The British Government, it was understood, informed France that the United Kingdom believes the outcome of the war will be decided on the battlefields of France rather than in the British Isles. Therefore Britain is sending all available support immediately to the battered but intact French armies.
British troops in thousands, many of them veterans of the Battle of Flanders, were en route to France last night to join in the battle, Around Paris fresh British units already had reached the front and were participating in the fighting west of the capital where the German offensive reached its greatest intensity.
On the home front in England, factories were turning out war equipment at top speed yesterday as Government officials voiced high praise for the cooperation of British factory workers.
"Magnificent Spirit"
The Minister of Labour and National Service, Mr, Ernest Bevin, stated at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon here yesterday that British workers were showing "magnificent spirit" in the manner in which they were cooperating in speeding up production of war equipment, The Butin worker, he said, realized that the present war was not one alone of nations, but a battle in which liberty and the rights of workers were at stake. His speech was broadcast to the United States and the Empire.
Additional British planes are being sent to the R.A.F. bases in France as fast as they are turned out of British factories, officials said last night, Women pilots fly the planes from the factories to training bases in England where they are taken over by new pilots who fly them to France for service over the western and northern fronts, it was said—United Press, The Allies were visibly attempting to draw Italy into the operations as far as possible in the European theatre. Italy's most vulnerable positions are along the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and the first operations have begun in Somaliland. Eritrea and Ethiopia, The French railhead and coaling port, Djibouti, has been isolated as much as possible by cutting the railroad at the edge of French Somaliland, but a strong Italian force was driving toward the port from the south-west, according to reports reaching here yesterday.
Ethiopian tribesmen, who have been waiting three years for the chance to strike back against the Italians, have been rallying at many points along Kenya and Egyptian and British Somaliland frontiers under the former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, French reports from Africa said. Tribal chiefs with modern arms were said to have joined the Allied operations against 25,000 Italian forces in Ethiopia and Eritrea, British bombers have raided Italian Army camps, roads and troop transports in Ethiopia in order to interrupt Italian operations, it was reported. With the Djibouti Railroad cut, the Italians in Ethiopia now have only motor communications through Eriirea, French military quarters said.
With the declaration of Paris to be an open city French war factories were forced to abandon the capital city and remove to shadow factory locations prepared long ago in the provinces,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.