AMERICAN OFFER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 March 1940, Page 7

AMERICAN OFFER

SAID TO BE STILL OPEN MEDIATION POSSIBILITIES. A SUGGESTED ARMISTICE. NEW YORK, March 9. The Washington correspondent of the “New York Times” says that the President’s secretary, Mr Stephen Early, told correspondents that Mr Roosevelt has not closed the door on Russo-Finnish mediatory activity. The statement is regarded as making more significant a speech by Senator Key Pittman, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he proposed a 30 days’ armistice to enable neutrals to offer their services for a settlement. Senator Pittman added: “We realise the difficulties in approaching the belligerents in the heat of the war. Unless reasonable peace terms are formulated and an armistice declared before summer the war is likely to be continued to a finish.” Officials of the State Department insist that Mr Roosevelt’s offer made to Russia and Finland on November 29 is technically open, but the State Secretary, Mr Hull, at a Press conference said that the United States .has not been asked to mediate. SWEDISH MEDIATOR DISCLOSURE OF IDENTITY. WASHINGTON, March 9. It is revealed in diplomatic circles that the Swedish industrialist. Mr A. P. Wenner-Gren, accepted the role of go-between at the instigation of a friend of Field-Marshal Goering, who radioed in code to Mr Wenner-Gren, yachting at Nassau, that Germany was anxious for peace between Russia and Finland.