THE SAAR

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20921, 28 September 1939, Page 8

THE SAAR

EUROPE’S POWDER KEG NATURAL PATH OF ARMIES WORLD ATTENTION AGAIN From the days of Attila and the Caesars down to Foch and von Hindenburg, and now to Gamelin and Hitler, the valleys and wooded hills of the Saar have rocked and echoed to the tramp and shouts of marching armies.

Barely 738 square miles in area, and with fewer than a million people this small, highly industrialised region has grown for many years such graphic labels as powder keg of Europe; witches’ cauldron; political sore spot. It has been since antiquity a stage of European disputes. Today great military forces are clashing once more within its boundaries. The last time the eyes of the world were fixed on the Saar was in 1935. By the Treaty of Versailles, France had recovered Alsace-Lorraine from Germany, but the adjoining Saar Basin, with its mines and factories, was made a separate territory, to be ruled for 15 years by a commission under the League of Nations. The expiration of that 15-year term marked the date of a plebiscite m which all qualified persons were entitled to vote on three possible solutions: (1) To remain under the League of Nations; (2) union with France; (3) return to Germany. The result of the plebiscite, held in 1935, was the return of the Saar to Germany. Densely Settled Geographically, the Saar is an irregular patch of hilly land crossed by small valleys, wrote a contributor to the National Geographic Magazine at the time of the plebiscite. It lies alongside Luxembourg, forms a buffer State between France and Germany, and was cut from the two German States of Prussia and Bavaria. It shelters more than 1000 people to a square mile—one of the most densely-settled areas in all Europe. Saarbrucken, metropolis of the Saar has only 132,000 people; yet in one year Saar trains haul 60,000,000 passengers.

Strategically, the Saar lies on a natural route between France and Germany, and for centuries they have disputed as to where their boundary lines should be fixed. Soon after the break-up of Charlemagne’s Empire and the Treaty of Verdun in 843 the Saar became German soil. For more than 1000 years prior to the Versailles Treaty, Germany held the Saar, except for two short periods, the second being the years when Napoleon pushed the French frontier to the Rhine. In the World War the armies passed this way, and many an Allied soldier washed his shirt in the Saar, the Moselle and the Rhine, or traded cigarettes and white bread to willing frauleins. Was a “ Phantom State ” German in race, speech, culture and traditions, the Saar showed by a previous census only about one person in 200 with French as his native tongue. It was simply a legal accident at Versailles which made these people citizens, temporarily, of a phantom State. The Saar, under that treaty, gained no nationality, no President or other ruler of its own. Instead a commission of five Europeans was named by the League of Nations to administer the territory’s affairs until the plebiscite. As in the Ruhr, industry there is com! —, intensive and theatrical in its setting. Like volcanoes, its giant mills belch forth clouds of thick grey smoke; the red glare of blast furnaces turns black night into brilliant Gehenna. Under every hill is coal. This is the only place on earth where you see mines and steel mills closely crowded by forests. Besides coal, coke and steel, the Saar produces cement and tar by the train-load. Plate glass and phonographic records, paper and textiles each it makes literally by the acre. Soap, perfume, cigars, cigarettes, shoes, matches, beer, ready-made clothes—all these things pour from its factories. But it cannot feed itself. Much of its wheat, meat, fruit, milk and vegetables come> from oulside. Few Are Farmers Less than 10 per cent of the Saar population earn their living from the farm. Some 90 per cent spend all or most of their working hours in i mine, mill, trade, transportation or i allied pursuits. Before industry ab- ! sorbed so many Saar workmen used to tramp all over Middle Europe as peddlars, tinkers and doers of odd jobs. The one constant thought of the I Saar people in all their 15 years under the League was the outcome I of their plebiscite. Economically, j the Saar and Alsaace-Lorraine were interdependent, since one has coal I and the other iron ore. But nationalistic feelings are above all economic considerations. Whatever flags may in future fly over this tiny, long-tormented land its place on the map and the con-’ venient routes which cross it must make it forever the natural path of marching armies. |