GERMANY IS NOT CONFIDENT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 302, 22 December 1939, Page 7

GERMANY IS NOT CONFIDENT

NO MASS AIR ATTACKS REASONS FOR HESITANCY . VIEWS OF LORD CHATFIELD ' I | British Offi'-ial Wireless I Received Dec. 27. 5.5 p.m. I RUGBY, Dec. 20. I Lord Chatfield, the British Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, in a broadcast referring to the surprise felt by many that Germany had not yet started the threatened military or mass air attacks, said: ‘You may be absolutely sure of one thing. If Germany has not started in either of these two ways it is solely because she ( has not got the confidence that she I could thus succeed. Whatever she I may say. Germany needs a short war i and so she hopes to break the British • Navy's grip on her supplies and de- | feat us rapidly where we are indeed most vulnerable, yet where we are : strongest; namely, on the sea." Lord Chatfield referred in this con- | nection to Germany’s illegal use of submarine and mine. Now Britain . had broken the back of the submar- , ine campaign. Germany was resorting . to the use of a new type of mine not ; laid according to international law, and. more recently, to machine-gun- i ning and bombing British fishing ! vessels. I>ord Chatfield believes that one of the vital chapters in the war is now being written. “For,” he says, “in defeating, with our great ally France, the enemy’s plans to ’ deny the seas to merchantmen of the world, we are laying the foundations of victory anti ensuring that all future military opera- > tions will be safely conducted.” In a tribute to the Royal Air Force, I Lord Chatfield said that by its sue- | cesses and endeavours it was building up that experience and confidence j in itself which would steadily give I Britain the same ascendancy in the j air that she had possessed for cen- ! turies at sea. Lord Chatfield cone.'. Jed with a! Ir’bute to the magnirk • t war efforts I cf the Dominions and tne Empire and j Britain's French allies.