Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1938. SETTING AN EXAMPLE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 September 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1938. SETTING AN EXAMPLE.

TWO States that are playing a somewhat unedifying part in the present European crisis are Poland and Hungary. Both have chosen the time in which Czechoslovakia finds herself in a position of extreme difficulty and danger to demand from her the surrender of disputed territories. Poland wants the mining district of Teschen, and Hungary extensive areas along the southern border of Slovakia in which the population is predominantly .Magyar. In both instances the claims no doubt are open to discussion on their merits, but whether Poland and Hungary are consulting even their own ultimate interests by pressing these claims at the present juncture is exceedingly doubtful.

At the simplest view it seems obvious that both Poland and Hungary are at once seconding the aggression of Nazi Germany against Czechoslovakia and inviting later extensions of that aggression with themselves in the role of victims. If the presence of some 186,000 Poles in Czechoslovakia justifies Poland in demanding the transfer of Teschen, and Hungary is entitled on similar grounds to ask for Slovakian borderlands' it is dear that precedents are being established which are capable of being turned with damaging effect against both claimant countries. Poland, for example, has within her borders a German minority numbering about 1,350,000, many of its members located in her western frontier regions, adjoining Germany. Hungary has a German population of some 600,000. This, of course, is merely typical of the distribution of races over a great part of Europe—a distribution in no way corresponding to established national frontiers. There is nothing, however, to prevent Nazi Germany from demanding, at her own time, considerable, accessions of territory from Poland and Hungary on precisely the grounds on which these countries rely in demanding territory from Czechoslovakia.

Herr Hitler and his Nazis no doubt are quite equal to stirring up just, as dangerous and disruptive agitations in Western Poland and Western Hungary as they have promoted in Sudetenland. It seems neither unjust nor ungenerous to suggest that Poland and Hungary are going out of their way to invite these misfortunes. Poland, in the extent to which her policy is influenced by her present Foreign Minister, Colonel Beck, and some of his colleagues, is said to be inclined to stake her fortunes on an alliance, with Germany, if need be against Russia. The rulers of Poland possibly may perceive in this alliance an assurance that their own tactics towards Czechoslovakia will not be turned against them. Hungary, under Admiral Horthy’s leadership, is credited with ambitions of quietly independent nationality. It can hardly be said that she is pursuing these ambitions with wise discretion in virtually co-operating with Nazi Germany in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.