POLISH POSITION

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 110, 5 November 1937, Page 4

POLISH POSITION

INFLUENCE IN EUROPE

MUST BE RECKONED WITH

With the problem of population becoming, every year, more important .in European politics both from the standpoint of defence and of economic outlets the rise of the post-war State of Poland adds a new and, as yet, incalculable factor to the situation, says a writer in the Sydney "Sim." At the height of Prussia's antiPolish policy before the war, Prince yon Bulow confessed himself beaten by what he called the "rabbit policy" of the Polish element in Prussia. And for the past sixteen years the population of Poland has been increasing at the rate of nearly half a million a year. It was the philosopher President of Czechoslovakia, Thomas Masaryk, who said that if you probed thoroughly Europe's post-war economic and other troubles you would reach bedrock in coming to population problems. There are nearly 70,000,000 Germans in the Reich against about 40,000,000 people in France. But what the French feel about the Germans, the Germans are apt to feel about the Slavs. They look eastward and see the Poles increasing faster than the Germans, while beyond them the Russians ire adding nearly 3,000,000 souls to their population every year. Poland is a qomparatlvely small country, hemmed in between Rvusia and Germany. Dismembered for 150 years and shared between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, it was reconstituted after the World War. In 1921 it had a population of just over 27,000,000. In 1937 it has over 34,000,000. If the two countries retain their present position in the matter of birth and death rates, Poland will catch up to France in under ten years. Another century, as things go, and she will be ahead of Germany. Poland is not a highly industrialised country. Of her people 28 per cent, live in towns and 73 per cent, in rural areas. In the years immediately before the war permanent emigration absorbed over half of the annual increase of the regions, that now make up Poland. Emigration revived again after the war. Between 1918 and 1931 France absorbed 500,000 Poles. .Between .1922 and 1835 the yearly number of Polish Jews moving to Palestine rose from 2000 to 25,000. By 1929 migration from Poland had again risen to 250,000 a year. . ■■ ■ ■;', - :■• : With the depression came a shutting out of Polish migrants. In 1935 the number of emigrants from Poland was under 25,000, not one-tenth of the number in 1929. Moreover, Poles returned from abroad in such numbers that in 1932 there was a surplus of 17,000 immigrants over emigrants. There are few signs at present of any chance of a, considerable resumption of Polish emigration. The United States has over 4.000,000 Poles now I and shows no inclination to add materially to their numbers. Palestine can hardly absorb any very great number of Polish Jews. So it comes about that a stream of Poles enters the towns of Poland each year from the rural areas in search of work. As things stand, therefore, industries are necessary for Poland. The Minister of Finance (M. Kwiatkowski), who was the real founder of the Polish port of Gdynia, has undertaken the task of creating an industrial triangle in the centre of the country, round the town of Sahdomirz. But Poland lacks many essential raw materials. She has coal, timber, oil, lead, zinc, and flax. She has very little high-grade iron ore, lacks copper, aluminium, and other metals, and is short of wool of the kind needed for her textile factories. She finds it increasingly difficult to procure the necessary quantities of cotton and of rubber. •Poland is one of the "have-nots." To buy rubber and cotton, Poland has had to dump sugar and coal abroad. It has been said of Italy, Germany, and Japan that they came too late in the race for colonies. But Poland, as a French writer has put it, lost the whole nineteenth century. In that period of industrialisation, of urban development, and of colonial expansion, Poland did not exist. Poland is beginning now to think in terms of colonial expansion, not that she has any definite proposals for colonies, but that she is concerned with the question of raw materials and of population. The new rural policy of Germany has reduced Poland's exports of primary products to Germany down to 40 per cent, of their former volume. The industrialisation of Kussia has made the Soviet a much less important customer. Through the port of Gdynia Great Britain drew for a time great quantities of eggs, butter, bacon, and other Polish foodstuffs. The new British agricultural policy and preference have cut this trade by half. German leaders can hardly help feeling uneasy when they see on their eastern frontier a Slav country with a population increasing faster than that of Germany. Germany's attitude towards Poland is correct enough. Sooner or later, however, Germany is likely to seek ■ a revision of her eastern frontier.