WALL OF SILENCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24603, 10 May 1941, Page 9

WALL OF SILENCE

BATTLE OF ATLANTIC LONDON CRITICISM AWAKING OF AMERICA LONDON, Apl. 29. " This appalling and humiliating stale of affairs is a shocking reflection on the Government's failure to appreciate the importance of news in war time, and the responsibility must be shared by every member of the Government from the top downward," says the News Chronicle, referring to the secrecy surrounding the Battle of the Atlantic. "A total black-out has descended over the Atlantic rollers," says the newspaper "There is just no news, and this is not good enough. We are aching for more and speedier American aid. There are plenty of signs that the Americans are not yet fully awake to our own and their mortal peril, and are not ready for the drastic action which the period demands, and yet we do nothing to dramatise the Battle of the Atlantic for 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 the most responsible have repeatedly appealed to the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Ministry of Information, but 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 of the Atlantic is a private war of their own." 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 taced with a wall of blank silence, when glorious 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.