IN DESPERATE PLIGHT

Evening Star, Issue 23380, 25 September 1939, Page 7

IN DESPERATE PLIGHT

POLES FALL BACK BEFORE RUSSIANS HARASSED BY UKRAINIAN TERRORISTS LONDON, September >24. (Reeived September 25, at 11.30 a.m.) The correspondent of ‘ The Times ’ on the Lithuanian frontier says here and there the Poles desperately resisted the Russians, particularly at Grodno, where street fighting continued. The Russian method of occupying unresisting towns and hamlets consists ot sending in motor cycles or motor cars with a few soldiers, who paste up bills giving the people 24 hours’ notice to quit. Many of the inhabitants steal away and hide, but their ultimate escape is unlikely. The occupation begins the next day with varying degrees of ceremony. Local Soviets have been formed, and the new order is functioning almost completely in Vilna, Baranowicze, and other western White Russian towns.

The Munkacs correspondent of the Associated Press says large-scale transportation of Polish military and civilian refugees to Lower Hungary has begun. Russian and Hungarian troops formally contacted on the Carpathians. Eight thousand Polish soldiers crossing the frontier before the Russians appeared had fought a rearguard action, in which bands of Ukrainian terrorists killed many. Others despairingly committed suicide.

A Polish priest disclosed that the terrorists lined up 40 Catholic theological students at Lemberg and shot them “ in a mad lust to strike at anything godly.” Polish officers said the Russians told them that they did not want to fight the Poles. They added that the Russians were rounding up the Ukrainian terrorists and were distributing food.

MYSTERY PLANE BOUND FOB ENGLAND COPENHAGEN, September 23. Flying so low that the markings were plainly seen, a Polish plane flew over Gothenburg. It is gtared to have received special permission to fly over neutral countries to England, and is believed to have carried a large quantity of gold and important polish citizens.