Four governments spent today saying they are outside this war. Bulgaria proclaimed neutrality by decree. Estonia interned the Polish submarine Orzeł at Tallinn this afternoon after German pressure, and has begun taking her torpedoes off. Washington's position, notified to the belligerents yesterday, is that it has given up none of its rights as a neutral. South Africa, which is in the war, took emergency powers over its own population at home.

The Indian National Congress declined to be placed in either category. Its Working Committee, meeting at Wardha, said India will not give unreserved help until Britain states what it is fighting for and whether the democracy it defends in Europe applies to India.

Berlin's claim that the ring around Warsaw is closed reached the agencies today. Polish troops have left Gdynia for the heights at Oksywie. Polish radio was still on the air this evening. Polish claims of counter-attacks and captured tanks at Lwów cannot be checked from outside the country.

Reports from Moscow say the Soviet Government and Japan have agreed to end the fighting on the Mongolian frontier. The terms have not been reported and no communiqué has appeared in either capital.

Senator Borah opened the American argument over the arms embargo overnight. Congress meets on the 21st.

PARIS The French advance in the Saar has come up against the main German fortified line and stopped in front of it.

The evening communiqué of the Ministry of National Defence reports that operations continued through the day, that contact was maintained with the enemy fortifications, and that there was artillery activity on both sides. It reports patrol actions. It reports the clearing of mines.

Methodical was Mr Chamberlain's word for it in the House of Commons yesterday, and it is the right one. In practice it means that the infantry does not go forward until the guns have prepared the ground ahead of it, and against concrete the guns take a long time.

OTTAWA Canada has put all of its war purchasing in one place. An order in council signed today, P.C. 2696, creates a War Supply Board with authority to contract for war materials, to organize plants for production, and to coordinate what gets delivered and when. It takes over from the Defence Purchasing Board.

A second order signed the same day, P.C. 2697, appoints Gordon W. Scott of Montreal and Watson Sellar, Comptroller of the Treasury, as joint directors to set the thing up.

Canada declared war on the 10th. Five days later it has a purchasing authority with statutory powers over its own factories.

CAPE TOWN The Union of South Africa has proclaimed a set of war measures covering its own population.

Reuters reports from Cape Town that the proclamation gives the Government emergency powers against hoarding and profiteering, restricts the sale of liquor, provides for action against subversive activity, and controls the movement of people out of the Union.

South Africa entered the war on 6 September after a division in its parliament. Today's measures are the first published use of the powers that decision carried with it.

The proclamation was issued at Cape Town and takes effect at once.

HONG KONG Reports out of Moscow say the Soviet Government and Japan have reached an agreement to end the fighting on the Mongolian frontier.

It is said to have been settled this afternoon between Molotov and the Japanese ambassador, Shigenori Togo, in a conference running about four hours. What it provides has not been reported. Whether the guns stop tonight, tomorrow or on a date still to be fixed is not known here.

Neither the Moscow press nor Tokyo has published anything. What is in circulation is correspondents' reporting from Moscow, and it should be read as that and not as a communiqué.

BERLIN The German announcement that Warsaw is completely encircled, issued in Berlin and carried by DNB, the official German agency, has come through on the wires today. It says the capital is cut off from the rest of Poland.

On the coast, Polish troops have given up Gdynia and withdrawn to the Oksywie heights above it, where Colonel Stanisław Dąbek is reported to be holding the high ground. Berlin announced its entry into Gdynia yesterday.

No prisoner figure has been given for either place.

Polish radio was still broadcasting this evening and reported fighting on the approaches to the capital.

LIVERPOOL No cause has been given for the explosion at a Liverpool works yesterday afternoon.

It was heard for miles. A building caught fire immediately afterwards and the men inside got clear by jumping. The fire took the building and was under control by the evening.

More than 30 people were hurt. Many of them are burned and several are described as serious.

This was not enemy action. It is the kind of accident that happened in this country in every year before this one, and the only wartime thing about it is that the works has not been named in any account so far issued.

WASHINGTON Secretary Hull notified the warring governments yesterday that the United States has abandoned none of its rights as a neutral under international law, and that it means to take practical measures if those rights are interfered with.

The statement answers two sets of orders rather than one. Britain has published its contraband list and is stopping ships. Germany has published its own rules and is sinking them. Neither government asked Washington, and neither is named in what Hull put out.

This is the Administration's ground going into a fight it has already scheduled. Congress meets on the 21st to consider repeal of the arms embargo, and the argument between now and then will be about whether selling weapons to a belligerent is neutral conduct. Hull's statement is about a different question, the treatment of American ships at sea, and that is the question that took this country into the last war.

STOCKHOLM The Polish submarine Orzeł is under Estonian guard at Tallinn this afternoon, and Estonia has said she will stay there.

She came in during the night of the 14th. The account reaching Stockholm is that she needed repairs and that her commander was too ill to keep the sea. The neutrality rules allow a belligerent warship to shelter in a neutral port for a limited period, after which the neutral must either send her out or intern her. An Estonian board went aboard and looked at her. Estonia has interned her.

Standing between those two facts is the German legation in Tallinn, which pressed the Estonian Government to act and argued that letting the boat sail would itself breach Estonian neutrality. How much weight that argument carried has not been said in Tallinn. The Estonians did not strictly need it. The rule would have brought them to the same place on its own, given a few more hours.

SOFIA Bulgaria has proclaimed its neutrality in the war between Germany and the Allied powers.

The decree was agreed by the Council of Ministers and approved by Tsar Boris. It commits the country to strict impartiality towards all the belligerents, and forbids the entry of foreign troops, the transit of war material, and the passage of belligerent aircraft over Bulgarian territory.

Bulgaria borders Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, and has open territorial claims against two of them.

The decree was published in Sofia today over the signature of the Prime Minister, Georgi Kioseivanov.

WARSAW Polish radio says a German motorised attack on Lwów was thrown back yesterday and that ten tanks and an armoured car were captured, with several bombers brought down, in weather it describes as bad.

A separate claim carried by Reuters from neutral sources says Polish armies have joined up west of Warsaw after fighting at Łódź, are retaking ground, and have inflicted casualties in the thousands.

Both accounts originate with the Polish authorities and are being broadcast to a country under invasion.

Berlin has issued nothing on Lwów. Neither claim can be checked from outside Poland.

LONDON The Congress Working Committee has attached a condition to India's cooperation in this war, and it is a condition London could satisfy without giving up an acre. Britain is asked to say what the war is for.

The Wardha statement condemns German aggression without qualification. It then declines unreserved cooperation until the British Government declares its war aims on imperialism and says whether the democracy it proposes to defend in Europe is to extend to the territories it governs. A free India, the text says, would associate itself with other free nations for mutual defence.

Nehru drafted it. The Committee argued over it for the better part of a week, and Gandhi, Patel and Azad have all put their names to what came out of the room.

WASHINGTON Senator William Borah of Idaho has told a nationwide radio audience that repealing the arms embargo would amount to American intervention in the European war.

The address was billed as an argument to retain the embargo. Borah, the senior isolationist in the Senate, put it that supplying arms to one side is a decision about which side wins, and that changing the law after a war has begun is not neutrality.

The embargo bans the sale of American arms to any belligerent. President Roosevelt has summoned Congress for 21 September to consider lifting it, and Borah is expected to lead the opposition on the floor.

The broadcast went out over a national hook-up shortly after half past eight, Washington time.