SIDELIGHTS ON THE COLONIES ISSUE

Evening Star, Issue 23175, 26 January 1939, Page 18

SIDELIGHTS ON THE COLONIES ISSUE

“ Wo sec a model of the Nazi technique on our own doorstep in this colonial question,” said Mr Bonn, M.P.

“ The same methods that were applied by Habicht in dealing with Austria and by Hcnlein in dealing with the Sudotens are being applied to-day in South-west Africa to the Germans.

“ Herr Bohle, who is head of the Ausland organisation, was, in fact, educated in Capo Town, and his father is a professor in Cape Town University. “ In South-west Africa the Germans keep together, they deal with no one else if they can avoid it, socially there is no intercourse with other people, they have their fuhrers and their Gauleiter, their cells, their Hitler jugend, except that they call them the Path Finders and the Maidens’ Guilds, they have the strength-through-joy ships, and, what is far worse, they have repudiated the agreement to which they came in 1923 for the acceptance by the German occupants of South-west Africa of union nationality.

“ Anyone in touch with opinion in South-west Africa will agree that all these facts are very well known and very bitterly felt by the South Africans. That is the working model. It cannot bo put into practice as quickly and effectively as it has been done elsewhere, but it is a working model on our own doorstep.”

“ Why should Great Britain surrender to a beaten foe the colonies which she captured, colonies which under Nazi rule would once again he a threat to the vital communications of the Empire? ” asked Sir Roger Keyes, M.P.

“ It cannot be contended that they are needed or would he of economic value to Germany, that she needs them for the supply of raw materials or as a home for her surplus population. “ They are needed for nothing but as a strategic threat to the British Empire, which the Germany of Bernhardi’s day was determined to destroy The Home Secretary and others, who might look a bit further ahead, extolled the Anglo-German Naval Treaty as of value to us. Herr Hitler has spoken of it recently as a concession to us, and it has even been suggested that to offset it Germany should possess an air force proportionately stronger than the British Air Force. “ Personally, I have never been able to see any virtue in that treaty. With the lead wo possess Germany cannot hope in our time to build a navy to challenge our sea supremacy, but she has reserved the right to build an unlimited number of submarines, and in the recent crisis her submarines wore located as far away as the South Atlantic, ready to prey upon our trade routes. “ That was a serious menace, but it would be much more serious if Ger-

many possessed ports which she could use as submarine bases on the African coast. I trust that the Government have taken serious note of this warning, and of the strategic considerations which make it imperative to resist the demand for a return of the colonies. “ A peace by negotiation which is dependent upon the return of the colonies could not be a permanent peace, because they would always be a threat to- the communications of our Empire.”