GERMAN STATEMENT

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20923, 30 September 1939, Page 7

GERMAN STATEMENT

DELIBERATE FALSIFICATION EARLY HISTORY OF CRISIS (Official Wireless) RUGBY, Sept. 29 A closer study of the German official publication on “the last phase of the German-Polish crisis” revealed in the case of one document a deliberate falsification, which has been exposed in the French press. The telegram in question is a news message coming from the Havas Agency, which dealt with the earlier of two proposals, made respectively on August 31 and September 2, by the Italian Government for a conference to settle the Polish-German dispute, and addressed to the French and other Governments. To the first proposal the French Government, in agreement with Britain, gave an affirmative reply. Before the second proposal was made on September 2 the German troops had entered Poland. The Havas news telegram printed by the German Foreign Office referred, as already explained, to the earlier Italian proposal and dispatched from Paris on the night of September 1. It stated that the French Government had been informed yesterday—that is August 31 —of the Italian demarche and had given an affirmative reply. But, as it appears in the German White Paper, the word “yesterday” is omitted. This suppression from the original text gives, and was intended to give, the impression that the French affirmative reply related to the last Italian demarche on September 2, and so to deceive German and foreign public opinion into believing that there was a difference between the French and British Governments regarding the second Italian initiative, and that the French Government was willing, despite the German invasion of Poland, to consider the suggestion for a conference which the British Government, on the contrary, had rejected. The deliberate omission of a word of crucial significance from the text of the Havas message in the German White Paper constitutes a veritable falsification, such as must render suspect every document in the White Paper for which other verification is impossible.