Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1938. CONCESSIONS TO THE NAZIS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 September 1938, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1938. CONCESSIONS TO THE NAZIS.

TN face of the news that is meantime available as to the outcome of the conference between British and French Ministers which has just concluded in London, it is becoming increasingly difficult to anticipate any stable and happy settlement of the crisis which centres at the moment on Czechoslovakia. It is stated that the plan of settlement now to be submitted to that country by Britain and France will comprise:—

(1) The cession of parts of the Sudeten German territory to the Reich. (2) The establishment of cantons in other Sudeten areas, where the population will vote on the form of government desired. (3) Security guarantees from France, Britain and other Powers.

Whether the Government of Czechoslovakia can be induced or constrained to accept these terms remains to be seen. That it will oppose them to the limit of its power and opportunity may be taken for granted, for the reason, among others, that any dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, as her Premier, Dr Ilodza, pointed out in a broadcast address reported yesterday, will create a series of nationality problems for the future. These problems probably will be inherently much graver and more serious than any that are raised today in Czechoslovakia.

The ugly and disheartening feature of the reported Anglo-French proposals is that they are not so much an offer of concessions to the Sudeten Germans as an ignominious surrender to Nazi Germany in her career of unscrupulous aggression. It has a vital bearing both on the internal problems of Czechoslovakia and on the international aspects of the position that Czechoslovakia is genuinely an “‘island of democracy in a sea of dictatorships.” The Czechoslovak State is not peculiar in including racial minorities, but it is peculiar in extending to all its minorities liberal conditions of free citizenship and equality under the law which are in absolute contrast to the treatment of minorities in nearly every other country in Continental Europe. It is admitted that the Czechs would have been wise to make liberal concessions of local autonomy to German and other minority groups years ago. Even had that been done, however, it is most unlikely that it would have averted the attack Nazi Germany is now making on the integrity of Czechoslovakia, under the pretext of a desire to emancipate the Sudeten Germans.

There is no other intelligible interpretation of the policy and tactics of Herr Hitler and his associates than that they are determined to make use of Czechoslovakia as a stepping-stone to further conquests. The Sudeten Germans are not an oppressed people and there can be no question of their pining to return to a Reich to which they have never belonged. As citizens of pre-war AustriaHungary they were probably as widely divorced in sympathy and outlook as'almost any European people from the Prussian-dominated Germany of that period. There are German minorities in fifteen European territories, apart from Danzig—minorities numbering 1,700,000 in France, 2,860,000 in Switzerland, 300,000 in Italy, 600,000 in Hungary, 1,350,000 in Poland, 1,000,000 in Soviet Russia and ’BOO,OOO in Rumania. At present, however, the fate of dismemberment because she harbours a German minority is reserved for Czechoslovakia alone.

Some explanation is needed of this remarkable discrimination and the explanation that commends itself on the known facts was summed up not long ago by an American correspondent, Mi’ 11. C. Wolfe, in an article in “Current Opinion.”

Valuable as the Czech loot would, be to the Reich (Mr Wolfe wrote), Hitler does not regard conquest of Bohemia as an end, but only as a beginning. The Fuehrer wants the rich oil fields of Rumania; he wants the fertile black earth of the Ukraine; he wants a free hand down, the Danube, to the Black Sea. ... Once Czechoslovakia is destroyed or brought under German domination,'the road is open to Hitler’s drive for world power.

In spite of the danse relating to security guarantees from France, Britain and other Powers, the reported AngloFrench plan suggests in the main a policy of weak submission to the unscrupulous violence of Nazi Germany —violence that will be stimulated rather than stilled by concession. The danger appears, not only that Czechoslovakia may in effect be thrown lo the wolves, but that in the outcome Nazi aggression, as a threat to all democracies, may become, and that speedily, vastly more formidable than it is today. Hitler’s denials of any aggressive designs against France and Britain count for nothing. It is doubtless on an eastward drive that he is intent for the time being, hut the threat his policy embodies to all free nations is none the less apparent.