AT SEA The British passenger liner Athenia was struck by an explosion in the North Atlantic this evening, hours after Britain declared war.

ENGLAND RAF Bomber Command aircraft left bases in the north of England after dark tonight on the first British air operation over Germany of the war. The aircraft are carrying leaflets addressed to the German population and are carrying no bombs, the Air Ministry confirms.

DUBLIN Ireland will stay out of the war, Éamon de Valera said in a broadcast this evening, as Britain entered its first day of war with Germany.

LONDON The government's evacuation scheme is nearly complete, having moved something over a million people out of London and other cities judged likely targets. That is roughly a third of the number originally planned for.

LONDON The King broadcast to Britain and the Empire this evening and asked his peoples for calm, resolve and unity in the war declared in his name this morning.

CAPE TOWN South Africa's Parliament will vote tomorrow on whether the country goes to war or stays neutral, after the Cabinet failed to agree a position.

PARIS France is at war with Germany. A state of war has existed between the two countries since five o'clock this afternoon, Paris time, some hours after Britain's declaration.

ROME Italy remains out of the war despite the Pact of Steel, its formal alliance with Germany. Its position is unchanged from the non-belligerence it declared some days ago.

WELLINGTON New Zealand is at war with Germany. The government confirmed the declaration late tonight, Wellington time, and dated it to the moment Britain's own state of war began this morning.

WARSAW A crowd gathered outside the British Embassy in Warsaw this afternoon, within an hour of the news that Britain had declared war on Germany. People carried hand-lettered banners, one of which read "Long Live England." The banners looked as if they had been made from shop paper.

NEW DELHI India is at war with Germany. The Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, declared it this morning by proclamation under the authority of his office, without consulting any elected Indian political leader.

LONDON The London Stock Exchange has been shut since Friday, so the declaration of war produced no fall in share prices today. Prices had no session in which to move.

LONDON Parliament today passed emergency legislation making male British subjects between the ages of eighteen and forty liable for military service.

LONDON Chamberlain announced a War Cabinet of nine members to the House this afternoon, against a peacetime Cabinet of more than twenty. It has been kept small so that it can decide quickly.

MELBOURNE Australia is at war with Germany. The Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, told the country in a broadcast shortly after 21:00 Australian time that Britain's declaration carries the Commonwealth with it.

LONDON The House of Commons met at noon today and gave the government its full support, a day after members came close to bringing it down.

LONDON Air-raid sirens sounded across London less than half an hour after Chamberlain finished speaking, and the alert proved to be a false alarm.

LONDON By 11:30 the crowd outside Downing Street had spilled off the pavement. Chamberlain had already finished his broadcast announcing that Britain was at war.

STOCKHOLM The Polish garrison at Westerplatte was still resisting this morning, on the third day of the German attack, according to reports reaching Stockholm by way of Warsaw. The depot has been cut off since the first hours of the war.

WARSAW German forces pressed their invasion of Poland into a third day overnight, with fighting reported across the country's western and northern approaches.