DEFINITE CHARGE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 295, 10 November 1934, Page 8

DEFINITE CHARGE

3.15 P.M. EDITION

GERMAN INTERFERENCE IN SAAR . REVELATIONS IN REPORT. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received November 10, 1 p.m. GENEVA, Nov. 9. Mr Geoffrey G. Knox, the British diplomat and chairman of the Saar Commission, in a letter to the League, said: “I want to draw the Council’s serious attention to the first information obtained from a partial scrutiny of the documents seized during a recent search of the Voluntary Labour Service under the Deutsche Front.”

The League publishes the Saar Commission’s report of the front’s activities and declares that the seized documents show the front is identical with the Nazi Party. It has subjected tlie x'esidents to threats, the most common of which is; “Wait until after 1935!” The front it divided into such small cells that it is impossible to miss any house or person.

German wireless messages and newspapers are used for the pxirpose of pei-secuting residents Among other means of pressure, the report charges the subsidiary body which was allegedly created to hold the wilder spirits ,in check as being really a super-spy organisation 10,000 strong, ready to take the street in action at any moment. The seized documents included a report by Mr Knox’s former butler giving alleged conversations at the dinner table.

The German Government is definitely charged with supporting the front’s persecution activities.

Mr G. G. Knox had held several important diplomatic posts in Europe and the Near East, and was counsellor at the British Embassy in Madrid, when, in 1932, he was called upon to take the highly delicate and responsible post of president of the international commission governing the Saar region. In April of last year the Nazis started a violent agitation in the Saar in an effort to introduce there the conditions they had created in the rest of Germany with a view to preparing for the plebiscite of January, 1935, which is to decide the future ownership of the region. Mr Knox at once took energetic action to preserve order, and suppressed the local newspaper, which boasted of Nazi defiance of the League. In August he complained to the League of Nations of systematic agitation against the Commission’s officials who are unable to rely on the present inadequate police force when dealing with the Nazis. Mr Knox requested the strengthening of the force _ by 2000 recruited from German-speaking members of the League.