UPPER SILESIA

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17220, 10 August 1921, Page 7

UPPER SILESIA

PROBLEM OF PARTITION. BRITISH AND FEENCH SCHEMES CONFLICT. « (By OaM*-Prea« Aa^istioo-OepyrisMl) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) (Received August 9th, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON, August 9. The Paris correspondent of the " Da,l y Chronicle" says an informal dinner talk on Sunday enabled Mr Lloyd George and M. Briand to create an easier atmosphere. , When the Supreme Council assembled on Monday, M. Briand consented to postpone the question of reinforcements for Upper Silesia and deal with the political, issue first. # The real crux of the situation thus became, whether Britain, on the one side, was prepared to admit the principle that the industrial triangle in Upper Silesia should be divided or whether France, on the other hand, was prepared to modify her proposed frontier line, making it just for the whole of Germany. # . , Britain's unalterable view is that tne alignment of the new Polish-German frontier must leave Germany reasonably contented. After postponement of the reinforcement question, the legal experts were requested to present their viewpoint. The French expert formulated a scheme which gave the industrial areas to Poland, reversing the result of the plebiscite to the extent of giving sevenelevenths of the population which voted for Germany to Poland. Sir Cecil Hurst, legal adviser to the Foreign Office, explained the British porposals. Firstly, the communes must he ! allotted according to the country for which they voted; secondly, isolations of communes must be avoided; thirdly, communes economically or geographically inseparable must not be divided. *fle pointed out that the population concerned totalled 2,000,000 people in 1522 communes, 678 of which had voted for Poland and 844 for Germany, or thir-teen-thirtieths for Poland and Beven-teen-thirtieths for Germany.