September 16, 1939; MAJOR BATTLES RAGE; NAZI TROOPS HALTED:

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1939:

Major Battle Rages on 40-Mile Front; Nazi Troops

Halted Despite Support of Heavy Barrage, Strafing
Airplanes; Positions Consolidated by French Army; ,

PARIS, Sept. 16.—(UP)—The biggest Western Front battle of tne war resulted Sunday in a crushing defeat for the Germans after three waves of infantry and massed tanks failed to break through new French defenses on German bills, according to military dispatches.

Attacking Germans were said to have been hurled back despite terrific shelling by, their supporting batteries in the Siegfried Line and furious assaults by a score of diving, strafing German planes.

PARIS, Sept 16 — (AP) —
Hundreds of thousands of French and German troops -were reported today engaged in a terrific battle along a 40-mile "Western Front after two weeks of skirmishes.

The fighting, including a "over-the-top" advance by Nazi infantry, was said by military observers to be ranging all the way from the Moselle River southeast to the Saarbruecken area — rich industrial prize.

Observers estimated at least 15 German di\visions and an equal if not larger number of French divisions had been drawn into the fighting in the no man's land between the Maginot and Siegfried Lines. Sizes of divisions range between 10,000 and 15,000 men each.

Germans were reported to have gone ' over the top" toward French lines in the lower Nied River Valley under cover of a heavy artillery bombardment.

ATTACK REPULSED

Poles Hold Lwow as Germans Take Two

Towns; Battle Rages at Brest-Lifovsk;
French Guns Pound Saarbruecken

PARIS, Sept 16 —(U.P)—German casualties in Poland to date total 100,000 killed or wounded, the newspaper Paris Soir said in a dispatch approved by the censor.

BERLIN. Sept. 16.—(AP)—A German communique reported today additional divisions have been hurled against Kutno in a determined drive to crush a Polish "lost Army" which has held out for six days, and then concentrate on Warsaw, 60 miles farther east.

Kutno is a key to a diminishing circle of territory still held by the Poles west of Warsaw, and a buffer between the beleaguered Capital and the German Army to the west.

Importance of the position was demonstrated by the visit yesterday of General Walther Von Brauchitsch, German chief of staff, to front lines.

The German announcement was taken to indicate the plan is to destroy the divisions at Kutno quickly, while closing the ring of steel tighter around Warsaw in the hope the capital may surrender.

8000 PRISONERS
The high command also said 8000 prisoners and 126 cannon had been captured by the Germans as they moved into Praga, a Warsaw suburb on the east bank of the VistulaRiver.

RUSSIA, JAPAN SIGN TRUCE;

PEACE PACT HELD PREMATURE
New Soviet Ambassador Is Appointed
Advantage to Tokyo Is Seen in China War

By WITT HANCOCK

MOSCOW, Sept. 16.—(AP)—An armistice today in Far Eastern fighting between Soviet Russia and Japan was stipulated in an agreement which diplomatic quarters saw as foreshadowing a possible nonaggression pact. A United Press dispatch from Tokyo said the reference was a Japanese Foreign Office announcement to return of Russo-Japanese relations to a "normal state" was taken in diplomatic quarters to indicate that reports of a nonaggression pact were premature. Conclusion of such a pact it was said, would be distinctly non-normal.