Names of Assessors to Aid Specified London, June 12.
Replying to questions in the House of Commons today on the Thetis, the ill-fated submarine which sank during diving trials off Birkenhead on June 1. the Prime Minister, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, mentioned that salvage operations would recommence in two or three weeks.
Lieut-Commander R.THH, Fletcher, Labour member for the Nuneaton division of Warwickshire, amidst Opposition cheers, asked Mr. Chamberlain whether he was aware that public opinion expected the vessel to be raised, and that there was an extremely uneasy feeling which would exist if there was any failure, in view of the successs of raising the German warships in Scapa Flow.
Mr. Chamberlain declared that the Government also expected the vessel to be raised, Subsequently, the Prime Minister announced that the three assessors appointed to assist Justice Buckhill in the Thetis enquiry would be Capt. George Cunningham Menzies, a submarine officer, Capt. Archibald Hamilton Ryley, one of the elder brethren of Trinity House, and Professor Thomas Bertrand Abell, professor of Naval architecture of the University at Liverpool.
Lieut-Commander Fletcher also called the Prime Minister's attention to the recommendation that a Standing Parliamentary Committee for Colonial affairs should be established.
Mr. Chamberlain said that the Colonial: Secretary, Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, had been examining the whole machinery of carrying out the Colonial policy, and that the possibility of bringing Parliament into a Closer and more regular contact with the affairs of the Colonial Empire was not being lost sight of.
Until the Government had completed its consideration of the question as a whole, he added, he was not prepared to make a statement. Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.