Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1938. GERMANY’S EASTWARD DRIVE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 October 1938, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1938. GERMANY’S EASTWARD DRIVE.

—♦ QN his return from a visit to England, Sir James Parr has expressed decided views on the European situation. lie thinks that within a few months Herr Hitler will demand the return of former German colonies now held under mandate by Britain and other Powers and also that war between Russia and Germany is inevitable. Hitler, the former High Commissioner observed, “wants the whole Danube basin, and then he will make for the Ukraine.” Whatever may be the immediate prospect with regard to the former German colonies, Germany obviously is engaged in an eastward drive that seems very likely to bring her into collision with Russia. Against the Fuehrer’s very recent declaration that Germany has no further territorial ambitions in. Europe, there is to be set the fact, that his policy plainly is directed to the establishment of a dominating control over all the smaller countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

One of yesterday’s cablegrams told of an attempt by the Polish Foreign Minister (Colonel Beck) to bring about a grouping of Poland, Hungary and Rumania, with Ruthenia included in Hungary—a grouping which “does not conform with Berlin’s aims.of forcible penetration of South-Eastern Europe.” Now that Germany has absorbed Austria, and Sudetenland, and is in a fair way to absorb also, economically if not politically, what is left of Czechoslovakia, it seems very doubtful if any such grouping of secondary States as Colonel Beck is said to have proposed can be regarded as feasible. The’grouping would oppose a. barrier to Germany’s eastward progress and she will probably he able to prevent its taking effective shape.

Germany undoubtedly is intent on gaining control over the whole agricultural and raw material producing area of Eastern Europe. It has to be recognised that in anything like normal circumstances and in a world pursuing ways of peaceful progress, an extension of German trade into Eastern and South-Eastern Europe would be natural and desirable. Before the Great War, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were opening up trade routes to Asia. Economically, the substitution for the Dual Monarchy of a series of small States which have developed to an extreme the policy of economic nationalism, was a disaster. There is plenty of room for a beneficial reconstruction. of trading relationships in Europe, and Germany is well placed to play an important part in that reconstruction. The position in that respect was aptly summed up not long ago by the “Christian Science Monitor.”

It should be admitted frankly (the American journal observed) that the Danubian countries are economically necessary to one another, and German trade ought to play a great part in their development. German manufactures, Austrian mercantile and banking operations, Hungarian and Rumanian agricultural products and Rumanian oil —all of these are complementary one to another, and ought to be mutually helpful in the give-and-take of trade. Any attempt Io stifle such interchange would be unsound and reactionary.

It is much less upon a natural and normal development of trade, however, than upon the establishment of economic and political domination that Germany is intent. Iler aim is to draw as many countries as possible into the rigidly exclusive economic sphere of a greater Germany and cut them off from the rest of the world. Even, from a purely economic standpoint there is a world of difference between arrangements for mutually advantageous trade between a number of free'nations, and a policy which aims at making a number of smaller nations the dependent satellites of one big nation.

In Germany’s ease, however, trade and power politics are interlocking parts of one policy. She aims visibly at making the countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe her political as well as her economic satellites. It is not an extravagant comment on the situation that is developing in Europe to say, as Sir James Parr has said, that “Hitler wants Hie whole Danube basin and then he will make for the Ukraine”—that, is to say, for the rich agricultural lands of South-Western Russia.

Soviet Russia cannot well be blamed if she regards Nazi Germany’s drive to the east and 1o the south-east as a developin''; threat to the Ukraine —as, in fact, an approach by stages to a position in which Germany would be able to attack Russia in greater strength and with a greater command of resources of every kind than she can muster at jiresent.