SOME TROOPS WITHDRAW

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 79, 14 March 1936, Page 5

SOME TROOPS WITHDRAW

French Observers’ Report FORCE VARIABLY ESTIMATED LONDON, March 12. The “Daily Mail’s” Metz correspondent says that French observers on the Maginot line report the withdrawal of large contingents of German troops which since Saturday have been close to the frontier. “The Times” political correspondent says; “The Germans maintain that there are only 28,000 troops in the remilitarised zone, though the highest French

The “Dally Mail’s” Cologne correspondent states that all artillery there has been moved ten miles farther from the frontier.

estimate has been 90,000. The British Government has no grounds on which to estimate, but the number is generail taken to be about 60,000.” “The Times” Berlin correspondent says that the number of Rhineland troops is regarded as small considering the large area of territory occupied. “It is true the German Government at first intended to send still smaller detachments,” he says, “but the military authorities represented it as inconvenient to send small bodies to widely separated districts. It was therefore decided not to divide formations into smaller strengths than a battalion.

“The German public is fully con vinced that Locarno has already been ended by the French action, and that all Herr Hitler has done has been to tegister its decease. “It has been suggested in authorita five quarters that slight alleviation in the tension might be induced if the French and German troops nowhere approached within five kilometres of the Franco German border. “It is stated that French fortifications are along a strip five to 15 kilometres from the frontier. The arrangement would mean that no troops would

be quartered nearer than the nearest fortress.”