London, Feb. 16. It was officially announced today ry credits amounting will be requested by the this amount, £1,107,- for improvements the regular army, £4,530,000 for for exceptional measures inereese in the territorial army.
Todays' announcement brings the total extra expenditures of the War Office for 1938-39 to £ 15,976,570.
It was also announced that nationa) defence expenditures for 1940-41 will amount to £650,000,000 as against £580,000,000 for the 1939-40 estimates, including £60,000,000 for civilian de-
New York, Feb. 15.
The Sino-Japanese hostilities may be æ possible obstacle to the reported plans of Germany, Japan and Italy to force a decision against the British and French Empires within six weeks, said Mr. William PHilip Simms, Foreign Editor of the Scripps-Howard chain of newspapers, in a sensational article from Washington today.
The article was published under glaring "headlines on the front page of the "New York World-Telegram.
"From a Nazi source with trade connections in this country, Latin America and the Far East, I have received information that Germany, Italy and Japan are expecting to stage a showdown within four to six weeks at the latest," Mr. Simms said.
"Within that time, according to my informant," he continued, "all three of these powers will be fully mobiliz~ ed for whatever action which might eventuate—Italy in the basin of the Mediterranean, Germany in central and eastern Europe, and Japan in eastern Siberia.
Three-Cornered "Pressure"
"Chancellor Adolf Hitler is planning to use against Hungary and Rumania the same pressure' methods which he used against Czechoslovakia. Simultaneously, according to the same source, Japan would menace the maritime provincë of Siberia and the trans-Siberian railway which serves Vladivostok and skirts Manchoukuo for more than 1,000 miles, while Italy would press her claims against France.
"I do not guarantee any of these statements," he declared. "All I can say is that certain Nazis now in Germany have privately warned business associates abroad that such is the general plan and to trim their sails accordingly.
"Germany hesitates to undertake a move against Russia until Japan is ready to move against the Soviet Union in the Far East and Japan may find her hands tied, when the time to decide comes, by her war against China.
"If such is the case, the plan might have to be postponed. Germany and Japan, according to my informant, have worked out a joint programme that borders on the grandiose.
"They expect Soviet Russia to cave in completely within six to eight months from the beginning of hostilities. She then would be disarmed whereupon all Eastern Europe, as envisioned in the now-forgotten treaty of Brest-Litovsk, would come under the Nazi orbit and Japan ould enjoy similar hegemony in the western Pacific and the Far East."—
United Press.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.