§ 46. Mr. Purbrickasked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been drawn to the speech of Dr. Goebbels last Friday, informing the German people of Germany's intention of waging total and radical war against us beyond any extent that can be imagined to-day; and will he take steps to notify the German people, by broadcast and other means available, that this country has sufficient stocks of death-dealing gas to destroy the whole of the population of Germany, civilian as well as military, and at their first attempt to do this to us we shall retaliate against them in the same way?
§ Mr. AttleeI am not sure that the passage in Goebbels' speech to which my hon. Friend refers bears the interpretation 161 which my hon. Friend appears to attach to it, but the position of His Majesty's Government in regard to retaliation in the use of gas was made clear by the Prime Minister in his broadcast statement of 10th May, 1942, and remains unchanged.
Miss RathboneHas my right hon. Friend's attention been drawn to a statement by a lady who was released from internment in Germany only a few weeks ago, who said that the German population, although many of them are strongly anti-Nazi, were fighting on the German side because they feared measures of extermination against the German people; and is not the kind of measure suggested in the Question likely to increase the support of the Germans for Hitler?