SURPRISE SPEECH

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 129, 25 February 1938, Page 11

SURPRISE SPEECH

Vienna Mayor Attacks Nazism UTOPIANS REJECTED “Austria Will Fight To End For Independence” By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Received February 24, 8.5 p.m.) Vienna, February 24. The mayor of Vienna, Herr Richard Schmidts, who is a strong Roman Catholic, made a surprising antl-Nazi speech before a large audience. “We will fight for Austria’s independence to the last drop of blood,” he said. “We reject the Utopians who believe it is possible to combine 90,000,000 Germans in one State. The regime which is hostile to the Church will not last.” GERMAN’S CRITICISM Hitlerism Fundamentally Anti-Christian (Received February 24, 9.40 p.m.) New York, February 24. Mr. E. W. Meyer, who resigned silently last year as first secretary to the German Embassy at Washington, in a speech termed Hitlerism as fundamentally anti-German and anti-Christian. He called the Nazi regime “anti- . Christ and the enemy of Western civilisation.”

“I could no longer serve a Government opposed to so many things that I had been taught Germany stands for,” he said. “Both moral law and loyalty to the true Germany make surrender to National Socialism impossible.” 40,000 NAZIS Massed Near Austrian Frontier London, February 23. The Vienna correspondent of the “News Chronicle” says that, despite the Berchtesgaden agreement, an Austrian legion composed of 40,000 Nazis which fled to Germany after the rising in 1934 is still massed within easy march of the Austrian frontier, recalling Herr Hitler’s recent declaration that legionaries had been entrusted with a special task. SEEKING IRON? German Concession In Egypt Cairo, February 23. A German combine is paying the Egyptian Government £6,000,000 for the right to develop 300,000 acres near Assuan. The area is reported to be rich in iron ore. . CITIZENSHIP LOST 1480 Disloyal Germans London, February 23. A list of 62 people who have been deprived of citizenship for disloyalty to the Reich brings the total to 1480 in four and a half years, states the Berlin correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph.”