Monday, August 18, 1930

Berlin:  The Foreign Office issues a statement stating that German foreign policy, especially regarding the German-Polish border, has not changed, and that Germany has no intention of attempting to renegotiate the Treaty of Versailles, in which the present border was laid out.

Poland:  People along the Polish border with Russia are reporting hearing rifle and machine gun fire day and night from across the border.  Occasional escapees into Poland say the gunfire is the soviet secret police hunting down people who have escaped exile and, occasionally, former exiles carrying out attacks against communist officials.  One Pole reports seeing a lone peasant woman walking quietly along a road close to the border when she was shot dead by a red soldier, who then buried her body on the spot. 

Bucharest:  Reporters in Berlin and Vienna say they have received dispatches from here that King Carol II, who recently returned to Romania, appears to be moving the country closer to a dictatorship.  Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu, who helped Carol return, is now said to be forming an alliance with the Liberal Party and its leader, Vintila Bratianu, in an attempt to block Carol’s power grab.  Carol’s pattern, say his critics, is to have a newspaper publish an alarmist story about an impending crisis and potential revolution, after which Carol can crack down on the alleged perpetrators, consolidating his power while elevating himself in the eyes of the public.  Reports say just such a story is slated to be published tomorrow, which will claim that a nascent revolution in southern Russia threatens to spill over into Romania.

Tokyo:  The special committee created by the Privy Council to study the London Naval Treaty begins its work in a session at the imperial palace.  The first meeting is devoted largely to agenda setting, although the chairman’s comments, that the treaty will receive a fair treatment and that the Privy Council is not hostile to Japan’s current government, are thought by observers to be hopeful for the treaty’s approval.

Berlin:  The new People’s Conservative Party, led by Gotfried Treviranus and Kuno von Westarp (both of whom bolted from Alfred Hugenberg’s nationalist party), releases its campaign platform for the upcoming elections.  It calls for the nations victorious in the World War to cut their military forces to match Germany’s; revisions of the German borders drawn after the war; revision of the war reparations payments; and for the German “war guilt” clause in the Treaty of Versailles to be cut. 

Prague:  Czechoslovakia concludes separate land deals with the government of Lichtenstein and the Order of Teutonic Knights, in which Czechoslovakia buys nearly 325,000 acres near the German border from the two.  The country says it plans to use the land to settle Czechs as a barrier against Germany.  It is being called one of the largest land deals ever done in Europe.