CESSION DEMANDED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 20, 24 July 1939, Page 9

CESSION DEMANDED

BRITISH HONDURAS

GUATEMALAN CLAIM

MEXICAN REPORTS

(By !'elegrai>li—Press Association—Copyright.)

MEXICO CITY, July 22,

The entire Mexican Press gives great prominence today to reports that the Guatemalan Government has asked for the intervention of the United States State Department to obtain from Britain the cession of British Honduras under the terms of the Anglo-Guatemalan Treaty of 1869. Guatemala, it is reported, claims that Britain has violated the pact.

The stories bear Washington date lines, but it is commonly reported that they were written in Mexico City and. were inspired by the Mexican Government, which, in the event of cession, would claim a third of the territory for what are vaguely termed historical and international reasons.

Foreign observers here consider that Mexico is merely jockeying for position in the oil controversy. The general impression is that the Mexican Government has served notice on the British Government that any too strenuous insistence on its present intransigent attitude to the oil question might result in Mexico making things very hot for Britain in Honduras.