SINISTER TONE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23103, 30 July 1938, Page 13

SINISTER TONE

SUDETEN GERMANS

LORD RUNCIMAN'S MISSION FORECAST OF FAILURE HENLEIN TO VISIT HITLER By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received July 2J>, S.au p.m.) LONDON", July '2O Abandoning its previously friendly reserve toward Viscount Runciman as mediator in the minorities question, states a message from Prague, the Sudeten official newsletter says : "Britain is trying to prevent the impending battle of ideologies by advocating a compromise which cannot produce a fundamental decision. It would be unfair to create personal difficulties for Lord Runciman, who has nobly undertaken the task, but it is clear that the gap between the conception of the Sudeten Germans and that of the Czech Government has become so wide that it is no longer humanly possible to bridge it." Lord Runciman will submit without delay his proposals to Dr. Hodza, Czech Prime Minister, and Herr Honlein, leader of tho Sudeten Germans. He is exported to remain in Czechoslovakia for a long period to judge the working out of any proposals submitted. Ho will 1)0 accompanied by a Foreign Office economic expert, Mr. Ashton G. Watkin, who is wo 11 known as the novelist "John Paris," and also by Mr. Stopford, an expert on minorities questions, as secretary. The Honlein party has received from the Czech Government its reform proposals regarding government of its minorities.

Herr Henlein will be Herr Hitler's guest on Sunday at the Reich sports and gymnastic festival at Breslau, «at which Herr Hitler is expected to speak, says the Berlin correspondent of tho Daily Telegraph.

CZECHS ACCUSED PARTIAL MOBILISATION ANOTHER GERMAN REPORT LONDON, July 25 The German report, which was withdrawn on Czech insistence, that Czech troops were being mobilised in the Sudeten districts, the Silesian border, has been followed by another report alleging partial mobilisation, says the Berlin correspondent of the Times.

.Both reports camp from the correspondent of tho Gorman official news agency at Waldenburg, Silesia. Tlie Berlin newspapers published the Czech denial of mobilisation, but declared that it evaded tho facts. They urged Britain and France, who were described as elders, to stop "tho unruly Czech children from playing with fire."

The second messago from Waldenburg asserted that the Czechs had removed the barricades which had hidden machine-gun posts. It declared that farmers had been prohibited from entering certain areas, in spite of the harvesting.