Quite a different picture of the scuttling of the Admiral Graf Spee is given by Mr. Winton Churchill, in his latest broadcast, for while it was thought that the vessels waiting Outside Montevideo included H.M.S. Renown and Ark Royal, it is now made plain that they were not on the scene, and that, if the Admiral Graf Spee had chosen to come out and fight, she would have encountered only the Ajax and the Achilles together with the Cumberland which had arrived to take the place of the Exeter. She would have had to fight two cruisers damaged in the action of last week, and one cruiser, still inferior to herself in gun power, so that the odds against her were not so great as was formerly believed. It is no cause for wonder, therefore, that surprise and dismay should be felt in Germany over the news of the scuttling of the pocket-battleship, because even Germans whose news is spoon-fed to them by Dr. Goebbels' Ministry must find it difficult to reconcile the alleged victory with the self-destruction of the vessel. It may safely be assumed that the news of the scuttling must have had a devastating effect upon public opinion in Germany, and in itself constitutes a serious reverse for Herr Hitler who has had to admit defeat in the course of a long string of alleged successes which did not exist in fact. There is much to be said for the contention that the decision to scuttle the Admiral Grat Spee is an indication that even amongst the leaders of Germany there is some doubt as to whether Germany can emerge victorious from this struggle, Obviously, if they were confident of success, the best course would have been to intern the vessel, which, after the war, would have been returned to them. and the fact that they destroyed it, is the best possible proof of the existence of a fear that after all victory does not lie ahead, in which event it might be the wisest thing to destroy the ship rather than have her handed over to the victorious Allies at the end of the war. The alleged German victory has been transformed into a singularly ignominious defeat, and a tacit admission of the possibility of even greater failure.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.