Late Edition REPORT OF DESERTIONS BY GERMAN TROOPS

Southland Times, Issue 23921, 13 September 1939, Page 8

Late Edition REPORT OF DESERTIONS BY GERMAN TROOPS

Two Meatless Days A Week In Reich, RUSSIAN OPINION IN NO DOUBT OF NAZI WAR GUILT (United Press Association —Telegraph Copyright) (Received September 13, 3.5 a.m.) LONDON, September 12. It is reported from Paris that a German officer and 20 soldiers deserted at Hunningue. The officer stated that if a pontoon bridge were placed across the Rhine thousands would cross to France. Every other school in Germany has been turned into a hospital, says a message from Berlin. Mondays and Fridays have been proclaimed meatless days, but the restrictions in Vienna are less severe because of the greater discontent among the population. The Paris newspaper Petit-Parisien suggests that the time is not distant when the Germans will have to fall back to a line in the Saar. A French communique declared that the night was calm along the entire front. The Moscow correspondent of the Independent. Cable Service says that after a week of careful avoidance of naming Germany as an aggressor, the newspaper Izvestia, organ of the Soviet Foreign Office, indirectly places the war guilt on Germany in its first review of the war. In spite of the caution exercised by the Press, which has reported the war news impartially, leading Soviet opinion since the beginning has been convinced that Germany is the aggressor. U-BOAT CAMPAIGN It is reported that a conflict has broken out between the German Naval Staff and the Nazi political leaders over the torpedoing of the British liner Athenia. The German Foreign Office and other propaganda officials are believed to be alarmed at the world reaction. The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy "(Grand Admiral Erich Raeder) countered criticism by saying that the only hope of breaking the British blockade lay in unrestricted U-boat warfare, but he protested against the clumsy efforts of the Minister of Propaganda (Dr Josef Goebbels) to cast the blame elsewhere, and said the U-boat commanders’ worst fault, if any, was that they had carried out too literally Herr Hitler’s order to sink vessels without warning. CHECK TO NAZIS The check on the German advance on Warsaw has impressed French military experts. Colonel Fabry, writing in Le Matin, says it proves, as it was proved in Madrid, that armoured divisions are efficacious in the countryside, but are useless in the suburbs of large towns. The German radio continues to broadcast incessant warnings to Polish civilians not to resist, under pain of death, the Nazi advance. The German High Command announces that German forces have occupied Torun. The German wireless has broadcast no military news all night. ' The Warsaw radio station has announced that Poland has decided to lodge a protest to the Governments o fall civilized nations against “the German practice of indiscriminate bombing, of open towns and civilians.” It has been established that French advances on the Western Front resulted in negligible casualties. Gas has not yet been used by either side in spite of rumours that it has.