DISCONTENT RIFE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24715, 18 September 1941, Page 7

DISCONTENT RIFE

OCCUPIED COUNTRIES SABOTAGE IN FRANCE SCORES OF TRAIN CRASHES (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, Sept. 16. Hot on the heels of the execution of 10 additional hostages in occupied France a German non-commissioned officer was shot and seriously wounded in a street in the centre of Paris.

The Moscow radio claims that during the past two months 1800 wagons containing German war material were destroyed in France, 194 trains crashed down embankments, sabotage occurred in 74 French factories producing for the Germans, hundreds of lorries carrying food to the German army were destroyed, dozens of food stores belonging to the army of occupation were wrecked, and several hundred German officers and soldiers killed. The Vichy police have offered rewards totalling 1,000,000 francs for information abQut sabotage, but no saboteurs have thus far been betrayed. The radio added that French papers are admitting that most of the German planes repaired in French factories quickly re-develop defects, and the tanks leaving the factories are almost useless.

A Norwegian news agency reveals that Norwegians living in districts where radios have been confiscated travel to neighbouring districts determined to listen-in. One district every night runs a special "London bus" crammed with passengers. Quisling supporters are furious with these Anglophiles and demand the confiscation of sets throughout the country. While the activities of the Gestapo were chiefly concentrated last week in Oslo, arrests were also carried out elsewhere, principally on the west coast, from where Anglophile Norwegians have been sent to Germany. The latest acts of sabotage include damaging the railway between Oslo and Sweden. As a result of this, two policemen are stationed every 200 yards along the line. The Germans are also speeding-up the evacuation of Norwegians in west coast areas, compulsorily shifting thousands of families inland. Serbian patriots attacked the railway between Belgrade and Nish, interrupting traffic for two days. German troops are now guarding the line and the trains are escorted by planes and armoured cars. Eleven members of a Serb patriot organisation were sentenced to death in Sarajevo for attacks against the police and for conspiracy, NAZI TERROR IN OSLO ONE THOUSAND ARRESTS (Rec. 9.30 p.m.) RUGBY, Sept. 16. During the last few days of Nazi teiTor the police made 1000 arrests in Oslo. Their excuse for this action is that a general strike was on the point of breaking out. Lest this should not be believed the Nazis have put out an alternative explanation—that a strike had actually broken out in one of Oslo's largest factories, where the workmen complained that they had been deprived of milk rations. The second excuse is the more likely, inasmuch as some 10,000 gallons of Norwegian milk are taken every day from Norway to be sent to German troops as sustenance in the Nazi attack on Russia. This robbery in all probability has resulted in there being insufficient milk for the women and children of the Oslo workers.

Nazi brutality towards Norwegian workers has been unhesitatingly condemned by the Congress of Swedish Trade Unions, which in a resolution adopted at the Congress stated that Norwegian trade unionists "have fallen in battle for Norway's freedom and for the right of the Norwegian working class to decide for themselves ', their own actions within the limits of Norwegian law. We honour their memory, which is a fresh link between the northern peoples." FATE OF HITLERISM COLLAPSE PREDICTED (Rec. 10 p.m.) CHICAGO, Sept. 16. Predicting that Hitler would collapse of his own over-reaching and be crushed by the vicious forces within his own regime, Mr Herbert Hoover, broadcasting, said that hate of Hitler in the conquered countries would prove more terrible than the blizzard was to Napoleon. The United States should build an impregnable defence and give material aid to the democracies. "England can prevent an invasion," he said, " if we give her the tools, and even warships, without sending our boys to their death."