HITLER'S DEAD LINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 105, 6 May 1939, Page 14

HITLER'S DEAD LINE.

CROSSED AT PRAGUE. HOW MANY MORE 'PROTECTED' NATIONS ? GUN POWER. MAN POWER, RACIAL HATES. (By Col. fi:i:i)i:i;it K iwi.mki:., NKW YORK, March 2X. Hitler has tho lm 11. but it carries a lici v <|iie.ii,,n inni k. I his march brings i him ncnicr wnr than his other marches to bloodless victories—an ugly. vicious " ■''' localised nt first in Knstern anil >"111 h en-tern Kuropc. with not only '• ain ami France, but probably So\ ict I I,'"-m.i as well looking on. * ! All depends upon whether the neigh--1,1 ring -mall nations prefer to yield""!' lighting as nations. I'nitcd. I V ugii-lm ia, Hiimania and Poland have ti.».IM10,000 people, nnd trained and well aimed armies larger thnn < Jerman v's. j I lie tnte of Czechoslovakia is before t lieiu. M lieu Tfitter s troops entered Prague, lie crossed the dead-line into a new policy which was inevitable. He made ironic sport of his own doctrine of selfdetermination. Hitherto, he had justified his ,'oii|>k on the ground he was bringing home to the I,'cich his kindred under alien rule. Now he is out in the open as conqueror. His protectorate over ( zechoslovnkin, clears the track for his rule over alien peoples. Ihe present threateningly ugly situation must be judged on form, and more than form—on gun power, man power, racial hates, political trends, uncontrollable outbursts of emotion and geographical frontiers. * " Hitler's future [dan is obvious. He niay think it will succeed without any shooting, since his previous plans have succeeded. He wants to force the submission of the small neighbour nations through political and economic pressure when the figures show the Reich's economic position is bad. Future bloodless victories depend upon softening them, then hitting them, one bv one. That is the old advantage of bringing your unified force against an enemy who fights with only parts of his army. "The Day We Return." Let us have the line-up of the neighbour nations in their military potentialities against Hitler. Not all are so small. Poland has a population of .1.1,000,000, about equal to ours in the Civil War. She has a trained army, with reserves of about 1,">00,000. Following the line of her frontier, it borders on the Reich for 500 miles from the Baltic to Rumania. As an outlet to the Baltic, the Versailles Treaty gave her the Danzig corridor and use of the port of Danzig under the League of Nations. This narrow corridor cuts off a portjon of East Prus-sia from the rest of Germany.

I was in Danzig the night before the league took over. On the morrow the j Crown Trincc's regiment of ancient I renown would have to evacuate its bar- , racks." That nigh'c, the surviving officers in their scars and faded irrih cross ribbons, held a farewell banquet in the old Rathskeller, which dates back to 'the Middle Ages. Heels clicking together as they rose, they drank to a silent toast and then broke their 'glasses. There was no need to guess I what the toast was. It was to "The I day wc return."

Poland, in her ambition, not content with > tho limitations of Danzig, would build her own port, all Polish on Polish soil, a few miles from Danzig. I saw it in its beginning on the site of Gdynia, a Ashing village, and later when the vHlage had become a city with manypiers and warehouses. The Danzig merchants were sore about Gdynia, and, down in Silesia, the Oermans, an the old masters, had not lost their racial antipathy to the Poles, who were now the masters. And this is still true. Treaties Mean Nothing. From Gdynia, the "Polish frontier extends in a large bulge on the German side. It is, in a sense, a huge salient, which gives the military strategic and tactical advantage to the Germans. The Polish Army is not numerous enough to entrench the length of the long line. A war will be one of manoeuvre. We hear little about' the wrongs of the German minority in Poland. It had td wait its turn. That of Sudetenland oame first. Hitler rescues only one lot at a time. One day, he will raise the. cry for them and Danzig and that a German need no longer cross Polish soil to reach East Prussia. One day, Poland will have to fight or Gdynia will be a German port, and she will have no seaport and lose her iron and coal mines and oil refineries, thanks to another bloodless victory. Will she fight alone or have allies T She is between the knife-blaae and the handle, between the two great Powers of Germany and Soviet Russia. Will Russia come to her support T With Germany in possession of the Czechoslovakian frontier of Poland, the bulge is deepened. After Munich there was talk that Hungary and Poland would occupy Carpatho-TJkraine, on the eastern end of Czechoslovakia, forming a harrier against Hitler's advance to the Russian Ukraine. But Hitler had a vital reason for not favoinrjng that. In perfect timing with hio dash to Prague is that of Hungary into CarpathoUkraine. This is more reward for Hungary after Hitler let her have a piece of Czechoslovakia in the September dismemberment. She looks for further reward in the recovery of her nationals and the soil lost by the Versailles treaty. This gained, then what? Hungry will look to her own interest. Friendships and treaties mean nothing in Europe now. Will she want to be under a German protectorate like Czechoslovakia? According to his present policy, Hitler will disarm her fears by his fair words about racial autonomy for subject Czechoslovakia. The Inscrutable Stalin. Rumania is the pathway from Hitlerieed Czechoslovakia, her oil and grain fields a part of the spoil in Hitlert eastern dream, looking towards the oil and grain fields of Russian ' Ukraine. Rumania has a population of 19,000,000 •nd an army, with trained reserves, of l.tilfi.OOO. On the southern border of Hungary and Rumania is Yugoslavia, with; 13,000.000 people nnd an army witli I trained reserves of l.iilD.ooo. But Yugo-' slavia has a lonp stretch, of Adriatic; seacoast opposite Italy. If Yigoslaviai heard* Hitler, then -Mussolini, in hu! ambition to make the Mediterranean a< Roman sea again, may turn in the opposite direction from Tunis. And next to Yugoslavia on the chessboard is Bulgaria, waiting her chance to get even with Rumania and Yugoslavia for her 'loss of territory in the World War.

So the three. Poland, Rumania and Yugoslavia, combined, do have a larger force than Hitler. Their armies cannot become much stronger, while the German Army is growing. It is a case for them of hanging separately or hanging together. Kither they must tight together, and soon, or accept their fate, unless Soviet Russia kicks them with force. She claims an army of 15,000,000. whose power is unknown, but the general milit-iry opinion is that it is a better army than that of the old Russia of the World War.

Will Stalin be content to hold the Japanese in Siberia? Will he let the small nations between him and Germany take the first blows and then come in? Or wait until Hitler reaches Russian soil? He keeps tight-lipped, inscrutable silence. He knows Hitler's technique, and he, too, may spring a cyclonic surprise.—(X.A.N.A.)