SURRENDER BANQUET

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 136, 10 May 1945, Page 6

SURRENDER BANQUET

HIGH OFFICERS CELEBRATE. (Roc. 11.30 a.m.) RUGBY, May 9. The scene in the room where the Germans signed unconditional surrender is described by a Berlin correspondent who says that once the Germans had gone several hundreds of people in the room had their faces wreathed in smiles.

Air Marshal Tedder and Marshal Zhukov did a regular "pump-handle" Handshake and there were handshaking and congratulations all round.. An hour or so later the room had a festive air. Russian girl waitresses laid the table for a typical Russian banquet and the toasts went on till after 4 a.m.

Marshal Zhukov paid a handsome tribute to General Eisenhower: "A magnificent General and one of the most talented this war has produced," he said.

Air Marshal Tedder recalled tho toast he proposed in Moscow last January, "To our meeting in the ruins of Berlin."

The sun was rising over the dead city of the defeated and broken aggressor as the victory banquet of Karlshorst broke up. Russian soldiers, chatting or waiting in the street, pulled up to salute in smart but friendly fashion as the British, American and French military envoys got into a fleet of cai-s to return to tho business of winding up the war in Europe. —Official "Wireless.

The Exchange Telegraph Agency's Stockholm correspondent reports that the Germans on Bornholm Island have surrendered.

Reuter's Oslo correspondent says that the first British troops arrived in Oslo todav by air. LONDON. May 8. The German Reich ceases its legal existence at midnight tonight and its Government ceases to function, says Reuter's military correspondent. Germany will become a subjugated, conquered and occupied country without further independent existence.

All the German leaders are now in the same category as the war prisoners and all German property, possessions and credits in foreign countries are automatically transferred to the account of the Central Allied Control Commission, which begins to function immediately. There is no armistice as in 1918, 'for which reason from midnight the whole of German manpower, military and private property is at the disposal of the Allies.