TIMES HAVE CHANGED

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 100, 22 January 1940, Page 7

TIMES HAVE CHANGED

Soviet Recognizes Annexing Of Czechoslovakia

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received January 21, 5.30 p.m.) RUGBY, January 20. The “New Statesman and Nation” calls attention editorially to two events which it suggests have significance. “The first was the appointment of a Soviet Minister in Bratislava and a Slovakian Minister in Moscow,” the paper says. The second was the curt request received a few days ago by M. Zdenek Fierlinger, Czechoslovak Minister in Moscow, from the Soviet Government to regard his mission as at an end. “These changes mean that the Soviet Iras recognized the German protectorate over Bohemia and Moravia as well as the ‘autonomous’ Slovak State.”

The journal adds: “It is not uninteresting to recall the Note which M. Litvinov handed the German Ambassador in Moscow on March 18, 1939. In that Note the Soviet declared that it could not recognize either the annexation of Bohemia and Moravia or that of Slovakia, even under the form of autonomy, as corresponding with the standards of international law or the principle of self-determination. But times have changed.”

AID TO FINLAND

Suggested Conference At Lisbon (Received January 21, 7.30 p.m.) GENEVA, January 20. The president of the Pan-European Union has invited the Portuguese Premier, Dr. Salazar, to summon a conference at Lisbon to co-ordinate aid to Finland. Dr. Salazar is considering the invitation.