FEARS OF AGGRESSION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 97, 24 March 1939, Page 7

FEARS OF AGGRESSION

CONCERN OF POWERS. COUNTERING HITLER. LONDON, March 23. Mr Neville Chamberlain (Premier), Lord Halifax (Foreign Secretary) and M. Bonnet (French Foreign Secretary) conferred this afternoon on the general European situation. The Times says that the English and French Ministers discussed the British suggestion for a joint declaration regarding Hungarian and Rumanian tension and the situation in Memel. Britain was able to report that an affirmative reply had been received from the Soviet, but nothing definite from Poland, for whom the draft does not go far enough. The question, therefore, arose of strengthening the wording and making the terms of cooperation more explicit. The idea ot a conference has not been dropped. The Anglo-French discussions will be resumed to-day.

Mr Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, and M. Bonnet easily agreed on the necessity for England and France to impose a brake on Germany’s attempt at hegemony in Central Europe. The Havas News Agency says that M. Bonnet has given a written undertaking of unrestricted French participation in whatever form of co-opera-tion is decided on.

The Daily Telegraph says the manner of the Memel coup makes it more obvious that new aggressions are in store. The Times says the coup has all the characteristics of the militarised diplomacy of which the Nazis have made a specialty. “The incompatibility of the Nazi methods with any reasonable code of international intercourse remains as glaring as ever.”