WALL OF SILENCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23954, 2 May 1941, Page 8

WALL OF SILENCE

BATTLE OF ATLANTIC LONDON CRITICISM AWAKING OF AMERICA LONDON, April 2!) "This appalling and humiliating state of affairs is a shocking reflection on the Government's failure to appreciate the importance of news in wartime, and the responsibility must he shared by every member of the Government from the top downward." says the NewsChronicle, referring to the secrecy surrounding the Battle of the Atlantic. "A total blackout lias descended over the Atlantic roller-." says the newspaper. "There is just no news, and this is not good enough. \N e are aching lot more ami speedier Ameriean aid. Iheie are plenty ol signs that the Americans are not vet lullv awake to our own and their mortal peril, and are not ready tor the drastic action which the peril demands, and yet we do nothing to dramatise the Battle of the Atlantic tor them and to bring the realities and dire urgencies home to them. Americans Baffled "American journalists and broadcasters in London confess themselves •licked' in their long battle for information with the Service Departments. Several of th* most responsible have repeatedly appealed to the Admiralty, the War OlKce, and the .Ministry o|' Information, hut almost wholly without result. "They have now reached the point where they feel that further appeals are useless." The News-Chronicle ends the article with a reference to "tight-lipped' Service chiefs hugging news of triumphs and disasters to their breasts in Whitehall and pretending that the Battle ot' the Atlantic is a private war of their OH 11." Operations in Greece There has also been strong criticism in the London press of the lack of news about the British withdrawal from Greece, one newspaper commenting: "While the British remain obstinately silent about the withdrawal, it is announced and discussed in the United States. Australia, and every Nazi-con-trolled country." The British people were laced with a wall of blank silence, when gloiious deeds should have been ringing throughout the world. It is agreed that the evacuation, in spite of the smaller numbers, parallels Dunkirk, and should be similarly inflaming British blood

TROOPS IN FINLAND UNITS FROM GERMANY AGREEMENT RECALLED (Rerd. 7.30 p.m.) LONDON, May 1 The Moscow newspaper Pravda says it is reliably reported from Tallin, Estonia, that 12,000 German troops, equipped with tanks and artillery, aboard four transports, landed at Abo (Turku), iu the south-west of Finland, on March '26 and proceeded to Tampere, some distance to the north-east. The Pravda report brought a semiofficial statement from Helsinki that "1300 Germans passed through Finland. The Moscow figures beat all records for exaggeration." It is pointed out in London that there is an arrangement, in which the Finnish Government unfortunately acquiesced, whereby German troops stationed in north Norway going on or returning from leave are granted transit facilities through Finland, says a British official wireless message. According to the correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain in Moscow. German sources assert that the Soviet has long been aware that German troops Were proceeding north, via Finland. The\ say the latest landing is quite regular The Helsinki correspondent ot a Swiss agency says that officials deny reports of joint German and Finnish manoeuvres in Finland. A Zurich message says that the official German Army newspaper, for the first time since the signing of the Russo-German Tieaty, reminds _ its readers "never to forget that Hitler was the first to take up the fight against the Bolshevist terror regime."

GERMANS REMOVED AMERICAN LINER STOPPED HONOLULU, April 30 The American liner President Garfield, radioed that she had been stopped at sea on Tuesday by a Canadian warship. Four German aviation experts Irom South Ameri' a were removed. They were en route to Japan. PROMINENT COLUMNIST REINSTATEMENT REFUSED WASHINGTON, April 30 President Roosevelt has refused to reappoint General Hugh .Johnson as Briga-dier-General of the Army Reserve Corps. In recent months General Johnson, as a columnist and lecturer, has severely criticised the President's policy. One of the most colourful figures in America, General Johnson was formerly one ol Piesidcnt Roosevelt's chiel assistants as Administrator of the National Recovery Act. In turn quartermaster fo! refugees after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, executive officer of Yosemite National Park, judge-advocate in the punitive expedition against Mexico in 11)16. originator of the selective draft system on the entry of the United States into the last war, organiser of the Purchase, Storage and Traffic Division of the General Staff, and business executive, he took charge of industrial reorganisation under the National Recovery Act in lll.'f.'t. His dynamic and exuberant conduct of the Blue F«agl«' campaign at first went well but later differences nrose between liim and the Administration and his resignatinn in M'.'il was at once accepted by Mr. Roosevelt. He has since became one ol th«» most prominent newspaper and radio commentators in America.

YUGOSLAV WAR VESSELS LONDON, May I A Yugoslav submarine and two motor-torpedo boats, which the enemy claimed to have sunk, have arrived safely at a British port.