. The French Government has protested to Britain against the severe bombing of France, including Cherbourg, Nantes and St. Nazaire, where casualties were heavy and damage serious. Important German air and naval concentrations are understood to have been at all the ports attacked. . "Lord Haw-Haw," the English announcer on the German radio, yesterday repeated that the great attack against England was only a question of days and possibly hours. Coastal attacks made so far were "only a mild preliminary "The month ahead may bo the most dangerous period," said Mr. Malcolm Mac Donald, Minister of Health, urging parents not to bring evacuated children homo for the summer holidays. He stressed that air. raid casualties so far were much smaller in the country,than in the towns. The total number of men registered for military service in Britain is now 4,200,000. BRITISH WAR SAVINGS TOTAL OVER £300,000,000 BONDS AND CERTIFICATES GIFTS FOR BUYING AIRCRAFT British Wireless . LONDON, July 28 A total of £12,595,752 was raised through various forms,, of. war savings last week. Since the opening of the campaign £128,067,704 has been raised by the sale of savings certificates and £l3l-,528,980 by the sale of defence bonds. During the same period, the balance due to depositors in the Post Office Savings Bank and Trustee Savings Banks increased by £44,789,310 —a grand total of £304,394,988. The Minister for Aircraft Production, Lord Beaverbrook, announced that the public has subscribed £2,048,521 to buy various types of aircraft, says a Press Association cablegram. FRENCH SAILORS 1200 BOUND FOR MOROCCO LISBON, July 28 A French liner is anchored in the River Tagus, Lisbon, carrying 1200 French sailors from England to Casablanca, Morocco. DUTCH SEAMEN PRAISED LONDON, July 2G A British refugee from France, in a letter to the Times expressing the passengers' "gratitude to and profound admiration" for the officers and crew of a Dutch ship which transported tliem to England, points out that these sailors lost everything and left their wives and children and homes at the enemy's mercy. "Nevertheless," he says, "when the passengers handed the crow £IOO as a present, the crew presented the gift and an additional £25 earned as tips to the ship's captain, requesting that the money should bo passed on to the British Bed Cross."