READY FOR BATTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 September 1939, Page 5

READY FOR BATTLE

ALLIES EXPECT LIGHTNING ATTACK POSSIBLY THROUGH NEUTRAL COUNTRY. INCREASING ACTIVITY ALONG FRONT. Ey Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. LONDON, September 19. A message from Paris states that the British and French armies are now preparing for a major battle. The French expect a lightning attack, possibly through neutral countries. A Basle report states that are arrival of guns and equipment from the Polish front is assisting the Germans in the west. Their intense artillery fire has transformed the village of Per] into a no-man’s land, bearing out the belief that the Germans withdrew from their advance posts to enable heavy artillery to bombard the French cIttcTCkCTS. x Activity has now increased all along the front, including the new forestclad sector south of Saarbrucken where the Germans are reported to have dynamited 100-yard-wide patches of forest to enable their machine-guns to operate without obstruction. GERMAN ATTACK hurled eack by french. (Received This Day, 9.40 a.m.) PARIS, September 19. The French hurled back a German attack east of the Blies River, German troops ineffectively striking undercover of a heavy artillery barrage. NEUTRAL FRONTIERS REPORTS OF NAZI ACTIVITY. (Received This Day, 9.40 a.m.) NEW YORK, September 19. The United Press London correspondent says Britain and France are concerned at reports of German military activity near the Belgian and Netherlands frontiers. German civilians are evacuating the Aachen district, which is on the direct line to Liege, Germany’s route in the 1914 invasion of Belgium. Reports state also that a portion of the Germans who are being recalled from Poland are being concentrated within “striking distance of the Belgian and Netherlands frontiers. TWO GERMANS SHOT FOR TALKING OF STARVING SOLDIERS. ACCORDING TO FRENCH REPORT. (Received This Day, 10.5 a.m.) PARIS, September 19. A correspondent of the "Paris Sois” on the Dutch frontier reports that two Germans were shot for remarking: “Why should we fight when starving German soldiers, of whom thousands are concealed in the frontier woods, incessantly clamour for food.”