* * * Another example of the Goebbels half-truth method
as applied to an article in The Spectator has just reached me. In a leading article in this journal on April nth it was remarked that the German attack on Norway could have had nothing to do with the Allied mine-laying operations on the Norwegian coast, but that there had been too much open talk about "what were described as strong measures to be taken against the Scandinavian neutrals" ever since the meeting of the Supreme War Council of the Allies a fortnight before. The comment on this in Dr. Goebbels' Transocean news service is as follows: "The first clear statement by Germany about contem- plated British occupation of Scandinavia [my italics] was naturally disputed in London. But now the influential London weekly The Spectator discusses the reasons and causes for the extension of the war to Scandinavia which are tantamount to an admission." Then follows a flagrantly garbled quotation from the middle of which is omitted a sentence fatal to the whole Goebbels thesis: "There is no reason to believe that the Allies ever intended to occupy an inch of Norwegian soil, and no projects attributed to them provide a particle of excuse for Germany's latest act of brigandage." It is gross exaggeration after all to speak of a " half-truth " in this connexion and I retract the term.
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