SECOND FRONT AWAITED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIV, Issue 121, 20 April 1944, Page 2

SECOND FRONT AWAITED

MUCH SPECULATION

LONDON, April 19. Observers in London, while speculating on the imminence of the second front, recall that Mr Churchill in his speech on March 26 said that "to deceive and baffle" the enemy there will be many false alarms, feints and dress rehearsals" before the second front opens. It is argued in Stockholm, however, that it is not possible to bold up the movements of diplomats for very long and therefore something very big must be just around the corner.

The Berlin correspondent of thft Aftonbladet says: "Many people in Germany believe the invasion may begin in the next few days, but the second half of May is likely to be the most critical period. The overwhelming conviction is that the British action is too drastic to be a mere feint."

A Swiss correspondent in Germany reports that Germany is keyed up as never before and the invasion is expected at any moment. The Paris radio declared : The invasion is near —nearer even than we could have expected. According to tho Belgian News Agency the Germans are taking special precautions in the Ix>w Coun tries, including the banning of all communications between the right and left banks of the Scheldt at Antwerp, RESTRICTIONS ON DIPLOMATS.

The Government to-night took newsteps to yjaco diplomats under all the restrictions affecting "any other alien". Diplomats have hitherto been free to move about Britain as they wished, curfew and other restrictive orders not applying to them. The new order, authorises the Government, "notwithstanding, anything in the law' , to; keep diplomats from certain military areas and prevent them from moving about freely. «,T. heads of missions—Ambassadors and Ministers—come under the new order in addition to their official and domestic staffs. It ia pointed out that the order may bo used only to prevent diplomats coming into or going out of the country, thus giving legal effect to the ban imposed at midnight on Monday, but the fact that power has been so taken is unprecedented. German planes after dark are dropping millions of copies of a newspaper that exactly imitates the stylo of the R.A.F. newspaper, Courier de I'Air, which the French people have learned to know and trust, 6lates the Daily Express foreign editor. The German fake paper carries a London date-line and even correctly lists the B.B.C's French programmes, but—and herein lies the trap—it is telling Frenchmen that they need not await the prearranged radio signal to revolt. This trick aims to wreck in advance the ' great French rising timed to meet the second front.