NEUTRAL STATES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 70, 20 September 1939, Page 9

NEUTRAL STATES

THREAT OF FORCE

AID TO GERMANY

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received September 20, 11.40 a.m.)

RUGBY, September 19. The Belgian Press reproduced the following bulletin by the Deutsche Nachrichten Buro: —"Great Britain is mistaken if she thinks Germany is disposed to allow her communications with neutral States to be cut by British guns. We must warn these States not to submit to Britain. This warning is specially addressed to the Oslo States, which met at Copenhagen on September 18. Germany desires to leave neutrals outside the present conflict. This desire must not, however, be considered as weakness, Germany not being disposed Jto allow the least deviation from neutrality, even if it is a question of yielding to force."

This will be seen to contain a direct threat to neutral States to force them to conform to Germany's own ideas of neutral conduct. The British Government's attitude towards tht question of trade with neutrals has been made clear in the statement issued by the Ministry of Information on September 19. If that attitude has produced this violent reaction in Germany it is clearly because she notoriously depends to a large extent on the Scandinavian States for war materials and wishes to force them to continue to supply her with these, though in international law no neutral State is under any obligation to supply anything to belligerents unless she feels so disposed.

Such threats are the more remarkable in view, of the German Government's declared intention to impose contraband control «of its own on neutral shipping.