BULGAR DOMINATION

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 6, 2 October 1941, Page 7

BULGAR DOMINATION

Methods Of Top Dog In Thrace (Received October 1, 7 p.m.) LONDON, October 1. The Cairo correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph," giving evidence of the thoroughness with which the Bulgarians are emulating the German methods in the occupied countries, says that they have imported a Bulgarian population into occupied Thrace and Macedonia, and the Greeks have been compelled to evacuate to the south of Greece or remain under humiliating conditions. They must change their names to the Bulgarian forms. All shop names and notices are now in Bulgarian, and fines are imposed on anyone speaking Greek in public. Tlie church services must be in the Bulgarian language. The Metropolitans of Komotini and Alexaridroupolis have been removed from their sees and taken to Salonika. Bulgarians flogged to death a Greek priest and four civilians who were charged with concealing arms in the village of Carlanis, near Struma. A subsequent search for the alleged arms revealed that they were non-existent. Inside Bulgaria, according to Ankara reports, a special tribunal was established in the weekend for trials for treason. An Englishman, Norman Davis, and the Bulgarian peasant leader, George Dimitroff, arc among the accused.

NORMAN DAVIS

May Be New Zealander Dominion Special Service. DUNEDIN, October 1. Though tlie report that an Englishman named Norman Davis has been charged, with treason in Bulgaria conies by so indirect ti route that its accuracy must be open to considerable doubt, it recalls the fact that Mr. Norman Davis, son of Mr. and Mrs. J. Davis, of Dunedin, and a former Rhodes Scholar, was a resident of Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, for three years. For 12 months Mr. Davis was engaged by the British Council, a subsidiary of the British Foreign Office, as teacher of English at the University of Sofia, and on the outbreak of war was transferred to the British Legation at Sofia, where lie was attached to the press bureau. When the German penetration of Bulgaria forced him to leave that country he went to Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia. His flight from that city when the Germans began to bomb it led to a series of adventures which did not terminate till three months later, when he arrived safely at Gibraltar. The most recent advice from Mr. Davis was that he had arrived in the Middle East and that in future he would not be able to disclose his movements.

INDOMITABLE SPIRIT

Czech Workers’ Activities (British Official Wireless.) (Received October 1, 7 p.m.) RUGBY, September 30. Reports received in London suggest that the Nazis are now realizing the dangerous possibilities of the general unrest in the European countries occupied by them. The appointment of Herr Heydrich as murderer-in-chief — tlie deputy Reich Protector—appears to be a symptom of what a commentator calls the policy of wider and better-synchronized ferocity. Brutality, however, may not prove a satisfactory answer- to the will of a whole people, and this is at present shown in Czechoslovakia, where the most irreconcilable element has been composed of workers whose acts of sabotage have been both courageous and original. As a result of the goslow campaign, production has often been reduced by from 40 to CO percent. The aircraft factories have provided a happy hunting ground for saboteurs. At one important works the staff was ordered to look for certain alloys which were stowed away, and the men caused such confusion in the storehouse that work in the factory was stopped for- several days. In the same place a file containing cancelled orders was lost, and for two full months the entire works'continued to fulfil useless orders. Another firm had 190 out of 200 pistons returned as defective. Sabotage on the railways has been so intensive that the Germans are no longerable to send trucks via Czechoslovakia. Many tanker trucks are now awaiting repair, and in nrost cases punctures in them were trot discovered till all the oil had leaked out. The indomitable spirit shown by tire Czech population, however, produces a foreboding of the limitless campaign of cruelty and torture which the Nazi? are likely to wage against' them.