DEMOCRACIES ALERT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 April 1939, Page 5

DEMOCRACIES ALERT

EFFECT OF THE ITALIAN AGGRESSION NEW IMPETUS TO MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING. NEED OF WIDE AGREEMENT. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.30 a.m.) RUGBY, April 10. There has been no significant change during the last twenty-four hours in the situation created by Italian action in Albania. Diplomatic correspondents and newspaper assume that the natural result of the events of the last few days will be a re-animation of the tendency manifest in all peace-loving States since the German occupation of Czechoslovakia to seek reinforcement of their security in mutual understanding. As seen from London, the centre of international interest has gravitated to South-Eastern Europe. The position of Greece and Turkey in the Mediterranean is much discussed. Comment in today’s newspaper? makes it clear that there is little readiness to accept Italian explanations of the. occupation of Albania, which is generally regarded as imitating too slavishly the new well-known technique of aggression to deceive anyone. The “Daily Telegraph” suggests that between Berlin and Rome there seems to be keen rivalry in bad faith. It thinks that two things are urgent. “The first of them is to accelerate,.with all possible urgency and resource, the fulfilment of the nation’s defensive organisation; the second is to spare no effort in extending and consolidating the anti-aggression front. The agreement with Poland is a good beginning, but only if it is followed up with parallel agreements on a wider scale, so that an obstacle too formidable not to give pause to the strongest aggressor may be raised before new predatory designs, no . doubt now in incubation.” RESERVISTS CALLED UP NUMBERS UNDER ARMS IN ITALY. DUCE POSTPONES VISIT TO TIRANA. (Received This Day, 10.10 a.m.) ROME, April 10. Reservists numbering 330,000 were called up today. At present 900,000 men.

excluding native • troops, are under arms. It is understood that Signor Mussolini is postponing his visit to Tirana, having decided to await the result of the British and French Cabinet meetings.