JUBILATION IN BRITAIN

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21043, 20 February 1940, Page 5

JUBILATION IN BRITAIN

RESCUE OF MERCHANT SEAMEN

INTERNATIONAL LAW NOT VIOLATED ONE MOMENT SLAVES THEN DRAMATIC FREEDOM (Official Wireless) (Received February 20, 11 a.m.) RUGBY, February 19 ' The whole daily press displays the news of the rescue of 300 British merchant seamen from the German ship Altmarck with great prominence and comments enthusiastically on the Royal Navy’s action, which is universally heralded as an eminently satisfactory sequel to the victory of River Plate, which resulted in the scuttling of the Altmarck’s mother ship. The Manchester Guardian says: “The skill and speed and the conclusiveness of the deed and the circumstances of the unhappy seamen —one moment crowded like slaves in a prison ship, humiliated and ill-fed and told that they were to be marched through Berlin in a triumphant procession, and the next moment sailing home safe in a British warship—have moved the people even more than the Admiral Graf Spee victory.” Referring to the legal aspect of the Altmarck case, the Times says: “International law' does not permit a belligerent to transport his prisoners of war through the territory of a neutral. He cannot march them across a neutral land nor can he convey them into or through neutral territorial waters. If a ship carrying prisoners is taken into such waters the law requires that the prisoners he immediately released. The first duty to release them rests upon their captors, as was clearly recognised by Captain Langsdorff, of the Admiral Graf Spee, who set free his prisoners as soon as he entered Montevideo harbour.