FLOCKING TO THE COLOURS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 84, Issue 86, 13 April 1940, Page 7

FLOCKING TO THE COLOURS

NORWEGIAN SOLDIERS INVADERS PRESSED BACK [By LONDON, April 11. The Norwegians, temporarily nonplussed under th«? first shock of the invasion, are now flocking to the colours. Increasing resistance is a salient tact emerging from the confused position in Norway. The correspondent of the Stockholm newspaper at Aftonbladet says that Norwegians are barricading and guarding all bridges on a long front running south, east and north of Oslo, parallel to the Swedish border. Other sources indicate that the Norwegians elsewhere are holding up or pressing back tho invaders, notably at Bergen, which Norwegian troops have apparently recaptured, although Swedish reports declare that the Germans are holding the fortress at the entrance to the harbour. On the contrary, the German news agency claims that the Germans not only hold Bergen, besides other ports originally occupied but have reinforced their troops at Bergen. Oslo and Stavanger. Troops By Air. A Swedish journalist, in a message from the occupied territory, reports that the Germans are transporting troops by air from advanced Danish bases, while according to a message from Marstrand, more German warships and transports have arrived in Oslo Fiord. The Speaker of the Norwegian Parliament, M. Hambro. declared that Norway had offered to negotiate if the German> stopped hostilities, but the German Minister had replied that Germany’s actions had developed automatically. M. Hambro added that 2000 Germans landed by plane at the Oslo civil aerodrome. Norwegian planes at the southern base had been withdrawn before the German attack, and stores of petrol, oil and grain had been successfully removed. Professor Koht. Norwegian Foreign Minister, said: “We are at war with Germany consequently we are the ally of all countries fighting Germany.” Norwegian Nazis. The director of the Oslo wireless station, who has arrived hi Stock-

holm, declared that Quisling’s (leader of the so-called Nazi party in Oslo) followers, not German troops, had first occupied the Oslo station. He added that King Haakon's appeal to right agvnst the Ge».ians was a big success, and throughout Norway Hoops were assembling at many points. Ihe German High Command claims that troops- have been landed on the Danish island of Bornholm, which Swedish circles describe as the key to the Baltic. A correspondent of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, on the Swedish-Norwegian frontier, reports that German planes bombed and destroyed the headquarters of the Norwegian army. It is reported from Berlin that German troops at Oslo found 50 new American Curtiss planes which arrived this week and have not yet been assembled. A French military attache at Oslo was captured. The official German news agency says that there is neither a de facto nor a de jure state of war between Germany and Norway. The Norwegian Government had not made a declaration that it was at war with Germany. It also declares that the crews of the sunken cruisers Bluecher and Karlsruhe are manning coastal batteries at unnamed points in Nor-