PRUSSIA SCRAPS TURKEY

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 71, 22 September 1919, Page 6

PRUSSIA SCRAPS TURKEY

"It would be best," says General Liman yon Sanders, "to draw a peii through our entire Turkish policy." This utterance is not a Prussian renunciation of conquest, but a recognition that the line of conquest has been geographically and vitally altered. In the day of the ex-Kaiser, as in the day of Napoleon, two great forces limited the expansion of military Europe—Russia and the sea. Under the Tsars, Russia was unconquerable, as Napoleon, who had perhaps the best conqueror's chance of all, ultimately discovered. Even the mere inert mass of Russia turned him'back, just as the British Navy drove him from the sea. A century later, building his plans Tinder the. same limitations, the ex-Kaiser de.veloped the idea of the Turkish "corridor " to Asiatic conquest, to which idea a submissive Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey were essential. Wilhelm could go no other way to Asia. The Tsardom—though secretly tottering—still barred the Russian roads; and, as in Napoleon's day, the British Najy closed the seas. So the Turkish corridor represented, politically and militarily, the only practicable route. With the dissolution of Austria-Hun-gary, and the fall of the Tsardom, all that has altered. With the Hapsburg Empire has disappeared a necessary link in the chain, connecting Germany with Turkey, and at the same time the obstacle of a united Russia has, perhaps for all time, vanished. Of the three | supreme factors governing German expansion, only the British sea-command remains the same. What Yon Sanders sees is that as the one road to the East closes the other opens, $nd it is idle to ! waste more time with a Turkish policy when so many of the essentials thereto I axe missing, and when a weakened Russia beckons Prussia to Moscow, to the Urals, and beyond. And expansion Russiai wards, for a start at any rate, needs j little or no military help. Peaceful penetration, which had done so much, for Germany in Russia under the Tsars, will accomplish still more without them. Germany, Yon Sanders foresees, can take the civic lead on the Baltic coast without any further dissembling, and can build up in Russia that trade domination which, but for Wilhelm's blunder, might have been asserted over the whole world. 'With Russia open to her, why should Germany worry about Turkey ? Yon Sanders would be no Prussian did he not recognise the change in the tide, and its necessary consequences. To this new trend of German ambition there is a, possible barrier in the erection of new States, particularly Poland. A strong Poland might prevent the Germanification of Russia, and a strong Czecho-Slovakia would negative the reunion of Austrian Teutons with the German Republic. Therefore the aim of Britain and France will be to strengthen, ar.d that of Germany to weaken, the new Slav States. With Prussian and Pole it is a war for mastery, in which the bullets and ballots in Silesia are only a prelude. Either Germany will found immense new colonies in the former Russian Empire, retaining their attachment to the Fatherland, as many of them did' before the war; or else German migration will set in oversea, where it will be lost' to the Pan-German ido»