RUSSIA AND GERMANY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 17, 20 January 1940, Page 12

RUSSIA AND GERMANY

CHANGED RELATIONS

SOME PERSISTENT REPORTS

Reports of some change in the relations of Russia and Germany hava been persistent in the last month. Correspondents of Scandinavian', newspapers have declared that the Nazis are attempting to convert the present understanding with.the Soviet Union into a military alliance while the Soviet Press has been creating a favourable state of mind for such an alliance by its repeated declarations that Britain and France mean to attack Russia through Scandinavia and in the Near East. . The report published today is thus one in a chain all hinting at some alteration in the link between the two dictatorship Powers. Early this month the military correspondent of the "Yorkshire Post," who has been well informed throughout the course of the Russo-Finnish war, declared that Germany would send a military mission to Moscow, because Stalin would have to accept German help in building up an efficient transport service. The German Press has also been acting in a way which might be seen as preparing the way for intervention in the Finnish campaign by printing the Russian stories that Britain and France began the war, that there is a great concentration of troops by Britain and France in Western Asia, and that France is demanding the right to send a fleet into the Black Sea, and is also planning to send an army to Finland. Neutral correspondents report hints that Germany will be forced to take •a hand in the war if Britain and France intervene, and that Germany will hold that Norway and Sweden have infringed their neutrality v they permit.the passage of volunteers or of munitions.