ARREST BY POLES

GERMAN LEADER

CHARGE OF ESPIONAGE

SENSATION CAUSED

(Received August 18, 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, August 17. A report from Warsaw last night stated that Herr Rudolf Weisner, leader of the Young German Party in Upper Silesia, and 60 other members had been arrested on a charge of espionage. The arrest of Herr Weisner, who is one of the two principa leaders of the German minority in Poland and an intimate friend of Dr. Goebbels, the German Minister of Propaganda, and who is often called "Silesia's Henlein," presages a sweeping Polish campaign to stamp out troublemakers. His arrest created a sensation and was accepted as proof that Poland "will not repeat Czechoslovakia's weakness* over the Sudetenland. The Polish arrests were reported, to be the result of the discovery of a widespread plot centred in German Silesia to undermine Polish authority. The arrests are said to have reached a total of hundreds. Reuters' Warsaw correspondent says that Herr Weisner and several others have been released. The arrests include M. Jankowski, leader of the German Workers' Union. Poland has also closed down the offices of the Young German Party and the German Workers' Guild, the two most prominent minority organisations. The British Associated Press suggests that martial law will be enforced on the Polish border districts if subversion continues. POLISH PRECAUTIONS. In Berlin it is reported that Poland has closed the entire frontier to Bohemia and Slovakia. | Poland has begun a national register of persons, between the ages of 16 and 60, including women, in order to allot I war-time jobs, specially for skilled persons. Eighty registration centres |in Warsaw were crowded .throughout ; today. The Polish Commissioner in Danzig, M. Chodacki, has gone to Danzig, where, the Associated Press of America reports, there is Polish indignation at German persecution. The Polish Press claims that 386 Poles were arrested between January 1 and July 1, 417 families have been forced out of the Free City, and children have been ordered to attend German schools. About 150 miles of the Polo-German frontier are now closed. The Danzig correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain reported that the Senate had protested to Poland against a second serious violation of the frontier in one day, alleging that Poles fired on a motor-car load of Danzig journalists near Dirschau. Subsequently it turned ait that the supposed firing was the throwing of a stone by a boy" at the window of a garage. The German newspapers today are swamped with gruesome stories of /'Polish terror." It is alleged that 1000 minority residents in Silesia were arrested and herded into concentration camps, where they were beaten and given uneatable foods. The reasons for the persecution are not given. It is also alleged that antiGerman elements are arming, for which reason appalling terror is to be expected. Reuters' correspondent in Berlin says that the Press campaign is approaching a stage ai which Germany will say she must march to protect oppressed nationals. The Paris correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain says that the Government has ordered the seizure of propaganda levers from Germany designed to induce Frenchmen to allow the Nazis a free hand in Danzig. The police were authorised to open letters from Germany, and 20,000 of these have already been seized in Paris. |