ECONOMIC BARRIER

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 135, 5 December 1930, Page 9

ECONOMIC BARRIER

WHAT CORRIDOR MEANS

CONSTANT ATTACKS

For some time attacks have been made in Germany over Poland's western frontier. These attacks are now stronger than ever. It is well known that Gottfried K. Treviranus, former German Minister of Occupied Areas, is not alone among German political leaders ia urging revision of the Versailles Treaty to abolish the Polish corridor, but never has the corridor problem been raised with such marked hostility to Poland and such warlike language as recently. This is understandable, for when Dr. Robert Somrner, recently Under-Secre-tary of State in Germany, went to' the United States last September to make a study of American transportation and how the new Tariff Bill would affect German-exports, he discussed unemployment abroad. Dr. Soinmer said that one of its causes in Germany was the thousands of natives who had returned to their country from Alsace and Lorraine, and also that the isolation of East Prussia, due to the Polish corridor, had sent additional thousands into the industrial sections of the State. "The Polish corridor," he continued, "has cut East Prussia oft from the hinterland and her markets, for this area is chiefly agricultural, with the result that East Prussia is to-day a more or less stricken land economically." • Dr. Somnier added that Poland in creating the new port of Dgynia on the western side of the corridor had done much to cripple the trade and commerce of Danzig, which is fundamentally a German city. The Polish Government, which hitherto had adhered strictly to a policy of leaving unanswered all German verbal attacks on the corridor, could not neglect Herr Treviranus's outburst. A formal protest was made by Foreign Minister Mialeski, who knew well that he had the entire nation with him in defending Poland's western frontier against any attempt to change it in favour of Germany. SEA OUTLET. - It is an illusion to think that Poland will ever willingly give up the corridor and free access to the Baltic Sea. For Poland, her narrow seashore is a vital' necessity ; for Germany, the corridor is considered but an inconvenience. The Poles are ready to do their best to improve transit conditions and enter into any arrangement making that inconvenience as small as humanly possible, but they never, Socialist or Nationalist, business man or worker, will resign Poland's sovereign rights over territory leading to the sea. The Poles are not "anti-German." There is no hatred of Germany in spite of pre-war Prussian persecutions in Posen and the German military occupation during the Great War. But all talk of frontier changes mobilises Polish public opinion against Germany and increases mistrust and fear of her. Hardly any European country was watching the German election canif paign more anxiously than Poland. A Nationalist victory across the border was feared here as a signal of new, reckless "drang nach osten" (drive to the east). Success by the German Socialists was held to mean at least that the corridor problem would be treated reasonably and Polish-German co-operation made feasible. This new external danger—that is, frontier revision—may have- a soothing effect upon Polish internal struggles. Ten years ago, with the Bolshevist army at Warsaw's gates, the National Coalition Cabinet formed the Sejm, and then the Chief of. State and Marshal Pilsudski were working hand in hand for victory. There are no prospects of the return of such government to-day or for any Parliamentary Government yet. NAZIS' POSITION. When the new German Parliament opened most people felt that the government would survive by a small majority, and that its fate depended on the decision of a wavering gronp.of middle "splinter parties," sais the "San Francisco Chronicle." The tactics of the Nazis, however, pursued in the six days that preceded the voting, opened the eyes of the members of these small bourgeois parties to the real menace of the Hitlerites. The first act of the Fascists that disgusted the moderato elements was their marching to their seats in the Keichstag on the first day of the session in brown uniforms and Sam Browne belts with swastikas on their arm-bands. An hour later the Fascist mob swept down on the Leipziger Strasse, Berlin's principal shopping avenue, smashing the windows of Wertheim's, one of the largest departmental stores in the world, and other shops, cafes, and banks that bore Jewish names or had Jewish directors. But perhaps what alarmed German Conservatives who hitherto Averc inclined to smile benevolently on the Nazis as' their potential allies was the action of Hitler's party in introducing the motion in the Uoichstag proposing the nationalisation of all banks and the limitation of interest rates to 5 per cent. ■ No man was more taken abnc.k by this step than Emil yon Stauss, director of tho Deutschebaiik, tlio largest German credit institution. Yon Stauss had lunched with leaders of the Fascist party tlie day before, and was leader in the plan to supplant Paul Loebe, Socialist leader, as President of the Reichstag—a post he has held for the last ton years—by Ernst Scholz, chief of the People's Party, which was to be consummated with the help of the Nazis. TRADITIONAL FOES. Yon Stauss was much aggrieved the next day when he learned that the Fascists actually were proposing to nationalise the banks, but his attitude toward them is typical of the mentality of German bourgeois circles. They still regard the Socialists as their mortal enemies. This state of mind ijj ej* m

considered opinion, but is an inheritance from the days of their fathers, to whom Socialists were what Communists are to-day. In the days of Bismarck the Socialists were regarded as "men without a country," and they were proscribed by special laws. Actually European Socialism, paradoxical as it may sound, is the most., conservative clement in European politics to-day. Almost everywhere the Socialists are protecting the existing order of society by keeping the trades unionists from drifting toward the Communist Party. To-day the German- Socialist Party, guided by its moderate lcadci-s, is again protecting the existing order in Germany —Bepublic and Parliamentary democracy. It was this that induced them to save the! Bruening Government in the Kcichstag, even though they internally disapprovo of the ministry and cordially detested its measures. But they realised that the choice was between supporting Bruening and saving the constitution, or handing Germany over to a dictatorship either under Hiudenburg or Hitler. If the Fascists by their demagogic tactics and their rowdy excesses had not finally opened the oyes of these timid bourgeoisie as to the real nature of the Hitler movement the Bruening Government would liave scraped through the Keichstag with but a narrow margin.