COLONIAL DEMANDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 150, 22 December 1938, Page 4

COLONIAL DEMANDS

THE GERMAN POSITION

Germany's colonial demands having been discussed pro and con abroad recently—particularly ithe- British Dominions—the German Government has decided to once more make its position perfectly clear, says a Berlin message to the ."Christian Science Monitor." ;

This has been done in the semiofficial "Diplomatisch-Politische Korrespondenz." Germany's attitude is thus outlined publicly as follows:

"Germany considers that its former colonies, taken over by others under a false assumption, are still German property. It contends that this property has been held in trusteeship for twenty years since the World War; now the time has come for its return to the owner; since the colonies were wrongly removed originally, justice demands a prompt settlement of Germany's claims."

That is the German attitude as it is officially expressed, but it is unofficially added that the German Government realises the difficulties in the way of a British settlement of, , this question on account of the complicated nature of the relationships among the various members of the British Commonwealth.

Germany therefore does not expect an immediate settlement. But it dislikes the current organised campaign to assemble all -possible arguments against the return of Germany's colonies. On that general question Germany's position is declared to be unyielding.

The suggestion that the colonial question is almost entirely economic and that a settlement might be possible on an economic basis, without the actual transfer of colonies, has been received coldly here.

The German Minister of Economics, Walther Funk, told a French interviewer that Germany considers the colonial question as vone primarily of prestige and honour, not of economics.