AMPLE SIGNS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 171, 21 July 1936, Page 7

AMPLE SIGNS.

RHINE GARRISONS

Germany's Increasing Military

Power.

REINFORCEMENT PLANS,

United Tress Association.—Copyright.

(Received 12.30 p.m.)

LONDON, July 20,

Signs are nt)t lacking of Germany's increasing military power. It is significant, the "Daily Herald" reports, that the garrisons on the left bank of the Rhine are to be considerably reinforced following upon General von Blombcrg's inspection of the Rhineland and the Palatinate. A Rhineland newspaper, in announcing the reinforcement plans, declares that I'iance will realise that the province is no longer a no-man's-land. The "Herald" points out that not only have the pre-war garrison towns been reoccupied, but also smaller towns never before garrisoned. Germany is spending £24,000,000 on railway reconstruction designed to speed up communication between south-western Germany and the French and Luxemburg frontiers. A big military aerodrome is being constructed at Enlieim, which is less than three miles from the French frontier. A British official wireless ' message states that Mr. Winston Churchill asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Commons if he was aware that the expenditure by Germany on purposes directly or indirectly concerned with military preparations, including strategic roads, might have amounted to £800,000,000 during 1935, and whether this rate of expenditure seemed to be continuing. Mr. Neville Chamberlain replied that the Government had no official figures, but from information he had he sawno reason to think that the figure mentioned by Mr. Churchill was necessarily excessive as applied to either year, although there were elements of conjecture. Secret Treaty With Austria. The Vienna correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" says: Although Germany denies that a secret military treaty lias been signed with Austria it is certain that military preparations are being co-ordinated between Austria and Germany, and commissions arc conferring both in Vienna and in Berlin on the subject of the details of the new agreement. A separate commission is discussing army co-ordination. The Vienna Press boasts that Austria and Germany are working together and that Italy is cooperating with them. It says the Little Entente is collapsing, that Yugoslavia is friendly toward Germany, that Rumania is looking toward Germany and that even Czeclio-Slovakia seeks friendly relations with Germany. Poland has long been Germany's friend, and Hungary bases her foreign policy on friendship with the Reich.