CERNAUTI, Rumania, Sept. 15—This city today became the headquarters for diplomats, newspapermen and Poles. All day long one diplomatic automobile after another crossed the border after an exciting journey through Polish territory.
All the automobiles were camouflaged and the flags of the respective countries were displayed. The machines were filled with everything from pillows to radios. When the automobile of Ambassador Anthony J. D. Biddle arrived with its American flag hundreds of curious gathered around. A small police detachment was necessary to keep order.
All hotels were filled completely. At the border Rumanian officials took strict measures, prohibiting completely the entry of refugees without visas.
Rumania tonight barred her frontiers to the bulk of the thousands of Polish refugees fleeing before invading German armies.
An official communiqué stated that “all private persons” from Poland, especially from Galicia, where the percentage of Jews is high, were barred from entrance into Rumania.
The communiqué dashed the hopes of most of some 10,000 Jewish refugees congesting the Polish side of the Rumanian border seeking entry.
Polish refugees fleeing the approaching German army, September, 1939.
SEPTEMBER 17, 1939
MERCHANT CONVOYS SET UP BY BRITAIN
By The Associated Press.
LONDON, Sept. 16—The British Admiralty pressed into service tonight convoys for merchant shipping after it was disclosed authoritatively that enemy craft had sunk twenty-one British ships, involving a tonnage of 122,843, during the first two weeks of the war.
The use of convoys was not instituted by the British in the last war until 1917.
While slim cruisers and racing destroyers roved and struck on the shipping lanes, planes of the Royal Aircraft patrolled the skies around the United Kingdom in redoubled efforts to halt the persistent shipping losses to U-boats or mines.
Despite the casualties, naval quarters expressed optimism about the situation at sea.
UNDERSTATEMENT IN REPORTS
Increasing patrol activity and the Admiralty’s cautious announcement that “a number of U-boats have been destroyed,” was taken by naval authorities to tell a story of far greater successes than the guarded statement indicated.
Britain placed responsibility on Germany for the sinking last night of the 8,000-ton Belgian motorship Alex Van Opstal in the Channel off Weymouth, asserting she was sunk by mine or torpedo in violation of international law.
A British communiqué said there were no British mines in the neighborhood, that Germany had sent no notification of German mines there and that attack without warning was in violation of the submarine protocol to which Germany subscribed.
[The Alex Van Opstal left New York on Sept. 6 for Antwerp with eight passengers and 3,400 tons of grain.]
Eight passengers and a crew of forty-nine escaped from the Alex Van Opstal, which, according to her captain, broke in two after a terrific explosion near her No. 2 hatch.
The crew of another British tanker, the Inverliffey, landed in England today and members of her crew told how the captain of the submarine had hauled them to safety when the tanker exploded and went up in flames. Third officer Albert Lang said men in boats were trapped by flames from their burning ship after the explosion.
“Flames and smoke from the ship went up 500 or 600 feet,” he said. “We seemed almost under this wall of flames, and when we thought we were done for the commander of the submarine sailed his ship alongside and told us we could stand around the conning tower. No sooner had we got on the submarine than it got up speed and took us out of danger. The commander treated us decently and took us to our boats before he waved his hand and submerged.”
SEPTEMBER 17, 1939
GANDHI URGES BRITAIN TO ‘LIBERATE’ INDIA
Says Free Country Would Be an Ally To Defend Democracy
Wireless to The New York Times.
WARDHA, India, Sept. 16—Mohandas K. Gandhi told Britain tonight that she could gain a willing ally in the war by making India a “free and independent nation.”
“The recognition of India,” he said, “as a free and independent nation seems to me to be a natural corollary of the British profession of democracy.”
Mr. Gandhi asked for a clear statement of Britain’s war aims in relation to democracy and imperialism, but urged the working committee of the Congress party that whatever support they should give to Britain should be given unconditionally.
He asked Britain for “honest action to implement the declarations of faith in democracy made on the eve of the war,” and said:
“The question is, will Great Britain have an unwilling India dragged into war or a willing ally cooperating with her in the prosecution of the defense of true democracy?”
SEPTEMBER 18, 1939
JAPAN NOW DRIVES FOR CHINA VICTORY
Kwantung Army Being Shifted to South—Peace Deal With Chiang Not Ruled Out
TOKYO, Sept. 18 (UP)—Informants close to the War Office said today that “it was natural to assume” that large numbers of Japanese troops were being removed from the Soviet frontiers of Manchukuo to China.
Following the Russo-Japanese agreement to cease fighting on the Manchukuoan-Soviet borders, increased military activity in China may be expected at once, it was said, in line with Premier Nobuyuki Abe’s announced decision to bring the long undeclared war with China to an early end.
So far the China war has been fought largely with second line reservists, many of them married men, but now, it was said, major units of the crack Kwantung army will be thrust into the China struggle in an effort to induce Chinese Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek to surrender.
RETIREMENT NOT NECESSARY
Japan, it was said, will be willing to make peace with General Chiang and permit him to continue in power if he will come to an early “reasonable” agreement.
This government still is willing to make peace with China on the basis of the declaration made by Prince Fumimaro Konoye, then Premier, last December. The Konoye declaration, it was recalled, did not make General Chiang’s retirement a necessary preliminary to peace.
Japanese units late last week started moving forward south of Nanchang, in the Hankow-Canton railway area, and it was believed that a first phase of the new push would be to clear this railway and break Chinese positions in General Chiang’s Hengyang defense triangle.
The Japanese then would move into Yunnan Province and undertake to cut the Burma-Chungking highway, thus rendering untenable the whole Chinese defense system in the southwest.
It will be recalled that when General Chiang abandoned Hankow almost a year ago he set up two “final” defense areas—one in the southwest to be fed by the Burma-Chungking highway and railways and highways into French Indo-China, and another in the northwest around Lanchow, Kansu province, and munitioned by trucks operating on the motor truck highway from Sian, Shensi Province, through Lanchow, to Soviet Russia.
The informants believed that General Chiang “now realizes” that both these defense areas are hopeless since his supplies of munitions from abroad are being cut off.
FIGHT CONTINUES, SAYS CHIANG
CHUNG KING, China, Sept. 17—Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek tonight made his first public pronouncement on foreign affairs since the outbreak of the European war in a speech before the People’s Political Council, now in session here. Despite the war in Europe, he stated, China must consistently carry out a fixed policy of armed resistance against Japanese aggression.
“The European war will make us fight Japan with greater vigor,” he said, “since we are confident of ultimate victory and of China’s rightful place in re-shaping a new world order.”
General Chiang called Japan’s policy of non-intervention in any European war tantamount to saying that she does not want any interference by Europe or America in the Chinese-Japanese conflict, since she is attempting to establish her so-called “new order in East Asia,” which would place her in the predominan
t position in Asia to the exclusion of other powers.
Turning to the Chinese-Japanese war situation, General Chiang declared:
“I am now in a position to state that our present military strength, compared with that at the outbreak of the war, is more than doubled. * * * Japan has exhausted her manpower and is already defeated.”
Japanese troops in northern Hebei province, China during the Second Japan-China war, 1939.
SEPTEMBER 17, 1939
SOVIET TROOPS MARCHED INTO POLAND AT 11 P. M.; NAZIS DEMAND WARSAW GIVE UP OR BE SHELLED
FIERCE BATTLE IS RAGING ON WESTERN FRONT
By The United Press
BERLIN, Sept. 17—A spokesman for the Propaganda Ministry announced that Russian troops had marched into Poland today at 4 A. M. Moscow time, [11 P.M. Saturday in New York].
The Soviet troops entered Poland with the full knowledge and approval of the German Government, he said.
The spokesman made his statement after D. N. B., the official German news agency, had reported from Moscow that the Soviet Government had informed the Polish Ambassador, Dr. Waclaw Grzybowski, Saturday night that Soviet troops were about to cross the frontier.
The agency said that the note handed to the Ambassador informed the Poles that the troops would cross the frontier along its entire length from Polozk in the north to Kamenets-Podolski in the south “in order to protect our own interests and to protect the White Russian and Ukrainian minorities.”
The Soviet Government, the agency said, told the Poles that it maintained its neutrality despite its military action, but added that its treaties with the Polish State could be regarded canceled because the Polish State could no longer be regarded as existing.
TO OCCUPY TWO DISTRICTS
MOSCOW, Sept. 17—Soviet Russia has decided to send her army across the Polish frontier today and to occupy the Polish Ukraine and White Russia.
The government was understood unofficially to have sent a note last night to the Polish Ambassador here saying that the Red Army would enter the Polish Ukraine and White Russia today from Polozk to Kamanets-Podolski.
Copies of this note were said also to have been sent simultaneously to all diplomatic representatives here saying the action was taken because Poland no longer exists. It was said to have declared there no longer is a Polish Government because its whereabouts are unknown.
The note was said to have declared that “the Soviet Union will retain neutrality, but feels it necessary to protect White Russian and Ukrainian minorities in Poland and will do everything to keep peace and order.”
[Poland not only has a non-aggression pact with Russia but in mutual assistance treaties by which the British and French are pledged to aid Poland in defense of her independence against any aggression. Polish invocation of this treaty brought Great Britain and France into war against Germany on Sept. 3, two days after a German army invaded Western Poland.]
COVERS ENTIRE FRONTIER
The scene of the Russian action would extend across the whole of Russia’s Polish frontier.
It would increase considerably Russia’s frontier with Rumania. Rumania holds Bessarabia, wrested from Russia after the World War, and the Soviet Government never has relinquished its claims on this territory.
Russia’s decision to act came after she had sent a vast number of men to her western frontier in semi-mobilization and had followed with her “peace” with Japan.
It was believed here that the Polish Embassy in Moscow would leave and that, possibly the British also would leave, since they are allies of Poland.
MAN POWER IS THREAT
If necessary, Soviet Russia could throw nearly 2,000,000 trained soldiers against the struggling Poles.
The official Communist party newspaper Pravda this spring estimated Russia’s peacetime army at 1,800,000. This estimate did not include the millions of semi-trained reserves who could be called up by conscription.
In addition to this manpower, the newspaper credited Russia with 9,000 airplanes, 30,000 light machine guns, 23,000 heavy machine guns, 1,600 pieces of heavy artillery and between 6,000 and 10,000 tanks.
During the past week Russia called up part of her army reserves in a mobilization move, and foreign observers said most of the troops were sent to the western frontier, facing Poland.
SEPTEMBER 18, 1939
SOVIET ‘NEUTRALITY’ STRESSED IN MOVE
By G. E. R. GEDYE
Wireless to The New York Times
MOSCOW, Sept. 17—The totally unprepared population of the Soviet Union learned through loudspeakers on the streets at 11 o’clock this morning that its governmentm during the night had committed it to the invasion of a neighbor’s territory. Warlike operations, which elsewhere are preceded by parliamentary debates and long newspaper: campaigns and even in Germany by a special session of the Reichstag, here were brought to the knowledge of an unprepared people hours after they had begun.
Little wonder that the Moscow population, recalling the reiterated declarations of leaders headed by Joseph Stalin that they did not desire a foot of anyone else’s territory, went about today asking: “What has happened now?” “Are we at war; with whom and why?”
‘’What do we want in Poland?” “What has gone wrong with the neutrality pact signed with the express purpose of keeping us from war?”
The Soviet radio declared that special propaganda meetings in every part of the Union today revealed general support “for the noble act of the government.” The only emotion revealed by the foreign observers with whom the writer spoke was one of utter bewilderment.
NEUTRALITY ASSURANCES GIVEN
As the Soviet forces marched into Poland representatives of Britain and France and of countries as far removed from European quarrels as the United States received notes assuring them that Russia would observe “neutrality” toward them.
The British and French Embassies are awaiting instructions from their governments as to the next steps. In British quarters there was at first a tendency to assume that unless the Poles called on Britain to fulfill the terms of the Anglo-Polish pact the case might be met for the moment by withdrawal of the British Ambassador to mark disapproval of-the Soviet attitude.
News that Polish troops were resisting the Soviet advance caused a rather graver view to be taken this evening. Diplomatic circles considered it possible that the British and the French might break off diplomatic relations and even declare war.
However, it is not believed that any precipitate step will be taken. Probably Russia will first be asked for an explanation of her action and assurances that no annexation is intended. Neutral diplomats question whether a declaration of war at this juncture would be of any advantage to the Western democracies; although it is obvious that the day will come when they will be obliged to insist that Russia restore the territory of their ally.
Meantime, it is felt, they are more likely to concentrate on their efforts on the Western front. Existing blockade regulations suffice to assure that Russia’ as a neutral will not import anything that might aid Germany in the prosecution of the war.
SEPTEMBER 18, 1939
Editorial
THE RUSSIAN BETRAYAL
It is altogether probable that the Russian invasion of Poland, just at the moment when that country has been laid waste and rendered all but helpless, reveals at least part of the secret understanding that lay behind the German-Russian non-aggression pact. This, no doubt, is the deal that Hitler and Stalin arranged. This was the price for which Stalin was ready to betray the French and British with whom he had ostensibly been negotiating for an anti- Nazi alliance. Germany having killed the prey, Soviet Russia will seize that part of the carcass that Germany cannot use. It will play the noble role of hyena to the German lion.
This gross betrayal of the professions that Soviet Russia has been making for years is being defended in the manner with which the world has now grown sickeningly familiar. Because Poland has “virtually ceased to exist,” Russia is free to break ever
y treaty with it.
The Soviet Government deems it its “sacred duty” to “extend the hand of assistance” to its dear brother Ukrainians and brother white Russians. The Polish Government has denounced as having been “rotten” anyway, and of having “persecuted” its minorities in contrast one supposes, to the well-known kindliness with which Soviet Russia treats minority opinion. The technique is established: just before you pillage your neighbor and kill his wife and children, you must denounce him as a scoundrel.
What further agreements and developments lie behind the ominous non-aggression pact—whether, for example, a re-partition of Poland is to be followed by a partition of Rumania or a more extended drive on the Balkan states, either to annex them or to reduce them to vassalage—we shall doubtless learn soon enough. It is possible that Russia does not intend to participate in warfare if she can help it, but merely to sit on her re-acquired territories or new possessions and hold them. In any case the outlook is hopeless for Poland and dark for England and France. The latter are more threatened in Asia by Japan, and Germany is in a position to get valuable supplies in particular, some of the oil that her motorized warfare so desperately needs.
But this virtual alliance of Germany and Russia, at least for temporary ends, will certainly not work altogether against the democracies, As Germany and Russia draw closer together, as buffer states shrink or disappear, the mutual distrust between the two Governments must grow. It is not likely that Hitler has changed the opinion he expressed in “Mein Kampf” that “The present rulers of Russia do not at all think of entering an alliance sincerely or of keeping one.” He must still believe that the Russian leaders combine “a rare mixture of bestial horror with an inconceivable gift of lying,” and the Russian leaders doubtless reciprocate the compliment. In such conditions no real or durable alliance is probable. The two Governments can act together only in dividing helpless intervening nations “between them, while quarrels over the division are always possible.
The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945 Page 17