SOVIET INDICTED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 September 1939, Page 6

SOVIET INDICTED

ACCUSED OF FLAGRANT BREACH OF FAITIf NON-AGGRESSION PACTS (VIOLATED. PRETEXT CONTEMPTUOUSLY DISMISSED. (Received This Day, 10.50 a.m.) LONDON, September 17. The Polish Embassy in London has issued the following statement: —At 4 a.m. on September 17, the Soviet troops crossed the Polish frontier at many points. The Polish Army immediately strongly resisted them, particularly at Molodeczno. Russia’s pretext to justify this flagrant and direct aggression is that the Polish Government has ceased to exist and has abandoned its territory, leaving its population in territories outside the German war zone without protection. The Polish Government cannot discuss the pretext which Russia has invented in order to justify her violation of the frontier. The Polish Government responsible to the President and the National Parliament are functioning in Polish territory, carrying on the war against the German aggressors with all the means in its power. The Soviet, by this act of direct aggression, flagrantly violated the Polish-Russian Pact of non-aggression concluded at Moscow on July 25, 1932, by which the parties mutually undertook to obstain from all aggressive action or attack against each other. Moreover the protocol signed at Moscow on May 5, 1934, prolonged the pact until December 31, 1945. Russia and Poland, by the convention concluded in London on July 3, 1933, clearly stamped as an act of aggression any encroachment on a contracting party’s territory by the other’s armed forces, also that no political, military or economic consideration could serve as a pretext for an act of aggression. Therefore the Soviet stands self-condemned as a violator of its own international obligations, contradicting all the v moral principles whereon it has pretended to base its foreign policy since its admittance to the League.”

FRONTIER CLOSED

GERMANS BOMB BRIDGE ACROSS DNIESTER.

MANY VILLAGERS KILLED

(Received This Day, 1 p.m.) LONDON, September 17.

A Bucharest correspondent of the British United Press states that the Rumanian frontier is closed. German airmen bombed Zalesczyki, destroying the bridge across the Dniester. A misdirected bomb killed many villagers in Wignitz. GERMAN PROGRESS EXTENDED ADVANCE iREPOK I tD. WARSAW SURROUNDED CLOSELY. (Received This Day, 12.5 p.m.) BERLIN, September 17. An official communique states that the “cleaning-up of Eastern Galicia continues. Lwow is enclosed on three sides. Polish troops between Lwow and Przemysl find their line of retreat towards the south-east cut off. German troops are advancing towards Lublin, north of the confluence of the San, and Vistula rivers. We captured Deblin, where a hundred undamaged planes fell into our hands. Kutno itself was captured and the River Bzura crossed in a northerly direction. Warsaw is closely surrounded.”