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THE CHINA MAIL, FEBRUARY 28, 1940

NAVY VOTE

Intensified U-Boat War Expected In Summer BRILLIANT CHURCHILL SPEECH ON Challenge To One-Sided Neutrality

London, To-day.

MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL, First Lord of the Ad- miralty, was received with cheers in the House of Commons to-day when he rose to speak on the secret naval estimates.

"

"I come," he said, "on behalf of the Navy to`ask for a few men; some ships, and a little money (laughter) to enable them to carry on their work.'

"

Mr. Churchill's reference to money referred to the £100 token grant, representing an amount running into many millions, but which is not defined:

Mr. Churchill continued: "There we have suffered from just these few has grown up a much wider compre- U-boats operating up to the present, hension of their duties and of the the House will see how vast must certainty that mistakes will be made be the preparations which we ought both at Whitehall and on the salt to make and which we have made water and that however hard we try, to cope with a full-scale form of at- the painful drain of losses will be tack which may come upon us. sustained.

This will only make us more zealous to discharge our task and to give satisfaction and win approval by producing good results.

"I regret that it is inexpedient to give the House precise facts and

regarding the figures

proposed strength and cost there is no need to tell more than is good for him about what we are doing (laughter).

of the Navy, but the enemy

"With the passage of Summer, the new building of U-boats will increas- ingly come into play and we expect large to meet them with cur very new bullding of craft especially adapt- ed to their destruction.

The Nazis are continuing to attack ships from the air. These air pirates attack trawlers,. colliers and other small vessels. Yesterday the Photo shows ambulance R.A.F. brought down two of these air pirates.

men carrying one of the wounded Ballors ashore from the tiny vessel "Tewdale" which was bombed and gunned off East coast on Feb. 3. The skipper was killed and four of crew wounded. (Air Mail. Copyright).

attacking harmless unarmed vessels the crowa and machine-gunning when in boats and in describing.on the radio 'what fun it was to Bee the little ship crackling up in flames like a tree' that we have had to set about arming all our fishing beats and small craft with means of de fending themselves (cheers). "We have reason to know that se- veral of them have sheered off very quickly when they found that-fisher- men who had only just been given a weapon, fired back upon them.

this "We shall be building all Summer at our extreme capacity." LAYING OF MINES After mentioning the efforts which are being made to make' a large in-

CONVENTIONS! crease in the rate of merchant ship-

"Thousands of guns of all sorts and building in order to replace inevit- able losses, Mr. Churchill continued: sizes are being issued to our merchant "The U-boat is being steadily driven and fishing fleets. The Nazis have re- from using the gun on the surface torted that this entitles them to break

all conventions which they had and has been largely driven from us- ing the torpedo, laying mines, magne-ready broken many times In the last two days, there had been tic and otherwise, in the approaches one certain and two almost certain--to-our-harbours." U-boat sinkings.

Mr. Churchill said that by the end of 1939, Germany had lost from all causes at least half of their U-boats, namely, 35, He doubted very much whether even ten fresh U-boats came into action in that period.

MAIN WEIGHT

"NICELY. MADE” Referring in more detail to the de- Mr. Churchill said: "So far the Navy magnetic mine, Mr. Churchill has borne the main weight of the war.clared: "There is nothing particularly or novel about it although If at any time in the future it becomes new apparent that we have got the upper mechanically it is very nicely made hand in an even more marked deci- (laughter). I feel entitled to say that way to mastering this sive form than at present, I shall be we see our the first to propose a review of our magnetic mine and other variants. of resources and requirements, but it is the same idea (cheers). certain that attacks will be delivered upon the sea power by which we live, on which we all depend,: ori a far greater scale than anything which we have so far beaten back or beaten down."

Again referring. to the U-boat dampaign Mr. Churchill, sald: was in error when some months ago

I said that the rate of Gorman new building of U-boats could be count. ed at two weekly. This, or even more, may be true In the future but It was not true up to the end of 1939.

How this la being achieved le.

In a ́a detective story written language of its own. To be modest (laughter) we do not feel at all outdone in science in this country, by, the Nazis. There are two stages in the process of dealing with the magnetic mine,

First is finding out what to do and the second is applying that knowledge on a very large scale.

We are now advanced upon the -second stage and although we must expact perhapa" in the... Immediate future, further much heavier attacks upon us by this method, we believe we shall find ourselves able to deal

with it. N

tion but of the civilised world."

NAVAL SUPERIORITY Referring to battleships, Mr. Churchill said: "If we had not got at the present time unquestionable su- periority in battleships, German heavy cruisers would come out into the At- lantic Ocean and, without fear of be- ing brought to account, would be able to obstruct, if not arrest, the whole of the enormous trade without which wo could not live (cheers).

&

"They might make temporary bases in different quarters of the globe and they might establish themselves in no positions in which we could have

"In this way they would soon bring means whatever of attacking them.

al- Happily we have far

about our mortal ruin.

greater the over strength in capital ships than

enemy and if at any time they break out as they may do we are always ready-to-meet them with much larger forces and bring them to. battle and destroy them as we did in the isolated case of the Graf Spee.

"They may, of course, (laughter). apply their methods on a larger scale but they have not for some time been able to descend to any new level of cruelty and disgrace.

“I suppose the House realises

that Hitler and his Nazis have quite definitely exceeded the worst vil- Jalnies which Imperial Germany committed in the last war. (cheers). "One of the most extraordinary things I have ever known in my ex- perience is the way in which German illegalities, atrocities and brutalities are coming to be accepted as if they were part of the ordinary day to day conditions of war (cheers). Why, the neutral press makes more fuss when I make a speech telling them what is their duty than they have done, when hundreds of their ships have been sunk (cheers) and over a thousand of their sailors have been drowned or mur- dered that is the right word-on the open seas.

"Without a superior battle fleet we could not exercise any command of the 'son nor even keep ourselves alive with food.

GERMAN WEAKNESS Recalling that during the last war Britain had to keep always ready 30 or

40 battleships, with attendant squadrons and flotillas to fight a main battle at any time, Mr. Churchill said: "Now that this preoccupation of humanity has diminished. The enemy have only two really big ships and cannot attempt to form a line of

battle.

"We have at least three if not four lines of battle,、 not ons. of which the anomy could face in a fought out engagement. Therefore we are able to dispose our ships much more widely and at the same time keep ample forces always at soa ready to engage, the onamy's principal vessels should they pre sent themselves. ? "Upon this fact depends the of our sea control.”

NEW WARSHIPS

A NEW DOCTRINE? "Apparently, according to the pre- sent doctrine of neutral states, pro- bably endorsed by the German Gov- ernment is to gain one set of advan- tages by breaking all the rules and committing foul outrages and then go whole on and gain-another set of advantages through insisting whenever it, suits

"The enemy may have ended the year with about 45 U-boats of which about 20 would be required for train-

FISHING TASKS ing, leaving perhaps about 26 for ac-

To cope with the mining attack we tive operations. As these would work have had to call on our fishing fleets in two or three rellefs the number at and fishermen. Although this year any one time cannot be very large. we shall have about a quarter of a

"Indeed our calculations show that million sallors at our disposal, we had her upon the widest interpretation of Mr. Churchill mentioned that the it has probably not exceeded that at at the end of November, to call for the international code she has torn to any, one time.

SHARPENING-UP.

"Since the New Year things have sharpened up on both sides. We are getting an increasing number of U- boats and we have some quite excep- tional weeks of proved results

many thousands of volunteers for mine-sweeping duties.

The engagement was only for three months and it is now clear that it must be greatly prolonged.

•

In many seaports over 75 per cent. of those who volunteered for three "We do not make announcements" months now wish to continue for the of U-boat sinkings,`` Unless there duration of the war and the Admir-

· are some features, of speóla! In [alty are going to meet their wish terest we leave them wrappad in (cheers), « mystery. “Remembering the substantial losses

Bo axeorable has been the behavi lour of som

German evlators

pieces. j

"It is not at all odd that His

Ma jesty's Government is getting rather tired of it (cheers). I am getting rather tired of it myself.

new warships Britain was building were capable of standing up to air bombing and were far better adapted to under-water explosions than any- thing they had to-day..

Saying that he did not wish to raise any undue apprehensions about the For my part-1 say without hos strengths of the existing shios, Mr. tation that in the Interpretation of Churchill announced that the Barham, rules and conventions affecting nou- an old ship which stood up well to a ́trals,

la humanity rather than Tedat torpedo, would soon be repaired and pedantry must be dur chlaf gulde ready for sen, and that Nelson, (cheers)` and, judging from the Alt-modern ship but nevertheless 15 mark eplaode, thle saams to be the years old, damaged by a magnetic

(Continued on Page 7) opinion not only of the British na-