HISTORY OF POLAND

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20040, 12 September 1939, Page 7

HISTORY OF POLAND

CHANGING FORTUNES NEED FOR ACCESS TO SEA GERMANY’S POLICY Describing the present war as one of Christendom against Atheism rather than one between Germany and Poland in the fundamental sense, Mr. K. M. Algie traced the background of events leading up to the outbreak of hostilities in an address to members of the Auckland Women’s Luncheon Club.

With the aid. of maps, which he distributed to each person present, Mr. Algie showed the boundaries of Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and surrounding countries prior to and after the Great War, and pointed out what territory Germany had lost in the east as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. Two parts of Germany, he explained, were separated by the Polish Corridor, and the whole of the German policy was directed toward the re-establishment of the German territory so that it could run continuously from Germany proper up to East Prussia. If that happened Poland would have no access to the Baltic Sea, so that on the surface the contest was between Germany and Poland. “Not a Hitler Struggle” “The ultimate policy of Germany, however, is to establish in Europe a complete dominion of Nazi Gennady, with, at the end of this century, a prospective population of nearly 200,000,000, and, incidentally, a destruction ox everything that you and I have been taught to regard as fundamental,” said Mr. Algie. “The struggle is not a Hitler struggle, but is as old as the Germanic people themselves.”

Going into the historical side of the question, Mr. AJgie described the movements of the Polish people from the time when, before 800 A.D., they were living between the Rivers Elbe and Ober, their gradual migration toward the east with the Germans behind them and the obtaining by Poland of its significance as a country by being at the cross-roads o' a great trade route. With the discovery of the New Americas, however, and the subsequent shifting of commerce from the Baltic, Poland lost this significance, and by the middle of the 10th century had embarked on a period of relative darkness which culminated in the cutting up of the country into three pieces, which were taken by Russia, Prussia and Austria. An Uncrushabic Ideal

Poland was re-established after the Great War, continued Mr. Algie, and its life blood was the Baltic Sea. Hitler was only an instrument, although a willing one, in a general historical process of evolution, for the urge of the Germanic peoples toward the cast was always there. Tire Poles, who were a deeply religious people and magnificent fighters, were now again caught up in the age-old struggle between two competing forces.

“If one triumphs the world staggers, and if the other triumphs it lives on as you and I would wish to live on,” said Mr. Algie. “If the Poles' outlet to the sea is denied to. them it would be equivalent to cutting the major artery leading from their heart. They may be driven out of Warsaw in a week, but they will go back again because they arc fighting for an ideal that is, in effect, uncrushable. It has survived over 1939 years and it is not possible for Nazi Germany to destroy it. They may obliterate it for the time being, but its vitality is such as to cause it always to revive."