A_moving message in which he summed up his work at the War Office and announced his readiness to perform any task with which he may be entrusted, was sent yesterday by Mr, Leslie Here-Belisha, who resigned as Secretary for War, to his constitu ents in. Devonport.
Mr. Here-Belisha's message read: "The people of Devonport have always" sustained me in the very arduous life I led in their service and the service of the state since my first election to Parliament more than sixteen years ago. I worked hard in four different Government departments and in the last of these, the War Omlice, it fell to my responsibility to reorganize drastically and to prepare thoroughly the British Army for war. Many changes and enlargements have been necessary. in the Army. Tam proud and privileged to have been for so long associated with it-and to have helped to mould its form and spirit. Whatever task may fall to. me 1 shall perform with vigour, but I have no. thought at present but that of winning the war. This concentration of purpose, 1am sure, is shared be everyone. The fact that T remain a member for Devonport still gives me the opportunity of service."
Mr. Here-Belisha went to the War Office this morning to take leave of the officials with whom he worked in close ce-operation to reorganize the army, to carry out the mobilization, and to send the British Expeditionary Force to France in the shortest possible time.
Messages of sympathy and appre dation are pouring into the War Office for Mr, Here-Belisha, Mr. Oliver Stanley, the new Seeretary for Wor, is suffering from influenza and has not taken possession of his department yet—Havas Sweden Protests to Soviet Russia Stockholm, Jan. 6.
The Foreign OMe yesterday ordered the Swedish Minister in Moscow, Mr. Wilhelm Winters, to protest the sink= ing of the Swedish steamship Fenris (404 tons) by a Russian submarine in the Gulf of Bothnia.
The Swedish Minister was also ordered to demand. an explanation from Russia on the "whole question of Rosin submarine activity in the Gulf of Bothnia."
Reports that the Fenris was set! afire: by shots fired from the submarine and not by a torpedo were onfrmed here st night Unites Armed Guard in s, Tacoma Montevideo, Jan. 5.
Following the attempt by five interned German naval ratings to escape in a motorboat, Uruguayan, naval authorities today' placed armed guard of twenty men on board the German freighter Tacoma, from where the escape attempt' was; launched. "The five men who tried to get to Buenos Aires were sailors of the Tale German pocket-battleship JAdmiral Graf Spee who were interned in the Tacoma, which picked them up in the frst' place after the Grat Spec was seuitted on December 17—
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.