SOVIET DIPLOMAT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20080, 28 October 1939, Page 7

SOVIET DIPLOMAT

RIBBENTROP TALK COMMUNIST PERIL BRITISH REMINDERS UNITY WITH FRANCE (Klee. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Reed. Oct. 27, 2.30 p.m.) LONDON, Oct. 26. During the course of the statement made by the Prime Minister, Mr. Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons to-day concerning the speech given at a Nazi rally at Danug on Tuesday by the Nazi Foreign Minister, Herr von Ribbentrop, the Soviet Ambassador, M. Maisky, who vas seated in the diplomats’ gallery ioined in the laughter that followed Mr. Chamberlain’s citation of Herr von Ribbentrop's speech in 1936. in ,vh:ch he declared that the Fuehrer was convinced that the only real danger to Europe and the British Empire was the spread of communism, .vhich was the “most terrible of all diseases, terrible because the people generally seemed to realise the danger only when it was too late.” Speaking in the House of Lords, the Foreign Secretary, Viscount Halifax, described Herr von Ribbentrop s poech as a clumsy attempt to diyidc England and France, whose relations

:ad never been more complete or more intimate. If Herr von Ribbenrop had been unsuccessful in understanding the British people he was less successful in understanding the joint mind of Britain and France.

Antagonised Big Sections

The Times, referring to Herr von Ribbentrop’s speech, says: "There is not the slightest doubt that Herr von Ribbentrop has antagonised large sections of opinion in his own coun-try-honest Nazis and others who genuinely consider Communism is evil, the Rosenberg theorists who believe in the doctrine of expansion north and eastwards, the admirals who do not care to see the Baltic become a Russian lake and the industrialists who looked to south-eastern Europe for partners in German trade. All these, in greater or lesser degree, have seen their hopes dashed and their aims miscarried. “The author of their disillusionnont is now trying, by bluster and false charges, to absolve himself from the consequences of his own ineptitude to put upon the generals the responsibility for getting the country out of the difficult position into which he has thrust it. He ended his lamentable speech with a call to that war against Britain, which itself falsifies his- own forecasts and declares the bankruptcy of his own policy.”