RUHR VALLEY.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 January 1921, Page 12

RUHR VALLEY.

KERNEL OF PRESENT DAY GERMAN PROBLEMS.

The kernel of the problems of pre-sent-day Germany is to be found in the Ruhr Valley, states the writer of a special article in the Christian Science Monitor. Here, in a district which is now the richest coal area of Germany since the alienation of the Saar and Silesian coalfields, is the centre of industrial concentration. Hete too, is agricultural impoverishment with a population subsisting on imported food, of late badly distributed. Here finally is the district which, according to poor and rich, Socialist and Nationalist alike is German to the core.

There is little community of feeling between the inhabitants of the Rhineland and those of the adjacent districts. War weariness has fallen upon the people. The middle class, which composes some 50 per cent, of the population, exhibits a strange apathy even to such questions as the peace, the separatistmovement, or the Ruhr rising. They are satisfied with the strife and dislocation of war conditions, and long only for peace and tranquillity. Their patriotism is, on the whole, less demonstrative than before the war, in spite of the unfavorable peace terms, while their econp'mic conditions have sadly declined. Nor can it be said that their numbers have improved under the strain. They support the Berlin Government as they always xfrill support a- Government chosen by the majority of the people. The Allied occupation is tolerated in the Rhineland with a fatalistic acceptance of the fortunes of war. There is apparent, however, a resentment towards France, which is not felt for either England or America, a. feeling which is shared by all classes, from the Socialist working men to the aristocratic Separatists, which persists in spite of the growing realisation that an economic rapproachment between France and Germany is essential more than the afternfath of Avar. It can be ascribed to the feeling that France assumes the most minatory attitude of all the Allied Powers, and is the only one prepared to make military advances under any provocation, and also to the employment by the French of their Sengelese black regiments for the purposes of occupation. The quartering of the negro troops upon German cities has aroused a storm of protest in the Press. Articles and cartoons have compared the Africans to gorillas, and demanded their immediate withdrawal. Since this concession has now been made, this ground for resentment has been removed.

A striking feature of opinion which I have found in the Rhineland is the peculiar isolation of the people, and their ignorance of the affairs of eastern Europe, of Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. There seems little foundation for the r iiori - that Bolshevik feel-

ing is responsible for the enthusiasm with which th-? people of the Rhineland have followed the recent Russian victories. The threatened loss of the Silesian coal mines to Poland has created a resentment among the people of the Rhineland, capitalist and workman alike, which is not mitigated by the influence of a common religion. There is, furthermore, in both the Rhur district and Westphalia a local Polish problem due to the presence of some half-million Polish workingmen who immigrated for the purpose of finding employment in the mines. Since the end of the war the political tension lias been so strong that these Polish miner.-, have emigrated en masse to France, Poland, and other countries. Yet these same miners realised that in matters of workmen’s welfare they had better conditions in the Rhineland than elsewhere.

While the old nationalistic prejudices still persist, new problems are appearing on the horizon. Chief among these are two movements of recent development and outstanding importance. Separatism and Communism, which represent the efforts of the capitalists on the one hand and the workman on the other, to meet the economic problems created by the war and the peace. The Separatists, who advocate local autonomy for the Rhineland within a federated Germany find their chief support among the Rhenish capitalists whose interests are as diverse from those of the East Prussian landowners as from the Berlin Socialists. For economic and sentimental reasons they are opposed to Prussian hegemony, and seek the elimination of Prussian officials from the administration of the Rhineland. Among their other demands are special provision for the development of trade and industry in the Rhineland and a local militia. There is also an effort in their programme to make the movement attractive to Labor- Various reforms are proposed, such as more direct contact between workmen and peasants with a view to reducing the cost of living, increase of personal liberties and more rights for the unpropertied classes outside of manual labor, such as teachers and minor officials. Profit-sharing, in industry is recommended, as well as widows’ pensions. The movement is further discredited in the Rhineland by the support of the Allies, especially of the French, although there is little doubt that it has a local basis, without which it could hardly have been created by an artificial foreign propaganda.

Labor unrest is a serious problem in this predominantly industrial district. The details of the general strike following the coup of Kapp and of the March rising in the Rhur are already well known abroad. The movement centred in Essen, Millheim, Duisburg, and Dusseldorf. but attained its greatest •strength in Essen. As to the character of the Red regime, which lasted for about three weeks after March 13. there are various opinions. According to several impartial observers, some of them disinterested foreigners, the rule of the Reds was energetic, but honest and fair The last few days before the taking over of authority by the Government’s troops can hardly be considered a part, of the Red regime, but was rather a general state of anarchy in the interval between the resignation of the Rods and the installation of the “green militia” the Reichwehr. However, according £o others, especially the Majority Socialists, -it was the failure of the Reds that prodthped the massacres of the Easter days.

The Reds in the Rhur were Communists or Independent Socialists, and their regime secured the support of the Majority Socialists only in a. few towns at die period of their greatest success. There is a possibility, however, that in the future the Left may again gain the support of the Majority Socialists though they are now pledged to the Ebert Government. Nor has the power of the Reds altogether disappeared with their disarming in the treaties of Belefield and Munster. It was only quite recently that the troops of the Berlin Government replaced the Red Army in the towns of Remscheid and Ludinghausen. On the other hand the Communist prois JWle

somewhat less radical than that of the Russian Revolution of .1917 it is still shaped by the extreme Left and the ad'Vocate of proletarian dictatorship. It lias been winning new adherents since the suppression of the rising, and the Communists now claim the support of even the Krupp workers who were difficult to enlist in the March rising on account of their -better wages. The situation has Mow changed, and support for future movements is expected from the Krupp workmen and the agricultural laborers.

The Allied occupation of the Rhineland, which in some quarters was considered as likely to precipitate a national uprising, has produced no such result. A fair degree of tranquillity is possible in the immediate future with a tactful handling of the economic situation .by the Allies. The eyes of Capital and Labor are turned toward the forthcoming international economic settlement which has a greater significance than any merely local dispute for the hungry workmen and miners of Rhineland and Westphalia as well as their employers. The economic has thus supplanted the national issue, although the Berlin Government shows a tendency to exploit national feeling to distract attention from hunger and unemployment- All signs now point to a clearly' marked division of the German people between nationalism on the one side of Socialism and Communism on the other.