HITLER’S DEMANDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 April 1940, Page 5

HITLER’S DEMANDS

RECEIVED VERY COLDLY BY MUSSOLINI AMERICAN CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT. FEARS OF BEING DRAGGED INTO WAR By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received This Day, 10 a.m.) NEW YORK, April 17. In a copyright message from Stockholm to the “Chicago Daily News,” Mr Leland Stowe says Herr Hitler at the Brenner conference, asked Signor Mussolini for wholesale Italian mobilisation in an effort to blackmail France into a separate peace. Herr Hitler’s demands were so excessive and provocative that Signor Mussolini's reception was very cold. The other chief demands were: Firstly. Italy to provide Germany with 50 submarines; secondly, to send an army of 500,000 to Libya, to threaten Egypt and Tunisia, and thirdly, to send troops across Spain to the French Pyrenees frontier to frighten France, even without General Franco’s permission. It is reliably stated that Signor Mussolini believed the plan would drag Italy into the war, for which he was not prepared. CANCELLED SPEECH SPECULATION IN LONDON. MORE RESTRAINED TONE IN ITALIAN PRESS. LONDON, April 17. There is widespread speculation regarding the reason for the sudden cancellation of the' speech on the international situation which Signor Mussolini intended to make on April 20, especially as it coincides with the arrival in Rome of a German military mission. The meeting, to which diplomatic and foreign Press representatives had been. invited, has been postponed indefinitely without explanation. The Italian Press is more restrained about the success of Herr Hitler’s Scandinavian, adventure, the “Tribuna” declaring that only possession and full use of the Norwegian coast could yield Germany all the fruits of her occupation. The Rome correspondent of “The Times'” says the German military mission is visiting Italian munition factories.