MORALE UNSHAKEN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24430, 16 October 1940, Page 7

MORALE UNSHAKEN

THE BRITISH PEOPLE LIFE NEARLY NORMAL CHILDREN PLAY IN STREETS (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON. Oct. 14. (Received Oct 15. at 9 p.m.) Three bombs wrecked several houses in a residential district of London and two neopie were admitted to hospital. Casualties are believed to have been caused at a convent, when bombs fell on a Roman Catholic Church damaging the church the convent, and the offices A man was killed and six were injured bv another bomb nearby. The British morale is unshaken by the orolonged bombardment. This is proved by a toui of oorts and holiday towns on the south-east coast. The civilian spirit is unbroken and life is as near norma) as the actual drooping of bombs nermits. Dover is as busy and cheerful as any other town in England, Seaside populations have dwindled. but evacuation has nowhere been wholesale. Children still clay in the streets and women go shopping even after air-raid warnings Ramsgate has changed its way ot life more than other towns. Women and children, remembering the terrific onslaught of August 14. spend many hours a day and most of the night 60 to 90 feet underground The Berlin radio claims that the Luftwaffe has dropped 350 tons of bombs on England in the last 24 hours, compared with six to eight tons dropped by the R.A.F. on Germany and German-occupied territory Factories Quickly Repaired The speed with which the factories in the London area which have been bombed by German aircraft have reorganised their production was illustrated in a speech at Lincoln to-day by Sir Cecil Weir, an executive member of the Export Council of the Board of Trade Speaking of a London tour, during which he visited plants, some of which had been struck as frequently as eight times by every type of bomb. Sir Cecil Weir said: “One would have expected disorganisation. chaos, and confusion. Instead, one found an extraordinary degree of normal production, and in one of the worst cases the drop in production. a large part of which was going for export, was less than 30 per cent, and the managing director assured me that within another week or two they would be fully up to the usual output.

“Another manufacturer showed me photographs of his damaged factory.. which had been struck in a vital spot by a 15001 b bomb In another vital scot it had been blasted by a land mine. When we looked at the damage the day after the attack his foreman said: ' Hew long do vou think it will be before we can get going? * and he said, optimistically, ‘about a month.’ In actual fact, the plant was operating within 24 hours. He lost 30 per cent, of production in the first week, 20 per cent, in the second, and the third was producing the full output. which was much more than the amount manufactured in pre-war days.”

NEW GERMAN BOMB EXPLOSIVE AND INCENDIARY LONDON, Oct. 15. (Received Oct. 16, at 1 a.m.) Night raiders used a new type of bomb which is both explosive and incendiary It explodes u mid-air. This was London’s most intensive raid yet. The barrage was in action almost continuously throughout the night. During a raid on a Midland town bombs fell on a home for aged women, killing three and injuring 10. Another bomb struck a departmental store, and others demolished houses and damaged office buildings and business premises.