Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1921. SAD CASE OF HELIGOLAND

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 38, 13 August 1921, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1921. SAD CASE OF HELIGOLAND

The report which reached us from Heligoland on Thursday combined pathos and comedy in almost equal proportions. It was impossible to read without a smile of the alleged intention of the two thousand inhabitants of that tiny little island— a mile in length with a-maximum width of about five hundred yards— to appeal to the League of Nations for independence. The Allies who professed to" be. fighting far Jhe small nations have' not been entirely forgetful of their clai/ns since hostilities ceased. ' The League of .Nations has swept some very small fry into its net, and insofar as it gives Panama and Luxembourg the same voting-power in its Assembly as Britain or France, it may be said to have put the little minnows on a level with the largest whales. But even the League of Nations has had to draw the line somewhere. It has not been able to recognise every claim to independence, and 'even independence has not always received the consideration to which it deemed itself entitled. A few weeks before the signing of peace at Versailles, the Prince-of Liechtenstein, which with a population of less than 10,000 is, with the exception of San Marino and Monaco, the smallest independent State in, Europe, became afraid "that the Allies were not aware of the existence of his country.'-' To correct this oversight, and to claim a place at the Peace table, the Prince set out for Paris. Liechtenstein's need of peace was at least as great as that of any other, for it was at war with Prussia in 1866, when it, attained its independence, and had been at war ever since. The claims of a State which had thus had nearly fifty years' start of the Allies in the game, and was still at it, : were obviously unique, y 4/ et they did; not prevail. The Gilbertian position did not reach its proper climax; We look in vain for the name of Liechtenstein among the signatories of the Treaty or the Covenant, and presumably its'war with ■Germany still continues.

If , t Liechtenstein was thus excluded, what hope is there for an island with but 20 per cent, of its'* population which has never yet been able, to stand alone? When the petition of these unhappy Heligolanders is presented, even the capacious hospitality of the League of Nations may well reply: " Haiti we'know, and Guatemala we know, but who are ye?" If, like our own Arbitration Court, the highest tribunal of the nations could allow hard icases to make bad law, the temptation to stretch a point in favour of Heligoland would be very strong. In their memorial to the German public, from whose deaf ear they are nOAv appealing to the League of Nations, the islanders are said by i the Berlin correspondent of the i)aily Chronicle to have stated their case as follows :

Conditions were satisfactory until the British ■ handed the islands over to Germany, when they were unhappy. When the islanders returned after tne Armis; tico they found conditions unhappiev still. Their homes had been spoiled, industries ruined, new taxation, introduced, and German police and workmen had arrived, importing chaos.

, The case is a sad one, and the grievances are not new. It was reported nearly two years ago that a strong agitation was proceeding in Heligoland For separation from .Germany and union with England,

*and that a plebiscite was in contemplation. The German gendarmes and the German tax-collec-tor have since made the little island even less like a paradise than it was then, but why has not the German tripperz made, amends ? Before the war Heligoland could rely on 20,000 visitors during the bathing season, and a resumption of this influx ought to be representing now a substantial set-off to the troubles of a. population of not much .more than 10 per cent, of that number. Yet peace has not brought happiness to the Efeli^olanders,i and they appear to be anxious for separation on any terms from the nation to which they had been- attached for nearly a quarter of a century before the war. A'contrast with the happy lot of the little State to which we have referred inevitably suggests itself. After fifty-five years, the stubborn war between Liechtenstein and Germany still continues, yet \% is waged by Liechtenstein without an army and with a civil population to which,. unless the other ■ war has produced a change, direct taxation is unknown. A further illustration of their Utopian condition is afforded by the fact that, while the rest of the world has been seething with trouble, the worst that we have heard of them is their' prince's alarm lest their existence might have been forgotten. " The world forgetting, by the world forgot" is an ideal of happiness which Heligo r land would be glad to take in exchange, for the* wretchedness which has accompanied its return to peace and " business as usual. 1' ' The interests or desires of the Heligolanders were , probably the very last thing that the Allies 7 had in view in disposing t>f their island. The cost, of the 2000 tons of high explosives that would have been required to destroy it had more to do with keeping it above water than such considerations as those. Heligoland was not returned to Britain'because it would have cost her too much to keep. . Germany was allowed to-retain the island, subject to the provision in Article 115 that the Jortificatioris, military establishments, and harbours should be destroyed under the supervision of the Allies. As long' as she did .not again make it a fortress or an arsenal, Germany was free to do with Heligoland as she pleased. And now the islanders themselves come akmg, and in the name of a principle to which the League of Nations is pledged a.sk to be allowed to determine theirown destiny. ■. " Self-determination " is indeed a blessed word. It is also in many respects a potent word, being, as MX Lahsihg says, "simply loaded ypith dynamite." But in'this case it is to be feared that the dynamite has not the power of the high explosives with which the island itself was nearly blown to bits. When the American indignation over the Island of Yap was at its height, the "Chicago Daily News naively asked whether it had occurred to anybody to inquire what the Yaps thought about it? Even in, the)land where self-determination has been most eagerly championed the controversy does not appear to have been affected by this question. There are limits to the doctrine of selfdetermination, and one of them is marked by the islands of Yap and Heligoland. .