GERMANS MASSING

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 126, 27 April 1940, Page 10

GERMANS MASSING

TRANSPORTS IN BALTIC. SWEDISH APPREHENSION. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyriglit.) LONDON, April 25. French military circles understand that embarkation of German troops from ports on the Baltic Sea is continuing steadily, states a message from Paris. The Daily Telegraph’s Paris correspondent says German concentrations at Baltic ports and aerial activity over Sweden are producing sombre forecasts of Sweden’s destiny. Troops are reported to he concentrated at Bornholm, Memel, Konigsberg, Danzig, and Stettin, from which transports laden with German detachments have sailed in the last few days. Nothing lias since been heard of them, but the presence of ice-breakers leads to an assumption that one of the German objectives may be the Aalands (Finnish-owned islands commanding the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia). Forty German ’planes are daily seen over Sweden. 'J’he Germans claim this to be accidental. Stockholm reported yesterday that five German minesweepers entered Swedish territorial waters in the Skagerrak, but left immediately when they were intercepted by Swedish patrol boats. The Swedish Parliament has passed a compulsory military service law applying to all citizens between the ages of 16 and 60 to operate when necessary. Sweden is floating a £30,000,000 defence loan. Berlin reports that a German trade delegation has arrived at Stockholm. The German Press and wireless threaten the Swedes with punishment unless they stop what Berlin calls “atrocity propaganda.” Rumours that Sweden is considering a demand to open territory to the passage of troops and war material arc emphatically denied by the Swedish Foreign Office.