BASE BETRAYAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 October 1939, Page 5

BASE BETRAYAL

HITLER SELLS HIS PEOPLE FOR GOLD STORY OF THE BALTIC INTRIGUE. ABANDONMENT OF ANCIENT OUTPOSTS. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. LONDON, October 16. Under the sub-headline, “Nazi Sellout in the Baltic,” “The Times” gives prominence to its Riga special correspondent’s quotation of the opinion of informed circles there that the withdrawal of Germans from abroad means that Herr Hitler has sold to M Stalin his European and colonial interests. Herr Hitler needed gold immediately, and M Stalin would not pay in advance without irrevocable relinquishment of the German hold in the Baltic, so Berlin precipitately ordered the repatriation from the Baltic States, these ancient outposts of the German Empire, paying with their bodies and freedom for Herr Hitler’s conquest of Poland and the war in the west. Their price in gold enables Herr Hitler to purchase ores from Sweden and other wai’ materials wherever they can be procured. The first irrevocable step having h>een taken, Germany sees that distress has been caused and is now trying to alleviate it by slackening the pace. Since Bishop Poelchau, the head of the German Lutheran Church in Latvia, likened Herr Hitler’s voice to “the voice of God,” the spiritual distress of the more mature evacuees has deepened to a sort of unresisting sacrificial resignation, indeed, some have murmured, “We are sold live slaves for Red gold and forcibly transported to live on stolen Polish farms.”