"STARVING BRITAIN"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24297, 14 May 1940, Page 8

"STARVING BRITAIN"

GERMAft RADIO MYTH Surprise that anyone in New Zealand should believe for a moment any of the broadcasts from the German radio stations, and particularly the oftrepeated statements that the people of England are starving, is expressed by an English business man in a letter to his Auckland representative. He refers to the " starving Britain" myth fostered by Goebbels, and encloses a clipping from the Daily Telegraph, London, showing that others besides " Lord Haw-Haw," Berlin announcer, share the delusion that the people of England are starving or on the verge of it. The clipping states: '•Families in one street within a week received: A letter from New Zealand saying how sorry the writer and friends were they could not send us poor folk some food; a ham and five pounds of tinned butter plus unlimited sympathy from Canada; and a visit from an Irish youth, looking for work, whose father in Ireland would hardly let him go to England, hot for fear of bombs but because he would not get enough to eat." "We did not think there were such stupid people in New Zealand who would take this stuff broadcast from that sink of iniquity the German radio, as anything but something to laugh at," said the writer of the letter. "We have all got to stand together in every way to defeat these blights on Europe and the world. Most of us cannot do anything in a big way, but we can in the little things."