A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
R. CHURCHILL'S broadcast address on Tuesday evening differed by hardly a word from the speech he had delivered in the House the same afternoon, but at one of the few points where it did differ an interesting question is raised. Speaking of the German navy, the Prime Minister said that " now they only have a couple of heavy ships worth speaking of." There, in the afternoon speech, he left it. In the later broadcast he added, in a tone which suggested that it was an afterthought, " the Schamhorst ' and Gneisenau.' " But have the Germans still got those two capital ships? The Scharnhorst,' severely damaged by ' Renown ' in April, was reported to have suffered a direct hit in a bombardment of Trondheim harbour by R.A.F. machines this month. She is probably therefore afloat but out of action. As for the Gneisenau,' was she or was she not sunk in Oslo Fjord in the initial attack on Norway? There have been conflicting reports about that, but M. Carl Hambro, the President of the Norwegian Parliament, whom I questioned on the matter only last week, said there was no doubt at all about it ; both the Gneisenau ' and the ' Blucher ' were sunk ; the Gneisenau ' apparently had her oil-tanks hit by the shore torpedoes and the result was a fire such as had never been seen in Norway ; her crew leaped overboard like blazing torches. That sounds decisive. But Germany apparently still has one, and probably two, pocket-battleships, and at least one of the two 35,000-ton battleships laid down in 1936 ought to be in com- mission by now.
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