SENSATION CAUSED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 257, 27 September 1933, Page 7

SENSATION CAUSED

GERMAN JOURNALISTS EXPELLED RETALIATION BY SOVIET. A SERIOUS DEVELOPMENT. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received September 27, 12 noon. MOSCOW, Sept. 26. German newspaper correspondents, including the representatives of the Wolf Agency, the Berliner Tageblatt and the Lokalanzeiger, have been ordered to leave the Soviet within three days. This is the sequel to the Leipzig incidents last week. No reply was received to protests from the Soviet Embassy at Berlin, which threatened the expulsion o* German journalists if no assurance was given that Russian journalists at Leipzig would not again be molested. The expulsion of the journalists has caused a sensation in foreign political circles, where it is regarded as the most serious development in RussoGerman relations since the Nazi regime. The expulsions coincide with a distinctly sharper tone in Press comments on the Leipzig trial, which is regarded as a farcical “frame-up.” Those expelled include Wilhelm Baum, representative of the Wolff Agency, who is also Press Adviser to the German Embassy. A message published on Saturday stated that Madame Lili Kith, a correspondent of the Soviet paper Izvcetia, and Bespalov, a correspondent of the Tass Agency, were summoned from their respective beds at 7 o’clock in the morning and taken to the police headquarters, where they 'were stripped and searched for weapons and documents. A plainclothes man aroused Bespalov and a policeman at the door levelled a revolver and threatened to shoot if an escape were attempted. The journalists were detained until 1 o’clock, when M. Hirschfeld, secretary of the Russian Embassy, secured their release, the police chief profusely apologising and saying a subordinate “had acted without orders. M. Hirschfeld, it was stated, was not satisfied and would report to the Ambassador.