NEW ALLIANCE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 302, 28 September 1940, Page 5

NEW ALLIANCE

GERMANY, ITALY, JAPAN.

TEN YEAR MILITARY PACT,

MUTUAL ASSISTANCE AGREEMENT.

“NOT DIRECTED AGAINST PEOPLE.”

(United Press Association —Copyright.) (Received This Day, 9.0 a.m.) LONDON, September 27.

The German radio has announced that a 10 year pact between Italy, Japan, and Germany has been signed. The German announcement of the alliance said that Hitler, Ciano and von Ribbentrop and the Japanese Ambassador (Mr Kurusu) attended the signing. The three last-named read the agreement aloud in their respective languages. Von Ribbentrop declared that the pact was a military alliance between the three most powerful Powers in the world. “Anyone disturbing the world’s peace will feel the might of 250,000,000 people,” he said. “The struggle we are now waging is not directed against any people but specifically against the existence of an international plot.”

The pact proclaims Italian, German and Japanese collaboration. It is the creation of a bloc of common interests.

The Associated Press correspondent at Berlin states that the pact is collaboration and mutual assistance, Japan recognising Germany’s and Italy’s leadership in the new order i.n Europe, but the British United Press says it is a military alliance. The German radio later confirmed that it is a military, political and economic pact. Germany and Italy recognise Japan’s leadership for the creation of a new order in the great Asiatic lebensraum. The contracting parties agree to undertake to support each other militarily by all the means at their disposal in the event of one being attacked by a Power not yet involved either in the war against Britain or in the. Chinese-Japanese war. The agreement alters nothing in the political status existing between each and the Soviet. The pact is being enforced at once.