DR. KOHT’S BROADCAST

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 May 1940, Page 7

DR. KOHT’S BROADCAST

GERMAN HYPOCRISY EXPOSED.

[BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.]

RUGBY, May 5. Professor Koht, Norwegian Foreign Minister, in a broadcast to the Norwegian people said he had come to London to confer with the British Governmen.t as to the best way of helpign Norway. He was also going to Paris before returning to Norway. “I 'have seen a lot of destruction by the German military machine in Norway. Their bombs have devastated beautiful peaceful places in valleys and fiords. I have seen weeping women and children take shelter in woods and cellars. What the Germans do not venture to do against nations with which they are at war, they have done against us, who 'had no wish other than to be neutral. That is how they treat the Germanic Nordic people, who will not submit themselves to the German yoke. “Many ask could the country have been spared, but the question was no longer whether we could remain neu-.tral,-.but which of the belligerent Great Powers we should join. It has been complained we were too strictly neutral. That is the best proof of our absolute neutrality'. But Germany wanted to drag us into 'the war at any price, and she occupied the most important strategic points, five or six hours before the delivery of the note to the Norwegian Government on April 9. Nobody reading the thirteen points of the memorandum placed before Norway can doubt it was bound co lead to war with the Allies.” “It is enough to consider the first point of the note which said that all fortresses, coastal batteries, communications, and' postal communications should be part of the German war machine. Norway would, thus be cut off from the western world. The Germans -:ay that the Western Powers are hypocrites, but nothing could be more hypocritical than this memorandum. It offered the protection of our neutrality by a nation which had sunk cur ships, and killed hundreds of our seamen. “The last point promised to respect Norway’s integrity, anti give us back our independence after the war. but we refused to believe in such promises. with the fate of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, in fresh memory. It is perhaps Germany’s worst defeat in recent years—this moral defeat, that no one in the world dares any longer trust a word that the present German Government utters. It has rendered the term, the honour of a German, a term of derision. We deepHy regret the decline of German politics and. culture. . - . • ■ “The Norwegians will not be slaves. We were not armed as we ought to have been, and we must take all the responsibility for this. But even so. our navy inflicted severe damage on the enemy, and in our val’cys the Norwegian army fought stubbornly against heavy odds.” Dr. Koht appealed ‘to Norwegians to be patient. Help from the Allies could not have immediate effect, and conditions in Norway itself made -immediate results impossible, but the AJ’ics had promised Norway full aid. and it was a point of honour for them to fulfil it. “We must trust in them, and on our side, must not lose pa tience. This is-our duty towards the country' we love, and which we want to.keen ’’’dependent during the com■«g ages.”