MAIL BAG INQUIRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 January 1939, Page 5

MAIL BAG INQUIRY

EARLY START TO BE MADE

BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE STATEMENT.

DIPLOMATIC COURIER SERVICE NOT INVOLVED.

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received This Day. 10.4 a.m.) RUGBY. January (>.

Mr O. St C. O'Malley. British Charge d'Affaires, and Sir Wasey Sterry have already had a preliminary meeting in London and the mail bag inquiry will begin at the earliest possible moment after their arrival at St Jean de Luz. Mr O'Malley leaves London tomorrow and reaches St Jean on Sunday. Sir Wasey Sterry leaves London early next week. Mr C. B. Jerram, British Agent at Burgos, proceeds to St Jean during the weekend.

At the time when information was first received concerning the mail bag incident, Mi - Ernest Golding (since arrested, with his wife, by the Nationalists) was in France, and as soon as he heard of the matter he returned to Spain. The Foreign Office states that in order to remove any apprehensions which might still exist, it should be made clear that there is no question of any British diplomatic mail bag having been involved in the recent incident at Irun, and that the courier service by which the British Agent in Burgos—under an arrangement agreed upon between the British Government and the Burgos authorities—communicated with the Foreign Office is in no way affected. The inquiry will be concerned with the local arrangements by which official correspondence or other matter was carried from the Vice-Consulate at San Sebastian to the British Embassy at St Jean de Luz.