NEUTRAL BLOC

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 September 1939, Page 5

NEUTRAL BLOC

FORMATION IN BALKANS

EXCLUSION FROM WAR. RESTRICTIONS ON GERMAN ACTIVITY. • By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. NEW YORK, September 25. In a radio-telephone message from London, the correspondent of the “New York Times’’ says Ihat the Balkans situation turns toward the creation of a bloc of concerted neutrals embracing all the Balkan States and guaranteed by Kussia,' Turkey and Italy. The Balkans appear io be excluded for good from the theatre of war and will protect tlie Mediterranean and restrict German military activity.

Turkey has sponsored the move, which Russia and Italy are supporting for different reasons. Herr Hitler has been thrown back in the east, where he was able to crush the Poles at a price allowing Russia to marshal over 100 divisions on the Vistula-Carpath-ians line, thus creating a permanent menace of a stab in Germany’s back immediately she weakens in the west. Germany has also lost the Ukraine and the prospect of seizing Rumania's economic resources. SOVIET & BALTIC STATES. The Moscow correspondent of the “New York Times” says that the Estonian Foreign Minister, M. Selter, has arrived at the legation. He maintains that the visit is commercial and has no political purpose, but the Soviet is confident that it will result at least in increased Soviet influence in Baltic States.

Significantly, Soviet troops on the Russian-Finnish frontier are constantly increasing, and Finland is preparing to resist an invasion., The Soviet is reported to be refusing Finnish vessels a passage through Leningrad via the Neva.