A Reshuffle in Europe

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22371, 7 April 1938, Page 10

A Reshuffle in Europe

Germany’s invasion of Austria has set going that scramble for new alliances which follows every disturbance of the balance of power. Negotiations between Great Britain and Italy for another Mediterranean pact, after dragging indecisively for several months, are now near to conclusion; the French Government has called a conference of its diplomatic representatives in Eastern Europe as a preliminary to exploiting the alarm that Germany’s coup has aroused in that region; and in a few weeks Count Ciano will go to Warsaw to negotiate an Italo-Polish rapprochement. Of these three moves, the last is of the greatest interest, since it is the policies of Poland and Italy in eastern and central Europe which will mainly determine the structure of the new system of alliances which is coming into being. Poland has for several years been one of the diplomatic enigmas of Europe. The existence of the Polish corridor, separating East Prus'sia from the rest of Germany, and of a measure of Polish control over the free city of Danzig, which is predominantly German in population, constitutes an adequate reason why Poland should be suspicious of Germany; and in the decade following the Great War Poland was a member of the French scheme of alliances. But when, following the National Socialist revolution in Germany, France concluded a pact of mutual assistance with Russia, Poland chose a rapprochement with Germany as a lesser evil than inclusion in the same diplomatic grouping as her arch-enemy to the east. But the recent Polish-Lithuanian crisis has emphasised the insecurity of this rapprochement. In 1920 Poland took advantage of disagreements among the Allied Powers to seize Vilna, the former capital of Lithuania, and its surrounding territory; and three years later Lithuania compensated herself by seizing the territory of Memel, adjacent to East Prussia, which the Allied Powers had intended to make an autonomous area on the model of Danzig. The real object of Poland’s recent attempt to browbeat Lithuania was, it may be suspected, to seize Memel and a strip of territory along the river Niemen, thus providing herself with an alternative outlet to the Baltic. This gained, she would have less reason to fear a German invasion of, Danzig and the Polish corridor. But Germany also has claims on Memel, the inhabitants of which are by culture; and fairly obviously it was Herr Hitler who persuaded the Polish Government to be content with relatively unimportant concessions from Lithuania. Poland thus finds herself in a state of isolation which is the more dangerous because none of her potential allies is likely to go to war in defence of an administrative monstrosity like the Polish corridor. That Poland will, in the immediate future, move out of Germany’s orbit is, however, unlikely. Germany is too powerful a neighbour to antagonise for the sake of the dpubtful benefits of a closer connexion with France and the Little Entente. Italy’s position is in some respects similar. Though she is acutely conscious that she has been an unpaid accessory in the destruction of Austrian'independence, the Ber-lin-ißorhe axis, remains her main source of diplomatic strength. The impending agreement with Great Britain is probably intended as a warning to Germany that Italian help may not always be given on such easy terms.