The Battlefield Grows

The British Admiralty announced last week that in the third week of the intensified Battle of the Atlantic Britain had lost 71,773 tons of merchant shipping -- 75% and 50% as much as in the two preceding.

But this was only a lull in the battle, for the German Government issued a proclamation extending the zone of operations right to the fringe of the Western Hemisphere -- to the three-mile limit of Greenland.

Explaining the extension, the proclamation stated: "As a consequence of illegal occupation of the Danish island of Iceland by British troops, blockade runners have been attempting to use this island as a base. This fact obliges Germany to include this island in her operations zone about England." British troops did "illegally" occupy Iceland just after Germany, with scant pretensions of legality, occupied Denmark herself a year ago next week. But so far Britain has used Iceland little if at all as a transshipment base.

The real significance of the German proclamation was that it mapped out as the battlefield for the Battle of the Atlantic almost the entire North Atlantic.

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