NEW FACTOR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 September 1939, Page 6

NEW FACTOR

ACTION OF THE SOVIET IN POLAND ANXIOUS CONSIDERATION IN BRITAIN. PROBLEM LIABLE TO ARISE IN ANY CASE. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.5 a.m.) RUGBY. September 18. Although the Russian invasion of Poland was not wholly unexpected in London and was implicit in the RussianGerman Pact, the development imports a new factor into the situation whicli is being anxiously studied by British Ministers and will be the subject of consultations with the French and Polish Governments when full official reports arrive from Moscow. Conferences between Ministers, with the assistance of officials, were frequent throughout yesterday and are continuing today. In informed quarters the view is taken that a situation in no way dissimilar from that which has now arisen would have occurred if Russia had been allied to Britain and France, in the event of the Polish Government being driven beyond its frontiers, as is now reported to be the case. It is noted in this connection that M. Molotov emphasises the necessity of “protecting” the White Russians and Ukrainians. The newspapers, while regarding as specious these professions, detect . in M. Molotov's communications an indication that the Russian Government is alarmed at the rapidity of the German advance and the threat it offers to Russia’s western frontier.

“Russia’s policy,” says the “Daily Telegraph,” is as imponderable as ever,” and after discussing the possibilities in detail it adds: “Whatever the future may hold, two things are certain. The presence of a powerful Russian army on his eastern frontier will immobilise a large part of Hitler’s forces at a time when they are needed in the West, and Poland, brutally stricken to earth, will rise again.”