GERMAN AIRMEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 121, 24 May 1937, Page 9

GERMAN AIRMEN

REPRIEVE GRANTED

EXCHANGE NEGOTIATIONS

(Received May 24, ; 11 a.m.) LONDON, May 23. The two German Air Force officers, Captain Walter Kienzle andLieutenant Gunther Schulieplanck, whq were captured by the Government forces and sentenced to death, have been reprieved until \ May 27. Negotiations are progressing for their exchange for two Russian aviators who are in Tebel hands. A previous message from Paris stated that the French Minister, bf Foreign Affairs (M. Yvon Delbos) had sent a message to the Basque President (Senor Don Jose Aguirre) asking for clemency for the German airmen in order to avoid Reprisals and to prevent prejudicing future' exchanges. It was reported from Bilbao that Senor Aguirre personally sent a message to the G-erman Chancellor. Herr Hitler, offering to set the Germans free if German personnel and aerodromes are withdrawn from the Basque front. A sheaf of pleas for clemency for the condemned airmen included one from the Chilean Ambassador at Berlin. To these Senor Aguirre replied expressing surprise over the world's silence at inhuman bombardments such as that of Guernica. Only the withdrawal of foreign pilots would avoid flagrant crimes like those. A Berlin message stated that urgent advice had been tendered to Senor Aguirre not to shoot the German airmen.:^ An . official spokesman said: "Think what their comrades would do in^revenge. " It would be madness for the Basques to do it.'" The rebel lea.der General de Llano, broadcasting from Seville, declared that if the German airmen were executed the insurgents would shoot all prisoners, even those already reprieved.