In March this country told Poland that if her independence was threatened, Britain would come to her aid. It was an easy promise at the time. Distant, conditional, about a crisis that hadn't happened.

It has happened. Tonight the promise has been restated rather than acted on.

What Britain and France did today was send Germany a warning. That isn't nothing. The note delivered to Berlin this evening says both governments will meet their obligations to Poland unless Germany gives satisfactory assurance that it is withdrawing, and it says it in language with very little room in it. But a warning is not the guarantee.

Poland was invaded before dawn, from three directions at once. Danzig has been proclaimed part of the German Reich, and the Polish Post Office there remains under attack tonight, its outcome unknown. President Mościcki has proclaimed a state of war and called the nation to its defence.

In Berlin, Chancellor Hitler has told the Reichstag that Germany is responding to Polish aggression, a claim Poland disputes entirely and which cannot be independently confirmed. Italy has stated it will take no military initiative for the present.

Britain and France have each delivered a formal warning to Berlin tonight, stating that their obligations to Poland will come into force absent a satisfactory German response. Neither government has declared war. No reply has yet been received from Germany.

At home, Britain has evacuated children from its cities and enforced its first blackout tonight. France has ordered general mobilisation. President Roosevelt has appealed to all sides to spare civilian populations from bombing.

PARIS France has delivered its own note to the German government tonight, following Britain's by a matter of hours and framed, French officials say, in similar terms.

The note is understood to warn that France's obligations to Poland, under the Franco-Polish alliance, will come into force absent a satisfactory German response. No fixed time limit has been announced from Paris tonight. French mobilisation, ordered earlier today, continues.

DANZIG German forces have attacked the Polish Post Office in the city, a defended Polish institution that has become one of several flashpoints inside Danzig since fighting began this morning.

The outcome by this evening is not established, and no confirmed account of casualties or prisoners is yet available. Polish postal employees and other defenders inside the building are reported to have resisted through the day.

LONDON At 19:45 a shopkeeper in Islington is still up a stepladder fitting black paper to his window, with three or four people waiting below for him to finish. They wait good-humouredly. There is nowhere else to buy anything.

The blackout order takes effect tonight. Every window in the country has to show no light at all.

Two doors down a woman hangs a blanket over her front room window, goes outside, looks at it, and goes back in to adjust it. By 21:00 there are no lit windows on the street.

A car comes past with its headlamps masked down to two slits, going slower than a car normally goes on a straight road.

LONDON Alongside the diplomatic statement, the House of Commons has turned this evening to emergency business covering public order, supplies and the machinery needed should the country move to a full war footing.

Measures under discussion include emergency powers over transport, food and industry. The sitting continues into the evening.

LONDON The House of Commons met this evening in emergency session, and the Prime Minister confirmed that Britain has sent Germany a formal warning over the invasion of Poland.

Mr Chamberlain told members that German troops crossed the Polish frontier this morning at dawn and that open Polish towns are being bombed. The note delivered to Berlin states that unless Germany gives satisfactory assurance that it has suspended all aggressive action and is prepared to withdraw its forces from Polish territory, His Majesty's Government will, without hesitation, fulfil its obligations to Poland. No German reply has yet been received.

WASHINGTON President Roosevelt has appealed directly to the belligerent powers not to bomb civilian populations.

The message, sent this afternoon to the governments of Britain, France, Germany, Poland and Italy, asks each to state publicly that its armed forces will not, under any circumstances, bomb civilian populations or unfortified cities from the air.

The appeal is framed here as strictly humanitarian, consistent with the neutrality the United States maintains by law. It asks both sides for the same undertaking and assigns responsibility to neither.

Whether it succeeds is another matter. Reports reaching Washington already describe bombing over a number of Polish towns since dawn. An appeal asking belligerents to state a policy they may already be violating carries an obvious difficulty.

PARIS, GARE DE L'EST The departures board still lists civilian trains. The platforms are army.

Men in ordinary coats carry kit bags that don't match their clothes, issued this week from depots that hadn't expected to open yet. The queue at the barrier moves in short bursts under a gendarme who has plainly done this before and remembers the technique.

The mobilisation posters went up today and still smell of paste. Reservists stand in front of them checking their class against the day they're told to report. A man in his forties read his twice, then asked the man beside him to read it as well.

PARIS The Republic has ordered general mobilisation.

The decree, signed this afternoon following an emergency meeting of the Cabinet, calls the reserves of the French Army, Navy and Air Force to their depots, effective from the coming days. It is accompanied by a formal note, delivered jointly with Britain's, demanding that Germany withdraw from Polish territory.

France mobilised against the same enemy in 1914. The Chamber of Deputies has not yet been asked to vote on a formal declaration.

The practical machinery of mobilisation is already visible in Paris this afternoon: notices posted at town halls, reservists making their way to railway stations, private vehicles requisitioned for military transport under standing regulations.

STOCKHOLM Rome will not fight, for now.

The Italian Council of Ministers, meeting under Signor Mussolini this morning, has announced that Italy will take no military initiative in the conflict that opened in Poland at dawn. The announcement follows, rather than precedes, a telegram from Berlin: Rome asked to be released from the military obligations of the Pact of Steel, and Berlin agreed within hours.

Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, has separately floated the idea of a conference among the European powers to examine the disputes arising from the Versailles settlement, Danzig and the Corridor among them.

Rome presents this as statesmanship. Officials elsewhere read it as an admission that Italy's fleet, army and industry are not ready for a war against Britain and France, whatever the Pact of Steel says on paper.

By midday, the shape of the day is this. German forces crossed the Polish frontier before dawn from three directions, with fighting continuing along all fronts and communication from the Polish interior intermittent. Danzig has been proclaimed part of the German Reich, and Polish positions at Westerplatte remain under attack.

President Mościcki has proclaimed a state of war, calling the nation to its defence. In Berlin, Chancellor Hitler has addressed the Reichstag, framing the German action as a response to Polish provocation.

Germany's justification rests on claims that cannot be independently confirmed from London or Stockholm, including an overnight report of a Polish attack on a German radio station at Gleiwitz. Poland disputes the German account entirely.

In London, evacuation of children from the cities began this morning under a long-prepared scheme. Only Germany and Poland are so far engaged in military action.

LONDON Poland was attacked from three directions at once this morning, not across a single frontier.

German forces came from East Prussia in the north, from Pomerania and Silesia in the west, and from Slovak territory in the south, with Danzig and the Baltic coast making a fourth front on its own. Border incidents don't look like this. This took months to arrange.

The geography matters more than any one day's fighting. A three-sided attack forces the Polish command into an immediate choice: concentrate near the frontier for a decisive battle, or pull back to defensible lines further east and give up the industrial west while doing it. Both options are bad. They have to pick one today.

STOCKHOLM Chancellor Hitler addressed the Reichstag from Berlin this morning. The full text is now available to foreign correspondents here.

Germany, the Chancellor told the assembled deputies, has been the object of Polish provocation for months, culminating overnight in an attack by Polish regulars on German territory. "Since 5.45 this morning," he said, "we have been returning the fire, and from now on bombs will be met by bombs." He named Field Marshal Göring, and after him Deputy Führer Hess, as his successors, and declared himself no longer Chancellor but "the first soldier of the German Reich."

The speech was delivered as stated and its content is public record. The border incident Berlin describes cannot be checked from here.

BERLIN Hitler, addressing the Reichstag this morning, has named Field Marshal Hermann Göring as his successor should he fall in the present conflict, with Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess named to follow after him.

The announcement came within a wider address in which the Chancellor declared Germany to be responding to Polish aggression. Foreign correspondents in Berlin describe the chamber as attentive but subdued. A fuller account of the speech follows.

LONDON The children came onto the platform in twos, in long lines, a teacher at the front of each and another at the back.

They were from East End schools. Every child had a label pinned to a coat and a small cardboard box on a string over one shoulder. The boxes are gas masks. The labels are names and school numbers.

The trains are ordinary suburban stock. Nobody has told the children where they are going. In most cases nobody has told the parents either, which is deliberate, and is explained as a matter of order and security.

By 09:00 the platform was empty again except for what gets left behind: a glove, sandwich paper, a single shoe nobody came back for. More trains are due through the day.

WARSAW Bombing has been reported over a number of Polish towns and cities since first light this morning, according to reports reaching London. Anti-aircraft guns have engaged German aircraft over the capital on several occasions since dawn.

Polish and Allied sources describe the attacks as striking open towns; no German statement on the air operations has yet been received in London, and the full extent of the raids and any casualties cannot yet be confirmed. Communication with the Polish interior remains intermittent.

DANZIG The Free City of Danzig has been proclaimed part of the German Reich. Gauleiter Albert Forster announced the incorporation in the small hours of this morning, as Polish positions at the Westerplatte transit depot came under attack from German land and naval forces.

Poland has not recognised the annexation, and the outcome at Westerplatte is not yet known. A United States consular report records notification from the Danzig Senate that hostilities began shortly before five o'clock this morning.

WARSAW German forces crossed the Polish frontier at several points in the first light of dawn this morning, striking from East Prussia, from Pomerania and Silesia, and from the south, where Slovak units are reported to be taking part. Bombing has been reported over Warsaw and other Polish towns.

The scale of the advance cannot yet be confirmed, and the German government has not yet issued a formal statement. Reuters and the Associated Press report the attacks from Warsaw and Berlin, and the Polish government's own communiqué confirms that fighting is under way along the frontier.